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Ma Hualong (馬化龍, Muslim name Alim Allah, Ar. name Muḥammad Īmān, Ṣūfī title Tabirat Allah, Chinese courtesy name Chaoqing; 1810–71) was a powerful Muslim leader in northwestern China and the fifth generation shaykh of the Jahriyya menhuan (Ṣūfī order). The Jahriyya is an offshoot of the Central Asian Naqshbandiyya tradition, with some Shādhiliyya influences, and was established in the 1170s/1760s by Ma Mingxin (d. 1195/1781). Ma Hualong led the Muslim resistance in Ningxia to the Qing dynasty’s pacification campaign during the Gre…

Ma families of warlords (馬家軍閥, Ma jia jun fa) is a collective term for three separate Hui Muslim lineages, all surnamed Ma, who dominated militarily and politically large parts of northwestern China from the late nineteenth century, through the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, to the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. There is no evidence that the three lineages were related, but all of them had roots in western Hezhou prefecture (in Gansu province), and two of them hai…