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The Salar people are a Turkic peoples ethnic minority in China who speak Salar language, a Turkic language of the Oghuz languages. They numbered 165,159 people in 2020, according to that year's national census.
The Salars live mostly in the Qinghai–Gansu border region, on both sides of the Yellow River, namely in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County and Hualong Hui Autonomous County of Qinghai and the adjacent Jishishan Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County of Gansu. There are also Salars in some parts of Henan and Shanxi, as well as in northern Xinjiang, in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. They are a patriarchy agricultural society and predominantly Muslims.
The Quran the two brothers brought on their journey to China is to this day still preserved in Xunhua Salar Autonomous County at Jiezi Grand Mosque in Haidong, Qinghai The Nanjing Museum has repaired the Quran to protect it from decaying.
According to Salar oral history, Tibetan women were the original wives of the first Salars to arrive in the Qinghai region. Supposedly, they were only permitted to marry the women after a compromise between the Tibetan ruler of Wimdo Valley and the newcomers. He demanded that the Salars install prayer flags, which are a Tibetan Buddhist practice, on the four corners of their homes, that they pray with prayer wheels with on them, and to bow before statues of Buddhahood. The Salars initially refused the demands based on their religion but eventually compromised on the flags by placing stones on the corners of their houses instead, which is still practiced to this day. For this reason, Salars are often bilingual in Amdo Tibetan and the two groups often use the term "maternal uncle" to refer each other, referencing the Salars' Tibetan ancestry. Many Salar customs and practices have been influenced by Tibetan culture and there are numerous Tibetan loanwords in the Salar language.
In eastern Qinghai and Gansu, there were cases of Tibetan people who remained Buddhists while marrying Hui men; they had sons who would be Buddhist or Muslim. The Buddhist sons became while the other sons were Muslims. The Tibetan Muslims, who live next to the Salar, have mostly become Muslim due to their influence.
Hui and Salar often intermarry due to their cultural similarities and shared religion, especially after the Ming Dynasty established control over the Xunhua Salars in 1370 and gave control to Hezhou officials. Many Hezhou Hui began to migrate to the region afterwards On the other hand, there are comparatively few Han-Salar marriages. The Salars do use Han surnames, however. Compared to Salar men, few Salar women married outside; the sole exception is Hui men taking Salar women as their wives while Tibetan women make up the majority of the spouses of Salar men who marry outside their ethnicity and it has been reported that Salars have a total avoidance of marriages with Han. (2025). 9781438468754, SUNY Press. ISBN 9781438468754 As a result, Salars are heavily mixed with other ethnicities.
Salars in Qinghai live on both the northern and southern banks of the Yellow River; northern Salars are called Hualong or Bayan Salars while southern Salars are called Xunhua Salars. The northern region is a mix between discontinuous Salar and Tibetan villages while the southern region is more solidly Salar, as the Hui and Salars pushed out the Tibetans prior.
After moving in, the Salars originally practiced the same Gedimu variant of Sunni Islam as the Hui did and adopted Hui practices, such as Hui Islamic educational practices, which were derived from Yuan Dynasty era Arabic and Persian primers. One such Salar primer was called the "Book of Diverse Studies" (雜學本本).
Salars were often multilingual, having knowledge of Salar, Mongol, Chinese, Tibetan due to historically trading on the Yellow River in Ningxia and Lanzhou in Gansu. The Salars were permitted an enormous amount of autonomy and self-rule by the Ming dynasty, which gave them command of taxes, military and the courts. The Ming and Qing dynasties often mobilized Salars into their militaries as soldiers, with the Ming government recruiting them at 17 different times for service and the Qing government at 5 different times.
In the 1670s, the Sufism master Afaq Khoja (and possibly his father Muhammad Yūsuf) preached to the Salars and introduced Sufism into their community. In the mid-18th century, one of Āfāq Khoja's silsila, Ma Laichi, began to spread his teachings, known as Khufiyya among the Salars, as well among their Hui people and Tibetan Muslims neighbors.
Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, another Chinese Sufi master, Ma Mingxin, was spreading his version of Sufi teaching, known as Jahriyya throughout the Gansu province (which then included Salar's homeland in today's Qinghai). Many Salars became adherents of Jahriyya or the "New Teaching", as the Qing government officials dubbed it (in opposition to the "Old Teaching", i.e. both the Khufiyya Sufi order and the non-Sufi Gedimu Islam). While the external differences between the Khufiyya and the Jahriyya would look comparatively trivial to an outsider (the two Tariqa were most known for, respectively, the silent or vocal dhikr, i.e. invocation of the name of God), the conflict between their adherents often became violent.
Sectarian violence between the Jahriyya and Khufiyya broke out repeatedly until the major episode of violence in 1781. In 1781, the authorities, concerned with the spread of the "subversive" "New Teaching" among the Salars, whom they (perhaps unfairly) viewed as a fierce and troublesome lot, arrested Ma Mingxin and sent an expedition to the Salar community of Xunhua County to round up his supporters there. In the Jahriyya revolt sectarian violence between two suborders of the Naqshbandi Sufis, the Jahriyya Sufi Muslims and their rivals, the Khafiyya Sufi Muslims, led to a Jahriyya Sufi Muslim rebellion which the Qing dynasty in China crushed with the help of the Khafiyya Sufi Muslims.
The Jahriyya Salars of Xunhua, led by their akhund (imam) nicknamed Su Sishisan ("Su Forty-three", 苏四十三), responded by killing the government officials and destroying their task force at the place called Baizhuangzi and then rushed across the Hezhou region to the walls of Lanzhou, where Ma Mingxin was imprisoned. When the besieged officials brought Ma Mingxin, wearing chains, to the Lanzhou city wall, to show him to the rebels, Su's Salars at once showed respect and devotion to their imprisoned leaders. Scared officials took Ma down from the wall and beheaded him right away. Su's Salars tried attacking the Lanzhou city walls, but, not having any siege equipment, failed to penetrate into the walled city. The Salar fighters (whose strength at the time is estimated by historians to be in 1,000–2,000 range) then set up a fortified camp on a hill south of Lanzhou. Some Han Chinese, Hui people and Dongxiangs (Santa) joined the Salar in the rebellion against the Qing.
To deal with the rebels, Imperial Commissioners Agui and Heshen were sent to Lanzhou. Unable to dislodge the Salars from their fortified camp with his regular troops, Agui sent the "incompetent" Heshen back to Beijing and recruited Alxa League Mongols and Gansu Tibetans to aid the Lanzhou garrison. After a three months' siege of the rebel camp and cutting off the Salars' water supply, Agui's joint forces destroyed the Jahriya rebels; Su and all his fighters were all killed in the final battle. Overall, it is said that as much as 40% of their entire population was killed in the revolt.
As late as 1937, a folk ballad was still told by the Salars about the rebellion of 1781 and Su Sishisan's suicidal decision to go to war against the Qianlong Emperor.
The Qing government deported some of the Salar Jahriyya rebels to the Ili valley which is in modern-day Xinjiang. Today, a community of a few thousand Salars speaking a distinct dialect of Salar still live there. Salar migrants from Amdo (Qinghai) came to settle the region as religious exiles, migrants and as soldiers enlisted in the Qing army to fight rebels in Ili, often following the Hui. The distinctive dialect of the Ili Salar differs from the other Salar dialects because the neighboring Kazakh and Uyghur languages in Ili influenced it. The Ili Salar population numbers around 4,000 people. There have been instances of misunderstanding between speakers of Ili Salar and Qinghai Salar due to the divergence of the dialects. The differences between the two dialect result in a "clear isogloss".
From the 1880s to the 1890s, sectarian strife was rife in the Salar community of Xunhua again. This time, the conflict was among two factions of the Ma Laichi menhuan (order) of the Khufiyya and in 1895 the local Qing officials ended up siding with the reformist faction within the order. Although the factional conflict was evident not only in Salar Xunhua but in Hui people Linxia City as well, the troops were first sent to Xunhua – which again precipitated a Salar rebellion, which spread to many Hui and Dongxiangs communities of Gansu too. It turned into the Dungan Revolt (1895), which was crushed by a loyalist Hui people army.
The later Qing dynasty and Republic of China Salar General Han Youwen was born to a Tibetan woman named Ziliha (孜力哈) and a Salar father named Aema (阿額瑪).
The Hui people, also known as the "white capped Hui", used incense during worship, while the Salar, also known as "black capped Hui", considered this to be a heathen ritual and denounced it.
Like other Muslims in China, the Salars served extensively in the Chinese military. It was said that they and the Dongxiangs were given to "eating rations", a reference to military service.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Salar troops and officers served in the Qinghai army of the Muslim general Ma Biao and they battled extensively in bloody battles against the Imperial Japanese Army in Henan province. In 1937, during the Battle of Beiping–Tianjin the Chinese government was notified by Muslim General Ma Bufang of the Ma clique that he was prepared to bring the fight to the Japanese in a telegram message. Immediately after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Ma Bufang arranged for a cavalry division under Ma Biao to be sent east to battle the Japanese. 让日军闻风丧胆地回族抗日名将 [2] Salars made up the majority of the first cavalry division which was sent by Ma Bufang. The Qinghai Chinese, Salar, Chinese Muslim, Dongxiang and Tibetan troops Ma Biao led fought to the death against the Japanese or committed suicide refusing to be taken as prisoner. In September 1940, when the Japanese made an offensive against the Muslim Qinghai troops, the Qinghai ambushed them and killed so many of the Japanese soldiers that they were forced to retreat. The Japanese could not even pick up their dead, they instead cut an arm from their corpses limbs for cremation to send back to Japan. The Japanese did not dare make an offensive like that again.
Han Youwen, a Salar general in the National Revolutionary Army and member of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), directed the defense of the city of Xining during air raids by Japanese planes. Han survived an aerial bombardment by Japanese planes in Xining while he was being directed via telephone from Ma Bufang, who hid in an air raid shelter in a military barracks. The bombing resulted in human flesh splattering a Blue Sky with a White Sun flag and Han being buried in rubble. Han Youwen was dragged out of the rubble while bleeding and he managed to grab a machine gun while he was limping and fired back at the Japanese warplanes. He later defected to the Communist People's Liberation Army, serving in numerous military positions and as vice chairman of Xinjiang. He had led Chinese Muslim forces against Soviet and Mongol forces in the Pei-ta-shan Incident.
Hui people general Ma Fuxiang recruited Salars into his army, and said they moved to China since the Tang dynasty. His classification of them is in two groups, five inner clans, eight outer clans. Ma said the outer group speaks Tibetan, no longer knowing their native language. Salars only married other Salars. Uighurs have said that they were unable to understand the Salar language.
Ma and Han are the two most widespread names among the Salar. Like the Hui, Ma is meant to substitute for Muhammad; however, many Salars also have the surname Ma due to intermarriage with the Hui. The upper four clans of the Salar assumed the surname Han and lived west of Xunhua. (Volume 51, Issue 4 of new series, American Philosophical Society Volume 51, Part 4 of Transactions Series Volume 51, Part 4 of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society new ser v. 51, no. 4) (Original from the University of California) One of these Salar surnamed Han was Han Yimu, a Salar officer who served under General Ma Bufang. He fought in the Kuomintang Islamic Insurgency in China (1950–1958), leading Salars in a revolt in 1952 and 1958. Ma Bufang, enlisted Salars as officers in his army by exclusively targeting Xunhua and Hualong as areas to draw officers from.
18.69 years was the average first marriage age for Salar women in 2000, while Tibetan women were married at 23.8 years on average in 1990.
In the late 1990s, it was estimated that out of the some 89,000 Salars, around 60,000 spoke the Salar language.
Most Salar do not use any written script for the Salar language, instead they use Chinese characters for practical purposes. Salar serves as their spoken language, while Chinese serves as a both spoken and written language. Many of the current generation of Salars are fluent in Chinese language and Lhasa Tibetan.
The Salar language spoken in Amdo (Qinghai) is a language of Turkic origin that has been heavily influenced by the Chinese and Tibetan languages. Around 20% of the vocabulary is of Chinese origin and 10% is of Tibetan origin. Morphological and Syntax have been fully borrowed from these latter languages. Yet, according to author William Safran, linguistic works published in China treat Salar as if it has few from these languages, omitting most Chinese and Tibetan features. The Salar mostly use the Chinese writing system, although Latin and Arabic alphabets are used on occasion. The Salar language has taken loans and influence from neighboring Chinese varieties. It is neighboring variants of Chinese which have loaned words to the Salar language. In Qinghai, many Salar men speak both the Qinghai dialect of Chinese and Salar. Rural Salars can speak Salar fluently while urban Salars often assimilate into the Chinese speaking Hui population.
In Ili Salar, the i and y high front vowels, when placed after an initial glides are spirantized with j transforming into ʝ. Qinghai and Ili Salar have mostly the same consonantal development.
Many Salar adhere to the Naqshbandi Sufi order, which spread throughout the region in the 17th and 18th centuries. (2025). 9780739175293, Lexington Books. ISBN 9780739175293
An autosomal genetic study (Ma et al. 2021) estimated that Eurasia-related admixture (represented by ancient Andronovo samples) among Salars was at ~9.1% to ~11.8%, with the remainder being dominant Eurasia ancestry; might derive from "Yellow River farmers" (YR_LBIA) or "Liao River farmers" (WLR_LN) at ~88.2 to ~90.9%. The study also showed that there is a close genetic affinity among ethnic minorities in Northwest China (Uyghurs, Hui people, Dongxiangs, Bonan people, Yugurs and Salars) and that these cluster closely with other East Asian people, especially with other Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tungusic speakers, indicating the probability of a shared recent common ancestor of "Altaic speakers".
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