Dungans

Dungan (Russian: Дунгане) is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union to refer to a Muslim people of Chinese origin.

Turkic-speaking peoples in Xinjiang Province in China also refer to members of this ethnic group as Dungans. In both China and the former Soviet republics where they reside, however, members of this ethnic group call themselves Hui. In the censuses of Russia and the former Soviet Central Asia, the Hui are enumerated separately from Chinese, and are labelled as Dungans. In the former Soviet Union, population of Dungans can be found in Kazakhstan (36,900 according to the 1999 census^[1]) and Kyrgyzstan (51,766 according to 1999 census^[2]). Some also reside in Russia (801 according to 2002 census.^[3])

History

Migration from China

The Dungan in the former Soviet republics are Hui who fled China in the aftermath of the Hui Minorities' War in the nineteenth century. According to Rimsky-Korsakoff (1992), three separate groups of the Hui people fled to Russian Empire across the Tian Shan Mountains during the exceptionally severe winter of 1877/78:

The next wave of immigration followed in the early 1880s. In accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881), which required the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Upper Ili Basin (the Kulja area), the Hui and Uighur people of the region were allowed to opt for moving to the Russian side of the border. Most choose that option; according to the Russian statistics, 4,682 Hui moved to Russian Empire under the treaty. They migrated in many small groups between 1881-83, settling in the village of Sokuluk some 30 km west of Bishkek, as well as in a number of points between the Chinese border and Sokuluk, in south-eastern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan.

Name

In the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and the post-Soviet states, the Dungans continue to refer to themselves as the Hui people (Chinese: 回族, Huízú; in Cyrillic Soviet Dungan spelling, xуэйзў). Even with their Chinese ancestry Dungans view themselves as a separate ethnicity.

The name Dungan is of obscure origin. It is mostly used by Dungans' (or Huis') Turkic- and Tajik-speaking neighbors, both in Xinjiang and in the CIS states, and has been presumably borrowed from the Turkic languages into Russian (дунгане, dungane (pl.); дунганин, dunganin (sing.)), Chinese (simplified Chinese: 东干族; traditional Chinese: 東干族; pinyin: Dōnggānzú), and English as well. One popular theory derives this word from Turkic döñän ("one who turns"), which can be compared to Chinese 回 (huí), which has a similar meaning. Another therory derives it from the Chinese 东干 (Dong Gan), 'Eastern Gansu', the region to which many of the Dungan can trace their ancestry; however the character gan (干) used in the name of the ethnic group is different from that used in the name of the province (甘).

In English and German, the ethnonym "Dungan", in various spelling forms, was attested as early as 1830s. For example, James Prinsep in 1835 mentions Muslim "Túngánis" in "Chinese Tartary". ^[5] ^[6]. In 1839, Karl Ernst von Baer in his German-language account of Russian Empire and adjacent Asian lands has a one-page account of Chinese-speaking Muslim "Dungani" or "Tungani", who had visited Orenburg in 1827 with a caravan from China; he also mentions "Tugean" as a spelling variant used by other authors.^[7] R.M. Martin in 1847 mentions "Tungani" merchants in Yarkand.^[8]

The word (mostly in the form "Dungani" or "Tungani", sometimes "Dungens" or "Dungans") acquired some currency in English and other western languages when a number of books in the 1860-70s discussed the Dungan revolt in north-western China.

Dungan villages in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

The Dungans themselves referred to Karakunuz (Russian: Каракунуз, sometimes Караконыз or Караконуз) as Ingpan (Chinese: 营盘, Yingpan; Russian: Иньпан), which means 'a camp, an encampment'. In 1965, Karakunuz was renamed Masanchi (sometimes spelt as "Masanchin"), after Magazi Masanchi or Masanchin (Dungan: Магәзы Масанчын; Chinese: 马三青), a Dungan participant in the Communist Revolution and a Soviet Kazakhstan statesman.

The following table summarizes location of Dungan villages in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, alternative names used for them, and their Dunngan population as reported by Ma Tang (2003). The Cyrillic Dungan spelling of place names is as in the textbook by Sushanlo, Imazov (1988); the spelling of the name in Chinese character is as in Ma Tang (2003).

The position of the Kazakhstan villages within the administrative division of Zhambyl Province, and the total population of each village can be found at the provincial statistics office web site.^[9]

Besides the traditionally Dungan villages, many Dungan people live in the nearby cities, such as Bishkek, Tokmok, Karakol.

Present day

As Hong (2005) notes, "[t]he Dungan people derive from China's Hui people, and now live mainly in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Their population is about 110,000. This people have now developed a separate ethnicity outside China, yet they have close relations with the Hui people in culture, ethnic characteristics and ethnic identity."

Language

Unlike other minority nationalities in Central Asia, such as the Koreans, nearly all of the Dungan report that they continue to use their ethnic language as their mother tongue. More than two-thirds of the Dungan also speak Russian, and a small proportion can speak Kyrgyz or other languages belonging to the titular nationalities of the countries where they live. [1]

Culture

The Dungan are primarily farmers, growing rice and vegetables such as sugar beets. Many also raise dairy cattle. In addition, some are involved in opium production. The Dungan tend to be endogamous.

The Dungan are famous for their hospitality and hold many ceremonies and banquets to preserve their culture. They have elaborate and colorful observances of birthdays, weddings, and funerals. In addition, schools have museums to preserve other parts of their culture, such as embroidery, traditional clothing, silver jewelry, paper cuts of animals and flowers and tools.

Religion

The large majority of Dungan are Hanafi Muslim, with a Hanbali minority. Many Dungan villages contain a mosque run by village elders.

Some ascribe the rise of Islam amongst the Dungans to an alleged Arab ancestry. Though this may be possible for some Dungans (though, not likely), it is more plausible that the prevalence of Islam amongst them is due in part to the freedom Arab preachers were given freedom by Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty in the 7th Century CE. Also, a more likely cause was the mass conversion to Islam by the Mongols, Berke Khan and the Golden Horde in particular, as well as mass conversions by the populations in their territories.

Notes

^ Aleksandr Nikolaevich Alekseenko (Александр Николаевич Алексеенко), "Republic in the Mirror of the Population Census" («Республика в зеркале переписей населения») Sotsiologicheskie Issledovaniia. 2001, No. 12. pp. 58-62.
^ Kyrgyzstan National Statistics Office, 1999 Population Census Report, Section 3
^ Всероссийская перепись населения 2002 года
^ As per Ma Tong (2003)
^ James Prinsep, "Memoir on Chinese Tartary and Khoten". The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. 48, December 1835. P. 655. On Google Books
^ Prinsep's article is also available in "The Chinese Repository", 1843, p. 234 On Google Books. A modern (2003) reprint is available, ISBN 1402156316.
^ Karl Ernst von Baer, Grigoriĭ Petrovich Gelʹmersen. "Beiträge zur Kenntniss des russischen Reiches und der angränzenden Länder Asiens". Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1839. p. 91. On Google Books (German)
^ Robert Montgomery Martin, "China; political, commercial, and social; an official report". 1847. p.19. On Google Books
^ Population data for Zhambyl Province towns and villages (1999-2002)

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