Xunhua Salar Autonomous County
Xunhua Salar Autonomous County is an autonomous Salar county in the southeast of Haidong Prefecture of Qinghai Province, China. The county has an area of around and approximately 110,000 inhabitants. In the east it borders on the province of Gansu, in the south and the west to the Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, its postal code is 811100 and its capital is the town of Jishi.
The Salar language is the official language in Xunhua, as in all Salar autonomous areas.
As of April 2009, Xunhua is also the site of a mosque containing the oldest hand-written copy of the Quran in China, believed to have been written sometime between the 8th and 13th centuries.
Xunhua County is the location of the Bronze Age necropolis Suzhi of the Kayue culture.
In 1917, the Hui Muslim General Ma Anliang ordered his younger brother Ma Guoliang to suppress a rebellion of Tibetans in Xunhua who rebelled because of taxes Ma Anliang imposed on them. Ma Anliang did not report it to the central government in Beijing and was reprimanded for it and the Hui Muslim General Ma Qi was sent by the government to investigate the case and suppress the rebellion.
