The Forgotten Kingdom That Captivated the World
In 1864, Chinese Muslim residents of a small city called Kucha rose up against their rulers. Within a year, the uprising spread across nearly every town in what is now Xinjiang. Consequently, a soldier of fortune named Ya’qub Beg seized the opportunity and carved out an independent Muslim kingdom in the heart of Central Asia. His capital, Kashgar, quickly became a symbol of hope for Muslims scattered across three continents.
Meanwhile, in faraway Istanbul, a Persian-language newspaper called Akhtar began tracking every twist of this distant drama. Ya’qub Beg’s rise offered proof, or so it seemed, that a new Islamic power could rise from the ashes of Chinese rule. However, his kingdom lasted barely thirteen years before Qing forces reconquered it in 1877. Still, the story he left behind shaped how an entire generation of Iranian intellectuals imagined China, Islam, and the great imperial rivalries of their age.
A new academic study revisits this forgotten episode. It shows how ordinary readers of a Persian newspaper, writing from the margins of three empires, built their own picture of world politics. Their story, in turn, offers a strikingly modern lesson about how nations far from the centers of power still shape global narratives today.
A Newspaper Caught Between Empires
Akhtar first appeared in 1876, funded initially by the Persian Qajar court to counter anti-Iranian propaganda in Ottoman papers. Nevertheless, money problems soon forced it to shut down, and it only returned a year later under Ottoman sponsorship. From that point onward, the paper served two masters at once: it had to please Iranian readers while also promoting Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s vision of global Muslim unity.
Consequently, Akhtar occupied an unusual position. It was neither a purely Iranian voice nor a simple mouthpiece of Ottoman power. Instead, its editors and anonymous writers navigated a delicate balance, criticizing colonialism abroad while avoiding direct confrontation with either the Qajar or Ottoman rulers who funded and censored them. Historians now call this kind of writing “subaltern geopolitics,” meaning political thought produced from a position of partial power rather than full authority or total powerlessness.
Despite these constraints, the paper reached an impressively wide audience. Readers in Iran, the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus, India, and Egypt all followed its reports. Therefore, when news of a Muslim uprising in faraway China reached its offices, editors recognized a story their readers would care about deeply. Over the following years, they published article after article trying to make sense of a region most Persian speakers had never seen and knew only through legend.
The Warrior Who Built a Kingdom From Nothing
Ya’qub Beg arrived in Kashgar almost by accident. Originally a minor military commander from the nearby Khoqand khanate, he entered the chaos of the Dungan Revolt and, within a year, controlled the entire Tarim Basin. Soon afterward, foreign powers began courting him eagerly. The Ottoman sultan sent rifles and granted him the title “Emir of Kashgar,” while Britain signed a trade treaty and quietly supplied weapons of its own.
Even Russia, wary of losing influence, negotiated a treaty securing merchant rights in his territory. In this way, Ya’qub Beg briefly became a genuine player in the so-called Great Game, the decades-long contest between British and Russian empires for control of Central Asia. Newspapers across Europe romanticized him as a modern-day conqueror in the mold of Timur or Babur.
Yet the reality at home told a different story. Local populations resented his heavy taxes and strict application of Islamic law, particularly since many viewed him as a foreign outsider from Khoqand rather than a native liberator. Ultimately, his death in 1877, likely from natural causes, left his fragile kingdom without a leader. Qing forces marched into Kashgar that December, and most residents reportedly welcomed the return of Chinese rule as a relief from years of instability and heavy-handed governance.
Key Events, 1864–1881
| Year | Event | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| 1864 | Dungan Revolt begins in Kucha | Chinese Muslims rise against Qing officials |
| 1865 | Ya’qub Beg seizes Kashgar | Founds independent Muslim kingdom (Yettishar) |
| 1874 | Britain signs trade treaty | Kashgaria gains international recognition |
| 1876 | Akhtar newspaper launches in Istanbul | Begins reporting on the “Great Game” for Persian readers |
| 1877 | Ya’qub Beg dies; Qing forces retake Kashgar | Muslim kingdom collapses after 13 years |
| 1879 | Treaty of Livadia signed | Sparks diplomatic crisis between Russia and China |
| 1881 | Treaty of Saint Petersburg | Resolves the Ili Crisis, though seen as unequal |
When the Kingdom Fell, the Story Changed
Interestingly, Ya’qub Beg’s death and the fall of Kashgar initially passed almost without comment in Akhtar’s pages. Only after the Ottoman-Russian War ended in 1878 did the story resurface, this time recast within a much larger narrative of pan-Islamic solidarity. Suddenly, writers described the fallen kingdom as yet another Muslim territory lost to an infidel power, joining a growing list that already included parts of the Balkans, the Caucasus, and soon Tunisia and Egypt.
Different Akhtar authors offered competing explanations for the defeat. One writer blamed Russian manipulation of the Chinese army; another cited a British newspaper claiming Russia sought to widen the Great Game itself. Meanwhile, a third insisted that Britain bore ultimate responsibility, framing the entire affair as a scheme to keep Russia distracted from a potential war in Europe. Clearly, facts mattered less to these writers than the broader political story each explanation supported.
Notably, one particular article revealed how this reimagining actually worked. Editors translated a London newspaper piece promoting a French book about Chinese Islam, yet they subtly rewrote its racist framing. Where the original mocked Chinese Muslim customs, the Persian version instead praised their honesty, discipline, and religious devotion. In doing so, Akhtar’s writers transformed colonial condescension into a message of Muslim pride, all while keeping the underlying facts largely intact.
Two Empires, Two Very Different Views
British observers saw the same events through an entirely different lens. D. C. Boulger, a prominent Orientalist writer, published a biography of Ya’qub Beg in 1878 that doubled as a geopolitical warning to his own government. According to Boulger, Britain had badly underestimated China’s military strength and needed to build a friendly alliance with Beijing rather than risk another costly war.
By contrast, Akhtar’s writers cared little about aligning China with any single European power. Instead, they hoped Britain and Russia would simply respect Chinese sovereignty and avoid a wider regional conflict altogether. Furthermore, they showed far greater interest in China’s Muslim population than any British writer of the era, since that community connected directly to their own vision of a global Islamic community under threat.
This contrast reveals something important about how geopolitical ideas travel. Colonial knowledge from London or Paris did not simply spread unchanged to readers in Istanbul or Tehran. Rather, Iranian writers actively reshaped that knowledge, discarding what didn’t fit their worldview and emphasizing what did. As a result, the “Great Game” familiar to Western readers looked noticeably different once filtered through a Persian, pan-Islamic lens.
British vs. Iranian (Akhtar) Perspectives
| Question | British View (Boulger, 1878) | Akhtar’s View |
|---|---|---|
| Who should China ally with? | Britain, to counter Russia | No one; all powers should respect China |
| Main concern | Protecting British colonial interests | Protecting the global Muslim community |
| View of Ya’qub Beg | Brave but flawed “Asiatic” ruler | Martyr-like defender of a Muslim kingdom |
| View of Chinese Muslims | Barely mentioned, dismissed as weak | Central to the story; praised as devout and capable |
| Underlying framework | Imperial rivalry (Great Game) | Pan-Islamic solidarity and imperial critique |
Why Ancient Words Like “Chin” Still Matter
Long before the Great Game began, Persian poets already used the word “Chin” to describe distant Eastern lands full of wonder and wisdom. A famous saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad urges believers to “seek knowledge even as far as China.” Meanwhile, the medieval epic Shahnameh mentions China hundreds of times, though rarely with any real geographic precision.
Over the nineteenth century, however, these poetic terms slowly transformed into precise political categories. Russia officially created a territory called “Turkestan” in 1867, while Persian writers began distinguishing between “West Turkestan” under Russian rule and “East Turkestan” under Chinese control. Therefore, Akhtar’s coverage of Ya’qub Beg marked a genuine turning point: it was likely the first time modern geopolitical language about China appeared in a Persian-language publication anywhere in the world.
This linguistic shift matters because it shows how global politics and everyday language evolve together. Old metaphors about distant, mythical realms gradually became tools for analyzing real wars, real treaties, and real human suffering. Similarly, many of today’s geopolitical narratives about China and the Islamic world can trace at least part of their roots back to exactly this moment.
A Mirror for Today’s World
Perhaps most strikingly, this nineteenth-century episode still echoes in current affairs. Modern discussions about China’s relationship with Iran, and about Chinese Muslim communities more broadly, often draw on narratives strikingly similar to those Akhtar’s writers first constructed nearly 150 years ago. Indeed, both countries continue to frame their relationship partly around a shared history of resisting Western colonial pressure.
Of course, the Iranian writers at Akhtar were far from professional diplomats or trained historians. Many articles ran unsigned, and factual errors crept in regularly, since these authors relied almost entirely on secondhand European sources for their information about China. Nevertheless, their creativity and persistence deserve genuine recognition, since they built an entirely original way of understanding world events using only fragments of colonial reporting.
Ultimately, this story reminds readers that global history was never written solely in London, Paris, or Saint Petersburg. Small newspapers, obscure translators, and anonymous editors working from a position of relative powerlessness still managed to shape how millions of people understood their world. Today, as international relations scholars increasingly search for these overlooked voices, stories like Akhtar’s finally receive the attention they deserve.
Feference: Figueroa, William. “China and the frontiers of Islam: East Turkestan and subaltern geopolitics, 1876–1880.” Global Studies Quarterly 6.2 (2026): ksag041.
