Dìngqiāng

Dingqiang belongs to the Hezhou country of Gansu, the upland where the Yellow River and the Daxia River run between loess ridges, west of Lanzhou. Hezhou stood on routes linking China's interior with Central Asia and connecting Mongolia and Tibet. During the Song, a southern road through Hezhou and Xining gained importance when the more northerly route lay under Western Xia control. The Ming army took the town about 1370, and the Tea-Horse Office there traded Sichuan tea to Tibetan and Mongol herders for horses.

Hezhou was an important Muslim centre by the 17th century. In the 18th century the scholar Ma Laichi made it a centre of the Khufiyya Sufi tradition, while another Sufi movement, the Jahriyya, founded by Ma Mingxin, also won followers in the region. Downriver, in the Yellow River gorge, the old Buddhist caves of Binglingsi drew Tibetan Buddhist monks and pilgrims along this frontier.