Early Life
A Hui, he was born in 1869 in Daohe, now part of Linxia, Gansu, China. His father was Ma Haiyan. He was senior commander in the Qinghai-Gansu region ever since the late Qing times.
Ma Qi lead loyalist Muslim troops to crush Muslim rebels during the Dungan Revolt (1895).
During the Boxer Rebellion, Ma Haiyan defeated the foreign army at the Battle of Langfang, and died in 1900 while protecting the Imperial Family from the western forces. Ma Qi succeeded him in all his posts and capacities. Ma Qi was six feet tall, and maintained the mintuan militia in Xining as his personal army, called the Ninghaijun.
Ma Qi also directly defied his commanding officer, the Muslim General Ma Anliang, when Ma Wanfu, the Muslim brotherhood leader, was being shipped to Gansu from Xinjiang by Yang Zengxin, to Ma Anliang, so Ma Anliang could execute Ma Wanfu, Ma Qi rescued Ma Wanfu by attacking the escort and brought him to Qinghai. Ma Anliang hated Muslim brotherhood, which he banned earlier, and sentenced all its members to death, and wanted to personally execute Ma Wanfu because he was its leader.
During the Xinhai Revolution, Ma Qi easily defeated Gelaohui revolutionaries in Ningxia, sending their heads rolling, but when the Emperor abdicated, Ma Qi declared support for the Republic of China. Unlike the Mongols and Tibetans, the Muslims refused to secede from the Republic, and Ma Qi quickly used his diplomatic and military powers to make the Tibetan and Mongol nobles recognize the Republic of China government as their overlord, and sent a message to President Yuan Shikai reaffirming that Qinghai was securely in the Republic. He replaced "Long, Long, Long, Live the reigning Emperor", with "Long live the Republic of China" on inscriptions.
Ma Qi developed relations with Wu Peifu, who tried to turn Gansu military leaders against Feng Yuxiang. Feng's suboordinate, Liu Yufen expelled all the Han Generals who opposed him, which resulted in Hui Generals Ma Hongbin, Ma Lin, Ma Tingxiang, and Han General Bei Jianzhang, the commader of a Hui army, to stop fighting against Feng and seek an agreement.
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