Sadir Palwan

Sadir Palwan (1798–1871) was a Uyghur folk hero and poet of Ghulja, in the Ili region of Xinjiang, and one of the leaders of the Uyghur uprising of 1864 against Qing rule in the Ili valley. Remembered in Uyghur and Kazakh tradition as a batyr — a champion of enormous strength — he took part in person, in his late sixties, in the storming of Qing fortresses, and his songs are still sung. ^{1 2}

He was born in 1798 at Mollatokhtiyuzi, a village near Ghulja, and his birth name was Sadir Khoshakhmat: his father Khoshakhmat had come to Ili from Khotan in 1766. The byname Palwan — "champion" or "wrestler" — was given for his huge stature and strength and for his feats in the Uyghur national movement, and it displaced his birth name entirely. From his youth he joined armed actions against the Chinese administration of the region. ^{1 3}

When the Uyghurs of the Ili region rose in 1864, Sadir Palwan was one of the uprising's organisers, alongside Abdurasul Beg and Alakhan Sultan; the Chinese article dates his leading of the rebel army to 10 November 1864 and says the rebels took the whole Ili region. Despite his advanced age he personally fought in the assaults on the Qing fortresses of Bayandai and Chilpanza. The Kazakh article likewise counts him among the leaders of the Ghulja peasant rising of 1864–67 and records that he was imprisoned several times across a life spent fighting the Manchu-Qing authorities and the local feudal begs. ^{1 3 2}

Sadir Palwan composed and himself performed poems that spread widely among the people; the Kazakh article names several by their opening lines. His life later became the subject of a play (M. Asimov, 1958) and a novella (I. Mukhlisov, 1964), and a memorial hall to him stands in his home village, built at a villager's expense. He died of illness in 1871 and was buried in the Muslim cemetery of Mollatokhtiyuzi. ^{3 2 1}

His faith is recorded as unknown, unflagged. No source read names any religious affiliation for him: the Russian article records only his burial in a Muslim cemetery, the Kazakh and Chinese articles say nothing about religion, and Wikidata carries no religion value for him. Burial in a Muslim cemetery and leadership of a rising in a Muslim land are circumstances, not attestations, and no school reading exists anywhere to weigh. ^{1 4}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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