Xunhua Salar Autonomous County

Xunhua Salar Autonomous County is an autonomous county in the southeast of Haidong Prefecture, in Qinghai province, China. The autonomous county has an area of around 2,100 square kilometres (810 sq mi), and a population of approximately 161,600 inhabitants per a 2022 government publication. In the east it borders the province of Gansu and in the south and the west Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Its postal code is 811100 and its capital is the town of Jishi [zh].

Xunhua County is the only autonomous county where the Salar are the sole titular minority. Salar language is an official language in Xunhua, as well as in Jishishan Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County.

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 (simplified Chinese: 苏志墓地; traditional Chinese: 蘇志墓地; pinyin: Sūzhì Mùdì) of the Kayue culture.

Ethnic Salars first arrived in present-day Xunhua Salar Autonomous County during the 13th or 14th century, as part of the Mongol army. Initially, Salar settlers cohabitated with ethnic Tibetans, moving into existing Tibetan villages along the Yellow River. However, as a result of population pressures and religious differences, conflicts between the two groups broke out, and Salar populations expelled local Tibetans, first from villages along the south of the Yellow River, and later, from villages along the northern bank.

The Ming dynasty established control of the area by the year 1370, placing it under the jurisdiction of Hezhou, located in Gansu. Following this conquest, Hui settlers from Hezhou began moving to the region, and began trading with and marrying local Salars. Many Salars originally surnamed "Han", which acted as a derivative of term "khan" adopted the surname "Ma", which acted as a derivative of "Muhammed". Marriage ceremonies, funerals, birth rites and prayer were shared by both Salar and Hui as they intermarried. These increasing economic and cultural ties between Salars and the Hui resulted in intermarriages between the two groups becoming commonplace, even more so than marriages between local Salars and Tibetans, or between Salars and Mongols and Han Chinese.

The Salar language, culture, and sociopolitical organization were all highly impacted throughout the 14th–16th centuries by large-scale interethnic contact and interethnic marriage. For example, Salars adopted high-walled adobe compounds and side-buttoning coats from Tibetic and Mongolic influences. The Salar language imported semantic and grammatical lexemes from Mongolic languages, and upon the end of Mongol rule in the late 14th century, many Salars were fluent in Tibetan and Chinese languages as a result of increasing contact with these two groups.

Since the early Ming dynasty, many Salars in the region engaged in long-distance traded along the Yellow River, a practice which has continued into modern times. Much of the region's trade had historically utilized the river to reach destinations such as Lanzhou and Ningxia.