Sabit Damolla

Sabit Damolla Abdulbaqi (June 1883 – July 1934) was a Uyghur scholar and independence leader who became the first and only prime minister of the First East Turkestan Republic, proclaimed at Kashgar on 12 November 1933. Captured after the republic's collapse, he was reportedly executed by hanging in July 1934. ^{1 2}

There is no Arabic or Urdu article on him; this page rests on the English and Chinese articles, as stated in its sources.

He was born at Atush (Artux) in the Kashgar vilayet of Xinjiang in June 1883. He received a religious education and studied at the Xinjiang Academy of Politics and Laws; the title Damolla marks a learned senior mullah and teacher. He travelled widely — to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and the Soviet Union — meeting, the English article says, many political and religious dignitaries and returning to Xinjiang by way of India in 1932 to work for East Turkestan's independence. ¹

The Turkic Islamic Republic of East Turkestan was proclaimed at Kashgar on 12 November 1933, with Khoja Niyaz named president in absentia and Sabit Damolla as prime minister; a government flight from Kashgar to Yengisar on 10 February 1934, under attack by Ma Zhancang's forces, in practice ended the republic, whose remnants were dissolved by 16 April 1934. He then went toward Aksu, was surrounded and captured by Khoja Niyaz's troops in late April 1934, and handed over to Sheng Shicai. ¹

The English article, citing Forbes's Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia (p. 123), reports that he was executed by hanging at Aksu in July 1934. The same article also preserves a later allegation that Sheng Shicai had instead held him secretly at Ürümqi — a passage tied to events of 1944 — and the Chinese article's infobox likewise gives his place of death as Dihua (Ürümqi) in 1934. The museum record carries the death as July 1934 following Forbes, marked debated because the two accounts conflict on the place. ^{1 2}

His faith is recorded as unknown, unflagged. No source names a legal school or order for him: the English article calls him (citing Tursun 2014) a Jadidist — a member of the Central Asian Muslim modernist movement, a movement descriptor rather than a school — the Chinese infobox gives his religion only as "Islam" in general, and Wikidata's religion value is likewise "Islam" in general. His learning and his office say what he did, not what school he belonged to. ^{1 2 3}

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