much as 40% of their entire population was killed in the revolt. As late as 1937, a folk ballad was still told by the Salars about the rebellion of 1781, and Su Sishisan suicidal decision to go to war against the Qing Empire. The Qing government deported some of the Salar Jahriyya rebels to the Ili valley which is in modern-day Xinjiang. Today, a community of a few thousand Salars speaking a distinct dialect of Salar still live there. Salar migrants from Amdo (Qinghai) came to settle the region as religious exiles, migrants and as soldiers enlisted in the Qing army to fight rebels in Ili, often following the Hui. The distinctive dialect of the Ili Salar differs from the other Salar dialects because the neighboring Kazakh and Uyghur languages in Ili influenced it. The Ili Salar population numbers around 4,000 people. There have been instances of misunderstanding between speakers of Ili Salar and Qinghai Salar due to the divergence of the dialects. The differences between the two dialect result in a "clear isogloss". In the 1880s-1890s, sectarian strife was rife in the Salar community of Xunhua again. This time, the conflict was among two factions of the Hua Si menhuan (order) of the Khufiyya and in 1895 the local Qing officials ended up siding with the reformist faction within the order. Although the factional conflict was evident not only in Salar Xunhua but in Hui Hezhou as well, the troops were first sent to Xunhua - which again precipitated a Salar rebellion, which spread to many Hui and Dongxiang communities of Gansu too. It turned into the Dungan Revolt (1895), which was crushed by a loyalist Hui army. The Hui people, also known as the "white capped HuiHui", used incense during worship, while the Salar, also known as "black capped HuiHui", considered this to be a heathen ritual and denounced it. Modern era Salars served in general Dong Fuxiang's Kansu Braves army against the foreign western and Japanese Eight Nation Alliance in the Boxer rebellion. Other Muslims like Dongxiang, Bonan and Hui also served in the Kansu-Tibetan Braves. Like other Muslims in China, the Salars served extensively in the Chinese military. It was said that they and the Dongxiang were given to "eating rations", a reference to military service. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Salar troops and officers served in the Qinghai army of the Muslim general Ma Biao