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Linxia City (, Xiao'erjing: لٍِ‌ثِيَا شِ), once known as Hezhou (, Xiao'erjing: حَ‌جِوْ), is a county level city in the province of Gansu, China and the capital of the multi ethnic Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture. It is located in the valley of the Daxia River (a right tributary of the Yellow River), (by road) southwest of the provincial capital Lanzhou. The population of the entire county level city of Linxia (which includes both the central city and some rural area) is estimated at 250,000; of which, 58.4% is classified as urban population. According to the prefectural government, 51.4% of Linxia City's population belongs to the "Hui nationality", i. e. the Chinese speaking Muslims. Some members of Linxia Prefecture other minority ethnic groups, such as Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar, live in the city. In the words of the ethnologist Dru Gladney, "Almost every major Islamic movement in China finds its origin among Muslims who came to Linxia disseminating new doctrines after pilgrimage to Middle Eastern Islamic centers". and Khufiyya Sufi orders; it was also the home of Ma Mingxin, the founder of the Jahriyya order, although that order's "center of gravity" has shifted elsewhere since.

Administratively, Linxia City is an incorporated county level city. Unlike many Chinese county level cities, which include a county size expanse of the countryside, the boundaries of Linxia City include only a fairly small area (88.6 km2), stretched along the Daxia River, which in this region flows towards the northeast. The wide fertile valley of the river is flanked by loess plateau escarpments on both sides, and the countryside beyond these limits, to the northwest and southeast of the valley, belongs to a separate administrative unit, called Linxia County. Linxia City borders on Linxia County in the southwest as well, but in the northeast it has a short border with Dongxiang Autonomous County. The central business district of Linxia City, corresponding to the former walled city of Hezhou, is located a couple of kilometers to the north of the Daxia River, and contains the city's more upscale shopping and entertainment precincts, as well as the prefectural government. The old city wall is gone, but its existence is remembered in many place names: Xi Guan Lu ("West Gate Street"), Chengjiao ([SW] "Corner of the City Wall") Mosque, Nanmen Guangchang ("South Gate Square") with Nanguan ("South Gate") Mosque, Dongguan ("East Gate") neighborhood, Bei Chengjiao Gongbei ("The Gongbei at the Northern Corner of the City Wall", a. k. a. Yu Baba Gongbei). A small river, called Hongshui He, flows along what must have been the southern part of the city wall. The main street within this central area is Tuanjie Lu ("Unity Street"), running north–south.

In the past, Linxia City was called Hezhou , and the surrounding area was sometimes known as Hezhou Prefecture. Throughout its history, Hezhou often was the crossing of important trade routes: one of the alternative paths of the east way Silk Route, connecting China's heartland with Central Asia, and the north–south route linking Mongolia and Tibet. During parts of the Song Dynasty period, when the Western Xia took control of the more northerly path of the Silk Route, the more southerly Didao Hezhou Xining alternative path of the Silk Route may have become particularly important, making all three cities important commercial centers. Historians think that it was then, during the Song Dynasty, that the Muslims of Hezhou probably built their first mosque.

Hezhou was already an important Islamic center in the 1670s, when the Kashgarian Sufi master Āfāq Khoja made his tour of the Muslim communities of Qing Empire's northwestern borderlands. While his preaching in Xining, Didao and Lanzhou is better documented, he most likely preached in Hezhou as well. In any event, both Āfāq Khoja's Chinese disciple Ma Tai Baba and another Chinese Sufi master, Qi Jingyi the founder of the Chinese branch of the Qadiriyyah school were buried in Hezhou. Soon enough, many people from the Hui and Salar communities were embroiled in conflicts between the followers of Ma Laichi's Khufiyya and those of another Sufi order the Jahriyya, founded in the 1760s by Ma Mingxin. The conflict came to a head in 1781 when Salar land in Xunhua County a few score kilometers to the west of the city was briefly besieged by the Salar rebels who passed by on the way to Lanzhou, in an unsuccessful bid to save the imprisoned Ma Mingxin.

Soon after the beginning of the Massive Muslim Armed Rebellion in Northwestern China in 1862, Hezhou became one of the main strongholds of the Muslim rebels who fought against Qing Dynasty and killed many non Muslim Han and Manchu people in Northwestern China. The leader of the rebellion in the Hezhou region was Ma Zhan'ao, the leader of the Hezhou based Huasi menhuan, a Khufiyya Sufi order founded over a century before by Ma Laichi. His top lieutenants were Ma Haiyan and Ma Qianling. A pragmatic leader, Ma Zhan'ao apparently preferred to avoid unnecessary bloodshed; soon after seizing the city, he made an effort to enable the Qing officials to flee the rebel city with whatever assets they could carry. Ma Zhan'ao himself went to fight along with Zuo Zongtang against the Muslim rebels farther west. For his efforts (and on Zuo's request), Ma was later rewarded by the "feathered cap of the fifth rank" ; his and his lieutenants' descendants went to play an important role in the region's history for decades to come. Ma Anliang was regarded by westerners as the leader of Muslims in Gansu. Ma Anliang's son held the title of garrison commissioner in Hezhou (Linxia) in 1922.

Linxia City has long been the region's commercial hub. One of the traditional local products are a certain style of round glasses worn during the Qing Dynasty that are still made there today.