EDITORIAL

The Islamic Heritage in China

Defining the Chinese Muslims

Fig. 1 Muezzin's tower, Yining, Xinjiang. This building is in the architectural style of Islamic buildings typical of the Hui heartlands of Shaanxi and Gansu in the mid-Qing period. This mosque was designed by a Chinese Muslim from Gansu and built in two main stages, in 1760 and 1781. These dates correspond to the first year of Qing rule over the Ili district following the annihilation of the Zunghar Federation (1760) and to the re-establishment of communication routes between Gansu and Ili after a major rebellion in Gansu (1781). Due to the civil violence of the late-Qing period and the Cultural Revolution, only a handful of Qing-era Islamic buildings survive in Shaanxi and Gansu, while Hui mosques in Xinjiang have fared much better. [From Zhang Shengyi, Xinjiang chuantong jianzhu yishu]

Ironically, it was under the aegis of the Communist Party in the 1930s that the term Hui was defined to indicate only Sinophone Muslims. At the end of the Long March in 1936, Mao Zedong's revolutionary government created a Soviet in a small, barren base area at Yan'an in northern Shaanxi. To the west lived large Chinese-speaking Muslim communities closely allied to the Nationalist government, while the Japanese were attempting to form alliances with the Mongol and Muslim communities that lived to the north of the base area. In an attempt to win the support, or at least the neutrality, of its Muslim neighbours, the Chinese Soviet government released a document entitled "Manifesto of the Chinese Central Soviet to the Hui people" that promised the Hui people (Huizu renmin) political autonomy, religious freedom and the right to bear arms. It was a strategy that was in keeping with the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party's United Front policy.[1] (Fig. 2) This manifesto did not, however, specify exactly what was meant by the ethnonym Hui.

In 1941, this was clarified by a Communist Party committee comprising ethnic policy researchers in a treatise entitled On the question of Huihui Ethnicity (Huihui minzu wenti). This treatise defined the characteristics of the Hui nationality as follows: the Hui or Huihui constitute an ethnic group associated with, but not defined by, the Islamic religion and they are descended primarily from Muslims who migrated to China during the Mongol-Yuan dynasty (1206-1368), as distinct from the Uyghur and other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Xinjiang.[2] The Nationalist government had recognised all Muslims as one of "the five peoples"—alongside the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans and Han Chinese—that constituted the Republic of China. The new Communist interpretation of Chinese Muslim ethnicity marked a clear departure from the ethno-religious policies of the Nationalists, and had emerged as a result of the pragmatic application of Stalinist ethnic theory to the conditions of the Chinese revolution.

Fig. 2 Great mosque, Tongxin, Ningxia. The Red Army captured the walled city of Tongxin, Ningxia, in June 1936, in one of the final movements of the Long March before settling down in the Yan'an base area. In October 1936, this mosque was the site of a general meeting held to establish the first (and short-lived) Chinese Communist autonomous county, named the Yuwang Hui Autonomous Government. Thanks to this fortuitous association with Communist revolutionary history, this mosque was the only major Islamic building in Ningxia to survive the Cultural Revolution.

Fig. 2a Detail of circular calligraphic motif, Tongxin, Ningxia.[AHG] This is an example of Islamic calligraphic art of the kind found at many Hui mosques. This particular piece is on a free-standing screen-wall (Chinese: zhao bi) in front of the main entrance to the Tongxin Great Mosque. The text reads, "And the places of worship are for God alone: so invoke not anyone along with God." (Quran 72:18) This calligraphic motif was painted in the 1980s, and the white background of the painted image that it replaced can still be discerned. The previous image is likely to have been a portrait of Chairman Mao represented as the radiant sun of the East, a popular Cultural Revolution motif that can still be seen on many buildings in Ningxia, such as the fort of Dong Fuxiang in nearby Wuzhong. This background makes the choice of the Quranic passage for the current motif particularly significant ("the places of worship are for God alone"), as the Muslim community of Tongxin reclaimed the mosque as a place of worship after it had been used for several decades as a memorial for the history of the revolution.

The late Muslim scholar Bai Shouyi (1909-2000) elaborated on the initial Communist definition of Hui by more closely focusing on the origins of this group in his book titled The Rejuvenation of the Huihui Nationality (Huihui minzu de xinsheng), published in 1951. Bai argued that the Huihui had roots in the Muslim trading communities active in China between the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, as well as in various Muslim and non-Muslim communities present in the Yuan, arguing that the Hui only coalesced into a distinct ethnic group in the centuries following the Mongol conquests.

In the half century or so since the publication of Bai Shouyi's influential thesis, the official definition of Hui has been further refined to exclude the "non-Muslim communities" of the Yuan dynasty from the pool of ancestors of the Chinese Muslims.

The Distinctive Traditions of Chinese Muslims

Many of the cultural traditions unique to the Hui can be related to this distilled official narrative that speaks of Tang-Song origins and a post-Yuan maturation. Written and material sources of Chinese Muslim history for the pre-Mongol period are fragmentary: ceramic shards, brief accounts of China in early Muslim travel literature, and the scant allusions to Muslims in the imperial historical record, although the latter are intermingled with references to Zoroastrian, Manichean and other "non-Chinese" religious communities resident in China since the Tang. The fragmented presence of Muslims ends with the Mongol conquest of the 13th century, when large numbers of Muslims, mainly from the Turkic lands of central Asia, settled in the Gansu corridor, Yunnan and the lower Yangtze valley. (Figs. 3 and 4)

Fig. 3 Earthenware water pot with Arabic motifs, 20.8cm, Yangzhou, 8th or 9th century. This water pot was unearthed in 1980 from a Tang dynasty tomb in Yangzhou. It is described as underglaze purplish-brown glaze pottery ware with green Arabic motifs, indicating it was made at the Changsha kiln. The obverse motif has been interpreted by scholars as an inaccurate rendition of "Allah Akbar" (God is great), suggesting it was written by someone with poor Arabic skills. A more likely explanation is that it is a calligraphic representation of a human face, tracing the nose with a mirrored "Allah", and the forehead with the letters M-H-M-D of Muhammad. This is a common form among Islamic devotional motifs, and from a Sufi mystical perspective expresses the union of the human body with the word of God that is achieved through constant repetition of the names of God and his Prophet. The reverse motif is similarly explained as a calligraphic face, this time made up of the words "Allah", representing a long nose, eye lashes and eyes, and "Muhammad" (or possible a mirrored "He", shorthand for Allah) for the forelocks that are a favourite symbol of the Prophet used in Sufi poetry. The pot has handles through which rope could be passed suggesting that it was used for carrying water, hence the archaeologists" description of this vessel as beishuihu. However the four sockets and the small size of the pot also suggest it may have been used for washing, such as in the ritual lavation taken before Friday prayer (ghusl). This pot provides early evidence of sophisticated Muslim artistic and technological input into the Chinese ceramics industry, a topic better documented for the Mongol period and later. The original is in the collection of the Yangzhou Museum. [From Changsha yao, Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 1996, Plate 87]

Fig. 4 Underglaze green glaze pottery shard with Arabic motif, late Tang or Five Dynasties. This piece of pottery was also made at the Changsha kiln, in the 10th or 11th century. The photo is of the inside of a bowl or open-top pot. The Arabic motif is again a calligraphic representation of a human face, here with a mirrored "Allah" for nose and eyes, and perhaps an upside down "Muhammad" for the mouth. The positioning of this motif on the inside of the bowl suggests a discrete blessing of its contents. [Changsha yao, Beijing: Zijincheng Chubanshe, 1996, Plate 170]

Muslims were the largest group of non-Chinese peoples during the Yuan. Referred to as "Semu" they occupied a privileged position directly below the Mongol nobility in the social structure of that dynasty. Over ten thousand Muslim names can be identified in Yuan historical records. The standard word used to denote Muslims in Chinese language documents of the late Yuan period is "Huihui", and this has remained the most common Chinese term for Muslims through to the twenty-first century.

The Etymology of Huihui

Fig. 5 Tang dynasty coloured clay figurine of a polo player unearthed in 1972 at Astana, Turfan, Xinjiang.

Fig. 6 Detail from a large scroll painting showing a Yuan dynasty procession, in which Mongol troops and their allies ride together 51.4cm high, 1481cm wide. [National Museum of China]

The word Huihui evolved from the term used by the Tang court to refer to its Uyghur allies, known in Chinese as the Huihe, but exactly how the name of non-Muslim Uyghurs became that of the Muslim Huihui remains a point of academic debate. One plausible account of this etymological process is provided in a recent article by the Dunhuang scholar Hu Xiaopeng, who traces the word "Huihui" along a complicated path through the shifting web of alliances and tribal antagonisms that preceded the formation of the Mongol empire.[3]

Scholars generally agree that the first instance of the use of Huihui as an ethnonym appears in the Song-dynasty text Mengxi bitan (Mengxi jottings). In this collection of short pieces on technological and other topics, the author Shen Kuo records battle verses sung by Song soldiers at Yan'an, a military post adjacent to the southern border of the Buddhist Tangut kingdom of Xixia. One of these verses concludes with the following couplet:

Flag bearers form a sea of polished silk brocade,
Armoured troops charge downhill to battle the Huihui.

Fig. 7 Half-dome recess entrance, Ashab Mosque, Quanzhou. The Ashab Mosque (Qingjing si) is the most significant surviving example of Islamic architecture from the Yuan dynasty found east of Xinjiang. The stone walls, entrance and support pillars of the prayer hall are what remain of the original mosque completed in 1310, which once also included a domed mausoleum. The layout of the mosque and the half-dome recess of the entrance way is similar to that of a number of Islamic building complexes in Xinjiang, such as the Zanqi madrasa in Kashgar (Fig. 8). This locates the architecture of the Ashab Mosque within the tradition of the post-Mongol Islamic domed architecture of central Asia, rather than the wooden pavilion tradition of later Hui mosques.

Most scholars assume that the Huihui mentioned here are the Buddhist Uyghurs of Gaochang. For his part, Hu Xiaopeng argues that in this particular instance Huihui refers to another of the three Uyghur polities formed after the collapse of the Uyghur empire in the late-Tang dynasty, namely the Muslim Uyghurs of the Karakhanid empire. Another hypothesis, also advanced recently, suggests that the passage quoted has nothing to do with battling nations, but rather simply depicts the players and cheer leaders at an inner Asian polo match.[4] (Fig. 5)

Hu's argument focuses on the status of Xixia political relations at the time Shen Kuo recorded this verse in Yan'an, around 1082. Prior to this time, the Xixia had clashed with each of the three Uyghur polities. By the close of the 11th century, however, the Xixia were allied with the Gaochang Uyghurs against the Muslim Uyghurs of the Karakhanid empire, who had recently conquered the Buddhist state of Khotan, and had launched raids against Gaochang and other Buddhist polities to its east.

Fig. 8 Zanqi madrasa, Kashgar, Xinjiang [Zhang Shengyi]

The detailed argument of Hu Xiaopeng offers an explanation of how Huihui came to be used in later Mongol-period texts to refer to Muslims in general. These later texts also clearly distinguish the Huihui from the Weiwu'er (Gaochang Uyghurs) whom Rashid al-Din describes in his History of the World Conquerors as "unrivalled in their hatred of Islam."

The Yuan usage of "Huihui", unlike the pre-Yuan usage in Chinese texts other than Mengxi bitan, signifies the Muslim Uyghurs or, by extension, Muslims from central Asia and Muslims generally. "Huihui" is rarely used to refer to the Buddhist Uyghurs who were called Weiwu'er, another of the many groups of Semu peoples. Hu suggests that the Mongols inherited the semantic distinction beween Huihui and Weiwu'er from the Xixia and other conquered empires of the northern periphery of China, all of whom were able to make such distinctions by virtue of their extensive dealings with the many non-Chinese ethnic groups of inner Asia.

Muslims under the Mongols

Fig. 9 The earliest of the Arabic tombstones with dates unearthed in Quanzhou, 1171 CE. The inscription reads, "This is the tomb of Hussayn bin Muhammad al-Khalat. May God show mercy upon him. Died on the 13th of the fourth month of the year 567." Khalat was at this time the capital of Armenia. [From Chen Dasheng, Quanzhou zongjiao shike]

In 1215, the Mongols sacked the capital of the Jin dynasty, Zhongdu (located in present-day Beijing). (Fig. 6) Half a century later, Khubilai Khan, upon his succession to the leadership of the eastern half of the Mongol empire, built a new capital called Khanbaliq ("city of the Khan") a short distance to the northeast of the ruined Jin capital. Many artisans from the conquered Muslim states of central and western Asia were brought to Khanbaliq to help in the construction of the new city. They were overseen by a Huihui named Amir al-Din, who designed Qionghua Island, now the chörten-topped island in the lake of Beihai Park in central Beijing.[5]

The first decade of Khubilai's reign provided a rare period of relative peace in the Mongol campaigns. Khubilai took this opportunity to consolidate his control over the conquered lands of northern China, creating a fiscal base to support his final assault on the Southern Song. His treasurer was a Huihui from Khwarzm named Ahmad, a man whose success in bringing silver into the state coffers was not matched by his ability to win the hearts of the taxpaying nobles and officials of northern China. He was assassinated in 1282 and posthumously condemned by the Khan for fiscal misconduct.[6] Three generations later, historians during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) awarded him the dubious honour of first place in the list of biographies of "traitorous officials" (jianchen) collected in the official history of the Yuan.

Fig. 10 The latest of the dated Arabic tombstones unearthed in Quanzhou. This is a typical example of the Arabic tombstones unearthed in Quanzhou from the late-Yuan to early-Ming period, with embossed cursive Arabic lettering in the shape of a pointed arch. The contrast between the earliest and latest of the Arabic tombstones found at Quanzhou reflects the evolution of a sophisticated, Islamic stone-carving industry in Quanzhou during the Yuan dynasty. Part of this inscription reads "for the martyred Hajji...on the 27th of the eighth month, 789 [1387CE]." The reference to martyrdom is explained by the hadith (tradition of the Prophet Muhammad) inscribed on the reverse of the tombstone that reads, "He who dies in a foreign land dies a martyr," indicating that the deceased was born outside China. [From Quanzhou zongjiao shike].

The prominent position of Muslims at the Mongol court can best be understood in relation to the order in which the Mongol conquests unfolded. The Mongol and eastern Turkic tribes were the first peoples subdued by Chingghis Khan in 1206, and they formed the ranks of the nobility. Next conquered were the peoples of central and western Asia (1220) where Islam was the dominant religion, followed by those of the Jin dynasty (1234), and finally the Southern Song (1279). This order of conquest established the relative rankings of the various ethnic groups of the Yuan empire, with the central and western Asians (Semu), including the Huihui, occupying the second social stratum below that of the Mongol nobility, but above the conquered subjects of the Jin ("Hanren") and Southern Song ("Nanren").

Social status based on ethnicity was established during Khubilai Khan's reign and these categories may have blurred towards the end of the Yuan dynasty, although they are still very much in evidence in one local gazetteer, that of Zhenjiang, a town on the lower Yangtze River, completed in 1333. A population count in the gazetteer divides the local population into "indigenous" (tuzhu) conquered subjects of the Southern Song and "foreign" (qiaoyu) residents. Yang Zhijiu, a specialist in Yuan history, compiled the following table of foreign resident households in Zhenjiang based on data recorded in the gazetteer:

Zhenjiang was a major commercial centre during the Yuan dynasty, and for this reason may have had a larger Muslim presence than eastern China taken as a whole. Nevertheless, it can be seen from the table that the Huihui were the most populous of Semu peoples in Zhenjiang, represented by the six middle groups listed, from Uyghur to Jurchen. The table also suggests that the different Semu groups shared a similar social status, each possessing a similar number of "slaves" (qu) per household (six per household). Mongol households had three times as many slaves as Semu households, while the Han, that is the conquered subjects of the Jin dynasty, had only one slave for every two households. The indigenous Southerners are not listed here as such, although they no doubt account for most of the slaves appearing in the far right-hand column of the table.

The Stone Inscriptions of Quanzhou

Fig. 11 Detail of a portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang in the collection of the National Museum of China.

Fig. 12 Imperial edict to Mir Hajji, during the Yongle reign of the Ming dynasty, 100cm by 72cm. This imperial edict was issued forty years after the end of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. The use of the three main languages of the Yuan court, Mongolian, Persian and Chinese, underlines the continuity between the Yuan and Ming imperial systems. The "Hajji" of the addressee's title indicates that he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, while "Mir" means someone who has earned merit on the battlefield (in Timurid usage this term indicates a member of the military aristocracy). The Chinese text reads: "The emperor of the Great Ming instructs Mir Hajji that he who is sincere and honest will revere God [tian] and serve the emperor [shang]. He will also have command over good people, and give loyal service to the imperial court. Hence, God will bless him, and he shall enjoy eternal bliss. You, Mir Hajji, have always followed the teachings of Muhammad. You are pious and honest, and lead people to do good. You also revere God and serve the emperor loyally. Such good deeds deserve to be honoured and praised. Therefore, I am issuing this imperial edict to protect your property, and so that no official, soldier or civilian shall despise, insult or transgress it. Whoever disobeys my order shall be held to account. This edict was issued on the 11th of the fifth month of the fifth year of Yongle." [1407] Facsimile copy in the Chinese Nationalities Cultural Palace. [Plate and adapted translation from Quanzhou Yisilanjiao Shike]

Quanzhou was the largest ocean port of the Yuan dynasty, and was extolled as the world's greatest port in the travel accounts of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. It wrested this position from Guangzhou at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty, when the local trading community headed by the Muslim tycoon Pu Shougeng submitted, with their fleets, to the Mongols. Guangzhou was sacked for failing to produce such farsighted leaders. However, Pu might not have been farsighted enough as, at the beginning of the Ming dynasty, many of his descendents were executed for his betrayal of the Song.

Fig. 12a Detail. Ming imperial seal, with a date according to the Chinese calendar in Chinese, Persian and Mongolian.

A large number of stone monuments and inscriptions left by the Islamic community that lived in Quanzhou during the Yuan dynasty survive today, thanks in part to the efforts of Wu Wenliang and the Quanzhou Foreign Relations Museum. A revised edition of Wu's Religious Inscriptions of Quanzhou (1st ed. 1957) was published in 2005 (see review). Over 300 stone inscriptions from Islamic tombs, graves and mosques in the Quanzhou district, in Arabic and Chinese, are painstakingly documented in this book, among which are 30 tombstone inscriptions including dates. The earliest date records the death of a certain Hussayn b. Muhammad of Khalat, Armenia, in the year 567 (1171 CE). This is the only inscribed date from before the Mongol period. A further four of the tombstone dates are from the Hongwu reign (1368-1398) of Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming dynasty, while the remaining twenty-five correspond to the ninety-year period of Mongol rule over Quanzhou. (Figs 7, 8, 9 & 10)

Shifting Loyalties from Mongol to Ming

Fig. 13 Quran with Chinese translation recorded in both Arabic and Chinese scripts. Sinophone Muslims developed a number of distinct written traditions. One of these is known as Chinese madrasa language (jingtang yu), which is simply written Chinese with a formalised vocabulary of Islamic terms. Another is known as "little script" (xiaojing), which broadly speaking is Chinese of any description written in Arabic script, but here is specifically a transliteration of Chinese madrasa language into Arabic script. The interlinear translation of the Quran shown here was produced by Ma Zhenwu, an octogenarian Hui akhund from Dachang, Hebei.

In the early life of the founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang (Fig. 11), the emperor-to-be was a member of a religious sect known as Mingjiao. Upon ascending the throne, Zhu suppressed this movement and all traces of his earlier association with it. The resulting ambiguity in the historical record has allowed room for the widespread belief amongst Chinese Muslims today that Zhu Yuanzhang was a Muslim, at least in his private life.[7] There is little direct evidence to support such a view, and historians generally agree that the Mingjiao sect was organised around some form of Manicheanism or Maitreyan Buddhist cult. What can be said without straining the historical record is that many of the generals who joined the revolutionary movement led by Zhu Yuanzhang were Muslim, for example Mu Ying and Chang Yuchun, who campaigned in Yunnan and central Shandong, respectively. These two areas later became leading centres of Islamic learning in China. (Figs 12 & 12a)

After the establishment of his dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang commissioned the construction of mosques in the lower Yangtze valley, and issued an edict in praise of the Prophet Muhammad that is recorded on steles found at a number of mosques today. (Fig. 13 & 13a) The most famous of these, that of the Jingjue Mosque in Nanjing, was appended to the first full Chinese biography of the Prophet written by the Nanjing writer Liu Zhi in the late 1600s. During the Yongle reign (1403-1425), the emperor Chengzu (Zhu Di) issued an edict in support of an Islamic institution in Quanzhou in Chinese, Persian and Mongolian, the three main languages of the Mongol court. This edict is one small reflection of the ambition of early Ming emperors to claim themselves as successors to the Mongol khans, sovereigns over the steppes and the agricultural plains, and patrons of religions of both the West and the East. The story of the Muslim Admiral Zheng He is perhaps another reflection of this ambition, when the Ming attempted to build on the international trade routes opened up by the Mongols. Chinese Muslims prospered under the ecumenical policies of the Mongol and early Ming emperors, and their relative social status declined as the Ming dynasty implemented travel restrictions and became more emphatically Chinese. (Fig. 13). [AHG]

Notes

[1] "Zhonghua Suwei'ai Zhongyang Zhengfu dui Huizu renmin de xuanyan" (Manifesto of the Chinese Central Soviet to the Hui people [Huizu renmin]), 1936/8/1.

[2] Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Huihui minzu shi (A history of the Huihui nationality in China), Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2003, pp.36-44.

[3] Hu Xiaopeng, "Huihui yi ci qiyuan ji hanyi xintan" (A new perspective on the origin and early meaning of the word Huihui), in Xibei minzu wenxian yu lishi yanjiu (Documentary and historical studies on the nationalities of the north-west), Lanzhou: Gansu Renmin Chubanshe, 2004, pp.85-94.

[4] Yang Jun, "Huihui ming yuan bian" (Discussion of the origin of the name Huihui), Huizu yanjiu, Yinchuan, 2005:1, pp.35-41.

[5] Yang Huaizhong, "Yeheidie'erding" (Amir al-Din) in Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Huihui minzu shi, op. cit., pp.813-818.

[6] Ma Shouqian, "Ahmad" in Bai Shouyi, Zhongguo Huihui minzu shi, op. cit., pp.791-800.

[7] Bai Shouyi, in a 1946 work on the history of Islam in China, told of an inherited belief within the Muslim community in Xi'an that Zhu Yuanzhang was born into a Muslim family, that the "usurping" Jianwen emperor went on pilgrimage to Mecca after fleeing from China, and that the 11th Ming emperor, Wuzong (Zhu Houzhao, reign title Zhengde, r.1506-1522), was a practising Muslim. Bai Shouyi did not discuss the historical credibility of these communal beliefs, and a low-level debate has continued since then on whether the first Ming emperor was actually Hui or Han. Evidence cited in favour of claiming him for the Hui side is that Zhu Yuanzhang had an empress called Ma, a common Hui surname; that a domed tomb was built at his burial site in the manner of Muslim dignitaries of the time; and that he wrote a tract in praise of the Prophet Muhammad. Two recent additions to this debate were printed in Zhonghua dushu bao in 2005, Zhou Youguang advancing the case in favour of Zhu Yuanzhang being a Muslim (see "Baisui laoren Zhou Youguang da kewen" (Centenarian Zhou Youguang answers reporter's questions), Zhonghua dushu bao, 22 January 2005), and Chen Wutong countering against this view (see Chen, "Shei zhengmingle Zhu Yuanzheng shi Huizu" (Who has ever proved that Zhu Yuanzhang was a Hui?), Zhonghua dushu bao, 15 June 2005, at http://culture.people.com.cn/GB/40479/40481/3484545.html, accessed on 6 Mar 2006).

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