Islam and Chinese Society

Genealogies, Lineage and Local Communities

Jianxiong Ma, Oded Abt, Jide Yao, Jianxiong Ma, Oded Abt, Jide Yao

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367419981
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000047455
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the long history in China of Chinese Muslims, known as the Hui people, and regarded as a minority, though in fact they are distinguished by religion rather than ethnicity. It shows how over time Chinese Muslims adopted Chinese practices as these evolved in wider Chinese society, practices such as constructing and recording patrilinear lineages, spreading genealogies, and propagating education and Confucian teaching, in the case of the Hui through the use of Chinese texts in the teaching of Islam at mosques. The book also examines much else, including the system of certification of mosques, the development of Sufi orders, the cultural adaptation of Islam at the local level, and relations between Islam and Confucianism, between the state and local communities, and between the educated Muslim elite and the Confucian literati. Overall, the book shows how extensively Chinese Muslims have been deeply integrated within a multi-cultural Chinese society.

1 The Mosque and Scripture-Hall Education

Jianxiong Ma and Jide Yao

Geographic localities and state institutions perform a crucial role in the construction of Hui identity in China. In general, it may be said that a noticeable Muslim population arose in China during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and they were scattered over many parts of the country. Many Muslims had newly come from Central Asia at the time of the Yuan conquest. The Yuan ran a relatively open economy, but in the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the state introduced two restrictions. Firstly, the Ming government attempted to rigidly control maritime trade, even though its efforts did not by any means succeed in limiting “smuggling” on the southeast coast of China. Secondly, after the fall of the Yuan tensions on the northern frontier continued until the peace treaty of 1571 between the Ming government and the Mongols; this conflict limited the possibilities of trade into Central Asia, with the exception of “smuggling.” For close to two centuries, Hui communities were cut off from the outside world and they increasingly integrated into the Ming realm.

The Governance of the Mosque Community

The most significant change for the social life of Hui Muslims during these two centuries was the abolition of the Islamic judge based at the communal mosque. In the Yuan dynasty, the judge was one of several positions central to the governance of the religious community (jiaofang), another being the imam (yimamu). The Ming dynasty recognized a position known as the head of the creed (jiaozhang), who was the imam, but abolished the position of the judge.¹ This arrangement followed closely the dictates of the lijia household registration system that was imposed from the early Ming. It signaled that the Hui communities, like the Han Chinese, were also to be registered as lijia households and subjected to the supervision of the headman. The mosque, therefore, was regarded as family property which could be passed on to descendants.² The leadership of the mosque community, stripped of its magisterial functions, evolved into the trio of masters (sandao zhi), of the imam, the preacher (haituibu) and the caller-for-prayers (mu’anjin). Over the course of the Ming dynasty, these positions gradually became hereditary within some families in a given community. In some provinces, such as Henan and Yunnan, these three positions came to be known as the “three heads of religion” (san zhangjiao).³

During the late Ming and early Qing (1644–1911), the management of communal mosques gradually changed. The “three heads of religion” were replaced by a council of elders composed of the imam, the preacher, and several trustees. This institutional change happened in different provinces stretching from the south to the north, along with the development of a system of mosque-based education that came to be known as “scripture-hall education.”⁴

Scripture-Hall Education

Scripture-hall education, which was established at a mosque and intended for the local Muslim community, has long been a very important social landmark among Hui Muslims in China. Hu Dengzhou (1522–1597), a Hui scholar who hailed from Shaanxi province, was the founder of this movement because he was the first to move private schooling into the mosque. Prior to this change, a Hui student would have studied Islam on payment of a fee at a private school, which would have been like any village school (sishu).

Hu Dengzhou also standardized the texts used in the mosque schools. Because the texts were ultimately based on translations from Arabic and Persian, this had the effect of standardizing some of the translated texts. The school being located in the mosque, the community that supported the mosque also supported the school. As pointed out by Ma Zhu (1640–1711), another reformer in the scripture-hall education movement, the council of elders had no right to collect any tax, for the mosque was supported by donations given as a form of charity.⁵

The change did not come overnight but took place over a long time. Nevertheless, by the middle of the Qing dynasty, say the 18^th century, scripture-hall education had gradually become established in different provinces all across China. In the early Qing, when a school was founded at a mosque, the council of elders would employ the service of a qualified ahong (Per. akhoond, a cleric) as the teacher. Rooms in the northern wing of the mosque used for studying the Qur’an, known as the “scripture hall,” would have been used for classes. The mosque community provided for the students’ living expenses. A well-endowed mosque would have provided a primary school for formative education, a middle school for supplementary schooling of the youth, and a school of higher education (daxue) to train professional ahong using a curriculum based on Islamic theology.

The duration of higher education normally lasted from four to six years. The curriculum followed the translations standardized by Hu Dengzhou and his followers. Some students followed in their masters’ footsteps, and their teachings evolved into local branches known by the places from which they originated, such as the Shaanxi School, the Shandong School, or the Yunnan School. An academic network developed that stretched across the whole of China. The basic texts used would have been the same, but different masters developed their strengths in different areas, such as Persian and Arabic grammar, Islamic philosophy and Chinese translation.⁶ Most mosques taught in Chinese. Their teaching also included Confucian texts, the combination of Confucian and Islamic texts being recognized in the saying, “The Islamic and Confucian canons should be equally valued” (jingshu bingzhong).

The scripture-hall education movement was probably itself the reflection of broader changes among the Hui that occurred through the Ming dynasty and into the Qing. Having settled in China for some centuries, many communities were probably losing their ability to read in Arabic or Persian, and it was increasingly practical to read the scriptures in Chinese characters. A Hui elite had possibly also evolved, one that accepted the understanding of Islam in the Chinese language, and even believed that, in some ways, it was possible to demonstrate that Islam was compatible with Confucian ideals. As lijia household registration went into decline from the 16^th century, communities also took back control from those families that had dominated the mosques by means of registration and government recognition. The hereditary religious head disappeared as more and more mosques engaged in reform.⁷ The change opened up competition within the community for religious authority. It was at this time that connection to the genealogy of the Prophet Muhammed came to matter.

The Genealogy of the Prophet Muhammed

In the Yuan dynasty, Hui Muslims were called the semu (assorted categories) people. They were concentrated, in the southwest, in Yunnan, and in the northwest, in Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and areas that in later times became Xinjiang. Many Hui served in the Yuan bureaucracy. One of the most senior Hui officials, Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din (1211–1279), served as the Muslim provincial governor of Yunnan. Prior to the Yuan dynasty, Yunnan had been the independent Dali kingdom. Sayyid Ajall successfully integrated it into Yuan China as a province. He was also instrumental in implementing the new frontier policies introduced by the Yuan government, including the local chieftain system. He effectively established the basic agricultural infrastructure in the Kunming basin. Moreover, he was later regarded as the founder of the Hui communities and a symbol of peaceful ethnic relationships in southwest China.⁸ Because he was identified as one of the descendants of the Prophet Muhammed, and his sons were leaders of the Huihui armies and appointed as governors in various provinces, many Hui communities came to link their own family genealogies to his. After several generations his descendants adopted Chinese character surnames. One of his sons, who was known by the name Ma Suhu, was also appointed as governor of Yunnan province, and Ma Suhu’s sons, by adopting the different Chinese characters in his name as their own surnames, became the ancestors of the Ma, Su, and Hu surnames.⁹

Other efforts to change Hui customs to be closer to Han Chinese practices came in the late Ming and early Qing. Some were imposed by overzealous Han Chinese magistrates. For example, in Xundian prefecture of Yunnan province, where there was a concentration of Hui, the prefectural gazetteer recorded an effort by the prefect to change Muslim funeral customs:

The semu people wear white hats, and they never wear headbands; they wear short tunics without collars; they are crafty people who practice endogamy, and do not have a taboo on same-surname marriages. They kill cattle when they are chanting scripture; at funerals they do not use coffins to bury their parents, and they do nothing to worship ancestors. Considering such practices immoral, in the 28^th year of the Jiajing reign (1549), Prefect Wang Shangyong consulted different people and tried to change them. After that, the Hui started to use coffins at funerals.¹⁰

At other times, the changes were voluntary, such as when Hui families, like many Han Chinese families, adopted a lifestyle of classical scholarship so that they might sit for the imperial examination. In Menghua prefecture, for example, the gazetteer records a reputable Hui family in the late Ming that had used the Chinese character “Ma” as their surname. For four generations, they had been successful in the juren examination. The gazetteer praised them as famous teachers of the Confucian classics.¹¹ Reference to their genealogy shows that the family claimed descent from Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din in the early Qing dynasty when Ma Zhu compiled the Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din genealogy.¹²

By the late Ming, scholars were referring to Confucian concepts in their interpretation of Islam. Liu Zhi (1660–1730), who wrote Explanation to the Key Elements of Islamic Rituals (Tianfang dianli), and Wang Daiyu (1584?–1660?), a scholar who preceded Ma Zhu and Liu Zhi and composed The Authentic Interpretation of the Orthodox Religion (Zhengjiao zhenquan), both did so.

Ma Zhu was one of the scholars most famous for applying Confucian concepts to the interpretation of Islam. He grew up in western Yunnan, but joined the refugee court of the Southern Ming as a young official as it was fleeing from the Manchus. Later he went to Beijing to serve on the staff of a Manchu prince after the emperor of the Southern Ming was captured and killed. While in Beijing, he gave up his Confucian studies for those of Islam, and in 1683, h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Hui Communities from the Ming to the Qing
• 1. The Mosque and Scripture-Hall Education
• 2. Succession in the Yunnan School (Yunnan xuepai) of Islamic Thought
• 3. Spiritual Genealogies of Gansu: Chains of Transmission in the Jahrīya and Khafīya Turuq
• 4. Representations of Sufi Genealogy and Their Socio-Cultural Interaction in Modern Northwest China
• 5. Social Conflicts between New Teaching and Old Teaching Sufi Orders among the Salar (Xunhua Sub-prefecture, Gansu Province) in the 18th Century
• 6. Hui Lineages in Taozhou and the Acculturation of Islam during the Qing Dynasty
• 7. Ming–Qing Huihui Genealogies and Changing Communal Memory: A Study of Qingzhou (Shandong) Huihui Jiapu
• 8. A Hui Muslim Lineage in Southwest China: A Case Study of the Xiaba Ma Genealogy
• 9. Genealogy Compilation and Identity Formation: Southeast China Communities of Muslim Descent
• Glossary
• Index