Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in Han Kitab by Kristian Petersen

Abstract

Reviewed by: Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in Han Kitab by Kristian Petersen Guangtian Ha Kristian Petersen, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in Han Kitab. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. xiii, 285 pp. £64 (HB). ISBN 9780190634346 Kristian Petersen’s new book is an excellent addition to the growing body of literature on the Sinophone Hui Muslims in imperial China. It shows with great clarity how a group of Hui intellectuals from the seventeenth century onwards combined [End Page 212] a multitude of sources to fashion a new Muslim identity that straddled Islamic and Chinese tradition(s). The texts drawn from Islam included both Arabic and Persian sources, with the majority being of Persian origin—a point mentioned but not elaborated on by Petersen. The Chinese sources were predominantly Confucian, though Daoist and Buddhist ideas inevitably found their way in. No doubt this was a highly intellectual project dominated by those proficient (in reading at least) in literary Chinese, classical Arabic, and Persian, the lingua franca of Central Asia for centuries. Such exacting linguistic requirements meant that most ordinary Hui would have been excluded from effective participation. Thus, the literature composed in this tradition, while read and cherished by some advanced clerics who were literate in classical Chinese, was perhaps less for mass consumption than for non-Muslim mandarins and emperors. In other words, what we nowadays consider Sino-Islamic thought is an ideological as well as an intellectual project. To some extent, it was (failed) PR for Sino-Muslims in imperial times. Organized into five chapters with an introduction and a short epilogue, Petersen’s excellently researched book unfolds around three themes, namely, pilgrimage, scripture, and language. The question of translation—both linguistic from Arabic and Persian to Chinese, and philosophical from Islam to Confucianism—linked scripture and language, while pilgrimage, i.e., the hajj, by offering encounters with new ideas and practices generated among the Hui returnees new drives for Islamic revival and new modes of engaging with Islam. New texts were avidly composed, older ones re-organized and re-interpreted. Petersen shows the painstaking efforts involved in this labor of faith by examining several prominent works in the Han Kitab 漢克塔布 tradition, a term designating the collective body of theological literature produced by the Sino-Muslim intellectuals from the late Ming (1368–1644) to the Qing (1644–1911) period. Out of this extensive pool, three authors are chosen as the main object of study: Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 (ca. 1570–1660 CE), arguably a pioneer of this tradition; Liu Zhi 劉智 (ca. 1660–1739 CE), indisputably the most erudite and at times the most abstruse author included in the Han Kitab; and Ma Dexin 馬德新 (1794–1874 CE), a native of Yunnan, a resolute pilgrim and unfortunate victim of politico-religious violence. Petersen’s focus is on the creative translingual processes whereby Islamic ideas are imaginatively rendered into Chinese; in particular, he is interested in how the physical experiences, as well as literary imaginations of pilgrimage along with the shifting role of Arabic, inflected this linguistic and philosophical translation. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of the history of Sino-Muslim communities in China. The broad strokes employed by the author, while necessitated by the nature of the subject matter, at times run the risk of subsuming other histories under that of the Sino-Muslims, as, for instance, when the Yaq’ūb Beg insurrection is used to support the perhaps overstated claim that “Sino-Muslims generally viewed the Qing imperial government as an oppressive political regime that failed to provide sufficient structural means for instituting Islam” (46). Proceeding along this historical line of inquiry, chapter 2 provides a meticulous mapping of the intellectual networks that gave rise to the works of Wang Daiyu, Liu Zhi, and Ma Dexin. This helps to both situate Sino-Islamic thought in the broader history of Islam in China and lay the foundation for a more elaborate discussion of the extraordinary work of translation and exposition performed by these three eminent minds. [End Page 213] However, it is chapter 3 that constitutes the most distinct contribution of this book, since it provides the most comprehensive account to date...