Interpreting Islam in China

Abstract

This book explores the contours of the Han Kitab tradition through discussing the works of some of its brightest luminaries in order to identify and explicate pivotal transitions in Sino-Muslim engagement with the Islamic tradition. A distinctive intellectual tradition emerged during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Sino-Muslims established an educational system known as scripture hall education (jingtang jiaoyu經堂教育‎), which utilized an Islamic curriculum made of Arabic, Persian, and Chinese works. The Han Kitab, a corpus of Chinese-language Islamic texts developed within this system, reinterpreted Islam through the lens of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian terminology. Three prominent Sino-Muslim authors are representative of major junctures within the history of Sino-Islamic thought and are used to illustrate discursive transformations within this tradition: Wang Daiyu 王岱輿‎ (1590–1658), the earliest important author; Liu Zhi 劉智‎ (1670–1724), the most prolific scholar; and Ma Dexin 馬德新‎ (1794–1874), the last major intellectual in premodern China. The chapters explore how these authors defined being a Muslim through an examination of their thoughts on the hajj, the Qur’an, and the Arabic language. In the discussions, I analyze how they deployed the categories of pilgrimage, scripture, and language in their writings, as well as their strategic objectives in doing so. More broadly, this book fosters an exploration of issues of vernacularization, translation, centers and peripheries, and tradition. It offers theoretical directions for redescription of critical categories in the study of religion, especially within translingual Muslim communities.