Review: The Phoenix Mosque and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou, by George Lane

Abstract

George Lane, ed. The Phoenix Mosque and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou London: Ginko Library, 2018, 284 pp., 52 b/w illus. $65 (cloth), ISBN 9781909942892 George Lane's latest book is a study of the most famous mosque of Hangzhou, which flourished in the fourteenth century, and the influential Persians behind it. It is the first book by Lane to focus primarily on architecture, as well as his first book to focus primarily on China. In fact, the subjects are equally the mosque in the city and the Persians in the city. Although Lane modestly takes the role of editor, he wrote five of the six chapters, and he is also the voice behind one of the two appendixes. The book was at least ten years in the making and recognizes the centuries of scholarly research on Persian inscriptions behind it. The introduction, written by Lane, includes a few pages that place Hangzhou in Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) history, particularly after 1279, when the city succumbed to foreign forces from the north. In the rest of this essay, Lane explains that funerary inscriptions in Persian and Arabic are essential to an understanding of the Song–Yuan history of Hangzhou and documents the work of scholars who have addressed this subject up to the year 2010. The first chapter, by Chen Qing, debates the origins of Islam in China based on four inscriptions dating to 618–26, 628, 634, and 651. Chen emphasizes that the dates are found in texts of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, but that Arabic and Persian writings similarly place the arrival of the first Muslims in China in the seventh century. Muslim traders, along with Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, surely traveled to China by sea from the …