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One of Islam's
main entry points into China was the Pearl River port of Quanzhou. |
The majority of China's Muslims are Turkic peoples living in the vast Xinjiang region of
northwest China. The rest are mainly Hui - either descendants of Chinese
converts to Islam or the offspring of Chinese intermarriages with Muslim
immigrants whose appearance is distinctly Chinese. They live in sizeable
communities in the former Silk Road oases of western and central China, in the
southern province of Yunnan, and in the industrial cities and ports of the east.
Contacts
between Muslims and Chinese began very early. Arab merchants traded in silk even
before the advent of Islam, and tradition has it that the new religion was
brought to their port-city trading colonies by Muslim missionaries in the
seventh century.
In
755, a contingent of 4000 soldiers, mostly Muslim Turks, was sent by the Abbasid
caliph Abu Jafar al-Mansur to help the Chinese emperor Su Tsung quell a revolt
by one of his military commanders, An LuShan. Following the recapture of the
imperial capital, Ch'angan (today's Xian), these soldiers settled in China,
married Chinese wives and founded inland Muslim colonies similar to those
established by the traders on the coast.
Islam
made its first real inroads into what is now western China in the middle of the
10th century, with the conversion of Sultan Sutuq Bughrakhan of Kashgar and his
subsequent conquest of the Silk Road oases of Yarkand and Khotan in southwest
Xinjiang.
During
the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), China experienced spectacular economic growth.
This stimulated expansion of the Muslim mercantile communities - particularly in
Ch'ang - an, the eastern terminus of the Silk Roads, and in the port cities of
Quanzhou and Guangzhou, where Muslims largely governed the internal affairs of
their own neighborhoods, building mosques and appointing qadis to
adjudicate according to Islamic law.
But
although some Chinese merchants involved in international trade did become
Muslims, other converts were few, and Islam in China was confined largely to
Muslim immigrants and their descendants. Until, that is, the Mongol invasion
overthrew the Song Dynasty and ushered in what Chinese Muslims regard as the "golden
age" of Islam in China.
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Inscriptions
on Muslim tombstones like the one at Guangzhou have helped scholars piece
together the early history of lslam in Southeast Asia. |
Although
the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1260 - 1382), founded by Kublai Khan, was the only one
of the four great Mongol khanates whose rulers never converted to Islam, they
nevertheless gave Muslims special status, often-placing individual believers in
responsible, even powerful, positions of state. In addition, when Yunnan fell to
the Mongol invaders and most of its population fled, leaving an empty land,
Kublai Khan sent the tough Muslim soldiers from Central Asia who had helped him
conquer China to repopulate the south - though this was probably partly to keep
them out of mischief and far from his own capital. It was also during the Mongol
period that the Uighur Turks of northwestern China converted to Islam.
Following
the conversion of the Chaghatai Mongols of Central Asia in the 13th century,
large stretches of northwest Xinjiang were won over to Islam. In 1513 the oasis
of Hami in eastern Xinjiang put itself under the sovereignty of Mansur Chaghatai,
who two years later made it his capital and a base from which to spread Islam
even further east. The religion advanced as far as Lanzhou, in today's Gansu
province, where a Muslim seminary still operates on the banks of the Yellow
River.
When
the indigenous Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) overthrew the Mongols in their turn,
however, the Muslims' position began to deteriorate. They lost their special
status and under the Ch'ing, or Manchu, Dynasty (1644 - 1911) were so oppressed
that they rebelled repeatedly - most notably in the Panthay Rebellion, which
lasted from 1855 to 1873, but was crushed with great cruelty. Because of such
repression, the Hui Muslims developed a strong sense of community, living in
segregated enclaves usually focused on a single mosque. The roofs of their
prayer halls flared, Buddhist-style, and their minarets were built like squat
pagodas so as to blend with neighboring Chinese architecture. Mosques in the
predominantly Uighur northwest maintained the traditional Muslim architectural
style of domed roof and tall, slender minarets, however.
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Mosques
in China reflect a mixture of architectural styles, sometimes in the same
building. The minaret of Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou (left) is simple
and smoothly finished like
traditional
buildings of Arabia. Its courtyard, however (right)
is
purely Chinese in
woodwork
and rooflines. |
In
the 20th century, Muslims throughout China continued to practice their faith
discreetly following the advent of Communism, despite the ideology's atheistic
principles. But during the savagery and purges of the Cultural Revolution,
between 1966 and 1971, most mosques were destroyed or closed down. Then,
following the death of Mao Zedong, Muslims were again given a limited amount of
religious freedom. Mosques and religious schools were reopened and few
hundred Muslims were permitted to make the pilgrimage to Makkah.
And
when I visited China in 1984 with Nik Wheeler, to write and photograph a special
issue of Aramco World on the country's Muslims, and again in 1987 with
photographer Tor Eigeland to research another issue, on the Silk Roads, we found
China's renovated mosques crowded and the call to prayer echoing once more from
the minarets of the northwestern province.
In
Beijing, also, we saw the recently repainted Niu Jie mosque, its pillars
lacquered in red and gold and its walls covered with a mixture of Arab and
Chinese motifs. In Man we watched workmen restoring the Great Mosque - China's
largest - said to have been built by the 15th-century Muslim hero Cheng Ho, who
cleared the South China Sea of pirates and rose to be admiral of the emperor's
fleet.
In
Xinjiang we found that, despite government attempts to dilute the Muslim
population by settling masses of Han Chinese among them, the region still
retains a distinct Muslim atmosphere. Here the men wear gaily embroidered
skullcaps and go regularly to the mosque to pray. They
also proudly tell visitors that Wuer Kaixi, who headed the 1989 democracy
movement that culminated in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, was a Uighur from
Xinjiang.
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| Grand
Mosque in Xian, which has the elaborately flared eaves typical of Chinese
pagodas. |
Policies
introduced by the Chinese government since then, limiting Muslim families to two
children per couple in urban areas and three to four in rural areas, along with
curbs on religious education, have caused new friction between the Uighurs and
the Han Chinese. In the Xinjiang village of Baren last May, for example, 22
people died in clashes with security forces following Beijing's denial of
permission to build a mosque.
There
was no sign of friction, however, when we arrived in Quanzhou, this year, on the
last leg of our journey along Islam's path east. In fact, Hui Muslims played a
prominent part in official ceremonies welcoming the UNESCO Silk Roads
survey ship Fulk al-Salamah, which Wheeler and I had rejoined in
Guangzhou, known in he West as Canton.
Over
2400 kilometers (1500 miles) from Beijing and only a short train ride from Hong
Kong, Guangzhou has always been more open to foreign influence than other
Chinese cities, and its mosque is generally considered to be the oldest in
China. Said to have been founded by one of the first Muslim missionaries to
China some 1300 years ago, Huaisheng Mosque displays a mixture of architectural
styles: a 36-meter (118-foot) cone shaped minaret, built during the Tang Dynasty
(618 - 906), towers over a cloistered court-yard and the sweeping tiled roofs of
the prayer hall, rebuilt to replace the original that was destroyed by fire in
1343. It is also known as the Beacon Tower mosque, because during the Tang and
Sung Dynasties, when the Pearl River flowed close to the minaret - before
silting shifted it away - a light was hung at night from the top of the tower
for navigational purposes.
We
sailed down the Pearl River estuary and out into the South China Sea, running
into thick fog and then heavy rain as we approached Quanzhou. But it failed to
dampen the spirited reception for the Fulk alĘSalaniah: massed bands,
lion dancers, acrobats - and Hui Muslims - gathered jubilant at dockside.
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A section
from an early 19th-century Quran, with Chinese |
Once
one of the world's largest ports, Quanzhou reached the peak of its prosperity
during the Sung Dynasty's commercial revolution, with Muslim merchants playing a
leading role. Today, however, the bustle of big-time commerce has gone, leaving
the city a rich cultural heritage of classical Chinese buildings and an opera
unchanged in song, dance and music since the Ming era.
Of
the city's mosques, which once numbered seven, only one remains. But the massive
granite walls of Masjid al-Ashab, built in 1009 in this, one of Islam's
easternmost outposts, reflect the enduring vitality of a faith born in the
deserts of Arabia and spread across Central Asia and India, all the way to China's
Pacific shores.
And
that is only its diffusion in one direction: eastward. Islam's way west is
another story.
Source:
Aramco
World
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