Historical Background

Islam came to China as early as the T’ang period (seventh to ninth centuries), probably during the eighth century. The first Muslim settlers in China were Arab and Persian merchants who travelled via the sea routes around India and soon found the Chinese trade remunerative enough to justify their permanent presence in Chinese coastal cities.

The Yuan (1279-1368) rule in China considerably boosted Muslim existence in the Middle Kingdom inasmuch as the Muslims, together with other non-Chinese groups (ssu-mu) were superimposed by the Mongol conqueror upon the Chinese. The Muslims, both those who had settled in China in previous centuries and the newly arrived allies of the Mongols from the Muslim sultanates of Central Asia, indeed wielded a great deal of power, the most prominent example being Seyyid Edjell who con­quered Yunnan for the Yuan and was nominated by the Khan as the first governor of the province. The borders of Central Asia were wide open for trade and ideas during the Mongol rule and considerable numbers of Muslims moved to settle in the north-western and south-western provinces of China; strong ties were established and cultivated between the Muslims of China and the lands of Islam.

The retrenchment of the Ming (1368-1644), and the self-isolation that came as a reaction to the rule of the Mongol barbarians over China, constituted a major watershed in the fortunes of Chinese Muslims. From then on, one could indeed speak of‘Chinese Muslims’ and no longer about ‘Muslims in China’. The Muslims adopted Chinese names, became fluent in the Chinese speech and in most cases, at least as far as China proper was concerned, they became outwardly indistinguishable from the Chinese. This same trend continued throughout the ‘High Ch’ing’, that is until the end of the Ch’ien-lung reign (1796).

The decline of the Manchu Dynasty, which was accompanied by the symptomatic plights of demographic explosion, scarcity of resources, devolution of power and the rise of anti-establishment groups such as secret societies, was, in this instance, also coupled with a startling Muslim revivalist movement in China. This movement, which gathered momentum during the nineteenth century, was contemporaneous with a similar outburst of Muslim fundamentalism in India, known as the Wah- habiyya, and was generated by the spread of the Naqshbandi Sufi order from Central Asia into China. The most dramatic development resulting from this movement was the avant-garde role that the ‘New Sect’ of Chinese Islam played in Muslim rebellions during the final years of the Ch’ing. Indeed, the Muslim revolts of the mid-nineteenth century, which threw most of China’s north-west and south-west into chaos, were apparently connected with the ‘New Sectarians’.

The Muslim revolts were mainly initiated in prov­inces where the Muslims constituted a large portion of the population. In Kansu, the rebellion was led by the messianic figure of Ma Hua-lung, who attempted to establish a Muslim state during the 1850s and 1860s, but it ended in failure. In Yunnan, Tu Wen-hsiu proclaimed himself‘Sultan Suleiman’ and governed a secessionist Muslim state for about sixteen years (1856-72) before he succumbed to the imperial forces. The same fate awaited the Sinkiang revolt of the Uighur Muslims (in the 1870s). But although these rebellions were quelled, amidst a terrifying bloodshed, the Muslims never gave up either their separate identity as Muslims or their messianic craving for a schism from the Chinese polity. Indeed, some outbursts of Muslim secessionism were recorded at the turn of the century, and again during the Communist rule when the Hundred Flowers campaign of the mid-1950s was proclaimed.