Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab

Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab
ISBN-10
0190634340
ISBN-13
9780190634346
Category
History
Pages
296
Language
English
Published
2017
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
Kristian Petersen

Description

During the early modern period, Muslims in China began to embrace the Chinese characteristics of their heritage. Several scholar-teachers began to incorporate tenets from traditional Chinese education into their promotion of Islamic knowledge. As a result, some Sino-Muslims established aneducational network, the scripture hall educational system (jingtang jiaoyu), which utilized an Islamic curriculum made up of Arabic, Persian, and Chinese works. The corpus of Chinese Islamic texts written in this system is collectively labeled the Han Kitab. Interpreting Islam in China explores the Sino-Islamic intellectual tradition through the works of some its brightest luminaries, in order to identify and explicate pivotal transitions in their engagement with the Islamic tradition. Three prominent Sino-Muslim authors are used to illustratetransformations within this tradition, Wang Daiyu (1590-1658), Liu Zhi (1670-1724), and Ma Dexin (1794-1874).Kristian Petersen puts these scholars in dialogue and demonstrates the continuities and departures within this tradition. Through an analysis of their writings on the subjects of pilgrimage,scripture, and language, he considers several questions: How malleable are religious categories and why are they variously interpreted across time? How do changing historical circumstances affect the interpretation of religious beliefs and practices? How do individuals navigate multiple sources ofauthority? How do practices inform belief? Overall, he shows, these authors presented an increasingly universalistic portrait of Islam through which Sino-Muslims were encouraged to participate within the global community of Muslims in both theological and experiential spaces. The growing emphasis onperforming the pilgrimage to Mecca, comprehensive knowledge of the Qur'an, and personal knowledge of Arabic further stimulated communal engagement. Petersen demonstrates that the integration of Sino-Muslims within a growing global environment, where international travel and communication wasincreasingly possible, was accompanied by the rising self-awareness of a universally engaged Muslim community.

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