Read more
This book explores the everyday life of Muslims in late imperial China proper ("Sino-Muslims"), revealing how they integrated themselves into Chinese society, while also maintaining distinct Islamic features.
Deeming "identity" as practical, interactive, and processual, it focuses on Sino-Muslims' daily networking practices which embodied their numerous processes of identification with people around them. Through an evaluation of such practices, it displays how, since the early seventeenth century, Sino-Muslims vigorously formed and participated in popular religious and secular networks at local, translocal, and China-wide scales, including mosques, merchant associations, gentry groups, Islamic educational and publishing networks. It demonstrates how such networks facilitated Sino-Muslims to become more aligned with the tempo of change in Chinese society and imperial governance, and created for them more ingenious venues and means to identify with Islam. Ultimately it reveals how, by the first half of the nineteenth century, a sense of collectivity-with common knowledge, memory, and discourse-was generated among dispersed Sino-Muslims.
Utilizing Sino-Muslims' own records such as steles, genealogies, and Chinese Islamic texts, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative Muslim studies, Qing and early modern China, religious and ethnic identity, and professionals of Sino-Arab relations.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Becoming Natives and Getting Dispersed: Formation of Sino-Muslim Communities in Late Imperial China; 2. Local Networks: Establishing Mosques as "Public Venues"; 3. Secularized Management of Mosques; 4. Local Networks and Beyond: Sino-Muslim Lineages and Worship of Islamic Ancestries; 5. Transregional Networks of Sojourning Sino-Muslim Merchants and Gentry; 6. The China-Wide Network of Islamic Schools and Creation of Chinese Islamic Knowledge; 7. Chinese Islamic Book Printing and China-Wide Circulation; 8. Forging Collective History and Memory of Sino-Muslims; 9. Shared Gender Discourse and Practice of Sino-Muslims; Conclusion; Index
About the author
Shaodan Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Center for Silk Road and Eurasian Civilization Studies at Xi'an International Studies University, China. Her research interests include late imperial Chinese history, Islam and Muslims in China. Her publications have appeared in
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs,
Frontiers of History in China, and more.
Summary
This book explores the everyday life of Muslims in late imperial China, revealing how they integrated themselves into Chinese society, whilst also maintaining distinct Islamic features. It will be of interest to comparative Muslim studies, Qing and early modern China, religious and ethnic identity, and Sino-Arab relations.
