The Muslim Midwest in Modern China: The Tale of the Hui Communities in Gansu (Lanzhou, Linxia, and Lintan) and in Yunnan (Kunming and Dali)

by Raphael Israeli

Overview

For several centuries now the Muslim Midwest, notably the Northwest and the Southwest, had been the "Muslim country" of China. Although Muslims only sporadically constituted local majorities in some towns, villages, counties, and neighborhoods, they remained overall a minority in the overwhelming Han landscape of China. Nonetheless, in those areas the Muslim-Hui culture has had its greatest impact and visibility. It was in those areas in mid-nineteenth-century China that major Muslim rebellions took place with the stated purpose of seceding from the Kingdom and establishing independent Muslim states. Almost two centuries later, those areas still bear the traumas of the past--crushed Muslim rebellions with massive massacres of Muslims, who lost their predominance and are reluctant to invoke past glories. The result has been a multitude of sects and sub sects, notably the Menhuan, which has no parallel in other parts of China, and even a new hybrid--the Xidaotang.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532637544
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	12/20/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	196
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Raphael Israeli has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. At Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he taught courses on the modern Middle East, Islamic history, Islamic radicalism, and on Islamic minorities in Europe and Asia. He is the author of fifty-five books and over 100 scholarly articles on those topics.

Raphael Israeli (PhD, Berkeley) is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Islamic History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is author of fifty books and more than a hundred scholarly articles.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: A Comparative Description of the Arenas of Gansu and Yunnan 1

Part I

Chapter 1 Gansu-the Pattern of Muslim Settlement 15

Chapter 2 Obsessive Sectarianism: New Sect, Menhuan 34

Chapter 3 The Ma Hua Long Heritage 56

Chapter 4 Xidaotang 73

Part II

Chapter 5 The Yunnan Pattern of Muslim Settlement 125

Chapter 6 The Du Wenxiu Heritage, The Burden of the Past 142

Chapter 7 A Muslim Sultanate in Confucian China 150

Conclusions: Two Arenas, Two Patrimonies and One Uniting Islam 168

Bibliography 177

Analytical Index 183

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The author took the advantages of his rich knowledge about the Islamic schism and ‘combed’ the Chinese Islamic new sects into systematic categories so that they are easily understood by English readers. The author also explores some main factors of the Yunnan Hui Uprising in the nineteenth century and the influence upon the Hui-Han relationships to today. This study does not stop on the façade, however; it touches the root part of the Hui faith which lead to their social interactions among themselves and with the majority Han. Even many Hui researchers in such area of expertise have neglected such discussions. I highly appreciate the book.”

—Wan Lei, Senior Research Fellow at
King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Editorial Reviews

The author took the advantages of his rich knowledge about the Islamic schism and ‘combed’ the Chinese Islamic new sects into systematic categories so that they are easily understood by English readers. The author also explores some main factors of the Yunnan Hui Uprising in the nineteenth century and the influence upon the Hui-Han relationships to today. This study does not stop on the façade, however; it touches the root part of the Hui faith which lead to their social interactions among themselves and with the majority Han. Even many Hui researchers in such area of expertise have neglected such discussions. I highly appreciate the book.”

—Wan Lei, Senior Research Fellow at
King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

From the Publisher