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partition of India? If the Mughal Empire had gradually weakened in state after
princely state over time in India, would Hindus and Muslims have eventually
worked out some kind of messy organic solution to their relative interests and
kept a concept of a united India as a common goal, albeit on a federal basis?
Very possibly. It seems, furthermore, quite unlikely that the mechanism of a
partition could ever have been conceived, much less executed by the Hindu and
Muslim players themselves; it took major external imperial intervention and
sweeping authority to make the entire operation possible. Maybe it is the British
imperial control of India over several hundred years—far more than “Islam”—
that has the most to answer for in contriving this ill-starred and perhaps
unnecessary partition that solved nothing.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Islam and China
Few in the West are aware of the close connections between Islam and China,
yet China ranks high among countries containing large Muslim populations:
some twenty million Muslims are scattered across the country—more than in
most Arab countries. But there is a critical distinction to be drawn among them.
About one half of China’s Muslims are ethnically Han Chinese, with some
admixture of Arab and Persian blood from the days of early Muslim settlers in
China. They are referred to as Hui, or Hui-Hui. They speak only Chinese and
follow a lifestyle similar to other Han Chinese, except for a few key cultural
distinctions that arise from Islam. Over time, the Han and the Muslim elements
have intermixed in fascinating ways and coexist fairly comfortably within
broader Chinese culture. But the other half of China’s Muslims are ethnically
and linguistically quite distinct—primarily of Turkic origin. The Uyghurs living
in far western China represent the largest Turkic group by far. Hui Muslims are
basically well-integrated into Chinese life, whereas the Turkic Uyghurs are not.
Chinese authorities treat the Uyghurs with suspicion and harshness, highlighting
the essentially ethnic character of the problem, reinforced by Uyghur adherence
to Islam.
The popular image of “propagation of Islam by the sword” is once again
erroneous in the Chinese case. According to Muslim accounts, Islam reached
China surprisingly early, in 651 CE, some eighteen years after the Prophet’s
death, brought by sea to Canton by an envoy of the Caliph ‘Umar. There is a
well-known saying of the Prophet, “Seek knowledge, even from China.”
According to Muslim tradition, the Tang Dynasty emperor ordered a mosque to
be built in Canton, the first in China, which still stands today. The emperor
believed Islam to be compatible with teachings of Confucianism and granted
rights to Arab and Persian merchants to establish the first Muslim settlements in
the area. Early Chinese encounters with Islam in Canton were therefore peaceful
and productive, and Muslims were granted a place in Chinese society, where

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their mercantile skills and contacts were known from pre-Islamic Arab traders.
China quickly recognized the great seafaring capabilities of the Muslims and the
potential benefits to China in expanding its influence and reach. As a result,
Muslims soon came to dominate the import/export industry of China by the time
of the Song Dynasty (960–1279); the Director General of Shipping was an office
consistently held by a Muslim.
But far away to the northwest borders of China, a very different geopolitical
event occurred between China and Islam with profound long-term geopolitical
consequences. There the expanding forces of the Tang Dynasty marched west
down into Central Asia, where in 751 CE they encountered Arab forces of the
Abbasid caliphate at Talas (in present-day Kyrgyzstan). The Arabs defeated the
Chinese forces, an event that marked the beginning of the end of further Chinese
expansion into Central Asia. Many see the battle of Talas as a decisive strategic
and civilizational turning point: Central Asia did not fall to Chinese rule, and
more important, the Turkic tribes of the region then increasingly turned to Islam,
an event that indelibly marked their future in their centuries-long migrations,
ultimately carrying their religion into the Byzantine world of the Mediterranean
and Anatolia.
With time, Muslims grew more deeply engaged in the basic administration of
the empire: by the Yüan (Mongol) Dynasty (1271–1368), the Mongols used
Muslims to strengthen trade ties with the West. Mongol armies that had ranged
as far to the West as Damascus rounded up hundreds of thousands of Arabs,
Persians, and Central Asian Turks and sent them to China to help administer the
empire—in finance and taxation, in calendar-making and astronomy, and in the
building of the new capital at Beijing. This marked the first serious influx of
Central Asian Turkic blood into China proper to complement the Arab and
Persian ethnicity of the first Muslims. Muslims were appointed as administrators
and to governorships, and many became fully absorbed into Chinese culture as
Muslims. These helped make up the various blood strains of the Hui.
The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) was a productive time for Muslims. After
having been perceived primarily as outsiders of Arab and Persian trader stock, it
was in this period that the Hui Muslims came to be more truly integrated into
Chinese culture and adopted Chinese names. They established major centers of
Muslim learning in Nanjing; Arabic and Persian were the two cultural languages
for the study of Islam. Muslims increasingly intermarried with non-Muslim
Chinese as well, thus losing their foreign status and becoming
“indistinguishable” in appearance. Otherwise, the Hui have “no [distinctive]
common language, no common territory, and no common economic life, though
they are widely held to be genetically inclined toward skill at doing business in

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the marketplace.” The only thing all Hui have in common is Islam and its
culturally linked practices. And because of Islam’s early presence in China, it
has long been considered one of the official indigenous religions of the Chinese
Empire, right until the present. With time, the Hui became more familiar and
trusted by successive Chinese dynasties due to their fundamentally Han culture
and greater integration into Chinese society, unlike the other Muslim minorities
with distinctly different ethnicities, whose tendencies toward resistance against
Hanization still persist today.
During the early fifteenth century, the most spectacular seafaring expeditions
in Chinese history were undertaken by one Admiral Zheng He, a Chinese
Muslim; he was dispatched by the emperor on a series of seven voyages across
the length and breadth of the Indian Ocean, and brought back to China a vivid
awareness of the extent of Muslim kingdoms and culture that existed to the west.

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