The Dao Of Muhammad: A Cultural History Of Muslims In Late Imperial China

by Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi

• ISBN13: 9780674017740
• ISBN10: 0674017749
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

This book documents an Islamic-Confucian school of scholarship that flourished, mostly in the Yangzi Delta, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on previously unstudied materials, it reconstructs the network of Muslim scholars responsible for the creation and circulation of a large corpus of Chinese Islamic written material--the so-called Han Kitab. Against the backdrop of the rise of the Manchu Qing dynasty, The Dao of Muhammad shows how the creation of this corpus, and of the scholarly network that supported it, arose in a context of intense dialogue between Muslim scholars, their Confucian social context, and China's imperial rulers. Overturning the idea that participation in Confucian culture necessitated the obliteration of all other identities, this book offers insight into the world of a group of scholars who felt that their study of the Islamic classics constituted a rightful "school" within the Confucian intellectual landscape. These men were not the first Muslims to master the Chinese Classics. But they were the first to express themselves specifically as Chinese Muslims and to generate foundation myths that made sense of their place both within Islam and within Chinese culture.

Table of Contents

Tables, Figures, and Illustrations	xi
Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	1	(20)
Chinese Islam and Shifting Paradigms in the Qing Period	5	(7)
Simultaneity and "Diasporicity" in Chinese Muslim Literati Identity	12	(9)
1 The Islamic Educational Network	21	(51)
The Urban Context of Eastern China	21	(3)
Networks of Learning	24	(5)
Clients and Constituents	29	(1)
Genealogy and Learning	30	(5)
The Nature of the Network	35	(3)
Key Teachers in the Network	38	(19)
Analysis	57	(5)
Who Were the Constituents of the Network?	62	(10)
2 Self-Perception and Identity Among the Scholarly Constituency	72	(43)
The Significance of the Starting Point	74	(8)
The Scholar as a Rescuer/Preserver of Knowledge	82	(6)
The Teacher-Scholar and His Powers of Learning	88	(9)
Geographical Location and the Transmission of Knowledge	97	(9)
The Muslim Scholar as Chinese Literatus too Genealogy and Chinese Muslim Literati Identity	106	(9)
3 The Han Kitab Authors and the Chinese Islamic School	115	(48)
The Rise of the Chinese Islamic School	119	(6)
Providing Access to Foreign Knowledge: Translators and Translations	125	(9)
Original Authors: Wang Daiyu, Ma Zhu, and Liu Zhi	134	(10)
Liu Zhi: The Culmination of Authorship	144	(9)
Bibliography and Textual Consolidation	153	(10)
4 Muhammad and His Dao: Knowledge and Identity in the Han Kitab	163	(52)
Muhammad, the Chinese Sage	171	(10)
Chinese Muslim Scholarship as the Study of Muhammad's Dao	181	(13)
The Dao of Islam and Chinese Muslim Scholarly Identity	194	(6)
Teaching Chinese Muslims About Their Origins	200	(15)
Conclusion: Dialogue in Action	215	(24)
Appendix
Appendix	239	(10)
Reference Matter
Bibliography	249	(22)
Index	271