Firmly rooted in Chinese and long-neglected Perso-Arabic sources, Islamic China traces the interlinked histories of twenty Chinese Muslims, some famous and some obscure, spread across multiple ethnicities, sects, and centuries. Their stories—emphasizing the diversity of Chinese Muslim communities and their continuous exchanges with other groups both within and beyond China—cut through the flattening narratives that have obscured China’s Muslim heritage. Taken together, the experiences chronicled here offer a fresh view of Islamic China, stretching across Central, Southeast, and South Asia—and of China itself.
While focused on the Ming, Qing, and early Republican eras, Thum also harkens back to earlier centuries and traces the inheritances of this history to the present. Islamic China makes the compelling argument that the abstractions brought to bear on the past have practical implications in today’s People’s Republic of China, where the state enforces an oppressive regime of differentiation and control aimed broadly at Muslims and is routinely exposed for atrocities committed against particular subgroups.
Dr. Rian Thum is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester. A contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and The Nation, he is the author of The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, winner of the Fairbank Prize for East Asian History from the American Historical Association and the Hsu Prize for East Asian Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association.
Sponsor(s): Program on Central Asia, APC, Asia Pacific Center, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Center for the Study of Religion, Islamic Studies