ABSTRACT
In China, the central organisation of the Sufi pathway (Arabic tariqa) evolved into the daotang https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> ‘hall of the path or doctrine’ or jiaotang https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_2_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> ‘hall of teaching’ often based on the tomb gongbei https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_3_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> of the founder. The equivalent of the Arabic silsila (the inherited chain of succession) is possibly the menhuan https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_4_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> a term for which it is difficult to find a precise Chinese etymology, but which appears to be connected with Confucian concepts of officialdom huan https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_5_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (literally a govenment servant or official) and gateway or pathway, reflecting the influence of Confucian thinking on Chinese Islam that can probably be traced back to the Ming Muslim thinker Wang Daiyu. Ma Tong, the leading contemporary Chinese specialist on the development of menhuan considers the organisation to be a specifically Chinese innovation, a Chinese contribution to Islam, because neither the term nor the menhuan system exist in the Arab world or Persia. 1 However the system seems to be a continuation of the silsila rather than a completely new form of religious organisation. Ma Tong suggests that the term menhuan first appeared in the twenty third year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty (1897) in an essay on Muslim denominations by the Hezhou (Linxia) Prefectural Magistrate Yang Zengxin, who later became Governor of Xinjiang, in A Brief History of Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai. 2 However, Mian Weilin suggests that the term menhuan might be related to an older form, menfa https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_6_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>, which means powerful and influential families, or the phrase menhu https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315027265/297f8de2-bbb4-4c3d-9f42-31d657f8df84/content/fig113_7_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> used by many people in north-west China to mean ‘gateway,’ or ‘faction’ and argues that there may have been some confusion between the terms with both indicating the power or influence of a clan or group. 3 The distinctive pronunciation of the dialects of northwestern Mandarin spoken in the Gansu and Ningxia areas makes this kind of confusion perfectlly possible.
