ABSTRACT

Islam arrived in China within a few decades after the death of the prophet Muhammad. Yet the first Chinese Muslim writings on Islam date from the seventeenth century. The first detailed descriptions of early Islamic history, as well as the first Chinese translations of the Qur’ān, derive from that same era. Most of the earlier accounts derive from the works of Chinese Confucians and focus on the commercial roles of the Muslims without supplying much information on the social and religious life of the Islamic communities. Thus, knowledge of the trends in Chinese Islam before the seventeenth century is fragmentary.