ABSTRACT
During the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries during Ming dynasty in China, more and more Huihui people were resettled from middle Asia and parts of central China to Yunnan. Some of them gradually lost their Muslim identities and original Islamic religious practice. After the sixteenth century, in the transformation from Ming to Qing dynasties, some Huihui scholars began to mobilize a movement to reinterpret Islamic ideas using the concepts of Confucian or Neo-Confucianism. Through this change, gradually, the Hui identity reformed. The Islamic education system was developed in communities based on the Common Items Charity, to extend local communities into a network. All of these developments were based mainly on the communal charity resources coming from minefields in the mountain areas, and long distance trade, especially on the Yunnan–Burma frontier. For example, when the Qing state tried to produce more and more silver and copper, many minefields were controlled by various powerful, Hui, minefield hosts. Through the extension of the Hui network, the Hui elite established, in a communal mosque, their Islamic education, which was based on the Common Items Charity in their home villages. It formed the basis of cultural construction for internal governance and a transregional network for business management and goods transportation. More Hui Muslims could, therefore, be freed from their everyday agricultural and official taxation and services tasks, because the Common Items played the role of a communal organization, and became a shield to deal with the state. In this way, the function of the Common Items Charity was to provide mosque education, deal with communal affairs, play host to long distant travelers, and fulfill official tasks.
