Ming–Qing Huihui Genealogies and Changing Communal Memory

This chapter analyzes two genealogies belonging to the Yang and Zhao surnames in Qingzhou, Shandong province, compiled during the 16^th and 17^th centuries respectively. Ding demonstrates how that period was formative in shaping the Qingzhou Muslim community. Although both families, like many other Muslim lineages in the region, referred to the Yuan dynasty Muslim governor of Yunnan, Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din (1211–1279) as their ancestor, only those genealogies compiled after the 1680s provide detailed information about his lineage and cite the passages relating his origin to the Prophet Muhammad. Ding reveals that these later genealogies were in fact informed by Sayyid Ajall’s formally compiled genealogy which had been produced by Ma Zhu (1640–1711) and disseminated in various localities at that time. Consulting other Shandong Hui genealogies in the Qing dynasty, Ding argues a strong case for Ma Zhu’s impact on shaping a common historical memory among various families during the early Qing.