Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

China in Islam: Turki Views from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Thum, Rian

China in Islam: Turki Views from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Thumbnail


Authors

Rian Thum



Abstract

This article questions dominant understandings of “China,” “Islam,” and the relationship between the two. It does so by uncovering an alternative understanding of China, one held by a group of people living within the Qing Empire and, later, the Republic of China: the Turki-speaking Muslims of Altishahr, known today as Uyghurs. Turki manuscript sources depict China as a distant and distasteful power, as a khanate in the Inner Asian tradition, and as a city synonymous with its ruler, characterized above all else by its rejection of Islam, yet vulnerable to conversion by charismatic Sufis. This notion of China, it is argued, is no more culturally determined than the predominant understanding of China that undergirds most scholarly studies of China, and no less enlightening. And yet Altishahri and other Islamic perspectives have been excluded from our notion of China, largely through a dependence on the concept of “syncretism.” As an alternative to the syncretism approach to cultural interchange, the article advocates for a greater focus on overlapping networks of shared meaning. Applied to the Altishahri case, this approach gives a sense of what is lost in the privileging of Islam and China as dominant categories, and shows the distortions involved in bounding these categories.

Citation

Thum, R. (2014). China in Islam: Turki Views from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Cross-Currents, 3(2), 573-600. https://doi.org/10.1353/ach.2015.0004

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 17, 2014
Publication Date 2014
Deposit Date Nov 19, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review
Print ISSN 2158-9674
Publisher University of Hawaii Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 3
Issue 2
Pages 573-600
DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/ach.2015.0004
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2656758
Publisher URL https://muse.jhu.edu/article/566007

Files




You might also like



Downloadable Citations