Islamic Thought in China

Jonathan N. Lipman is Felicia Gressitt Bock Professor Emeritus of Asian Studies and Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. His research focuses on Islam and Muslims in China since the 17th century, including religious, social, political, and economic themes. Jonathan is author (with Barbara Molony and Michael Robinson) of Modern East Asia: An Integrated History (2011), Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (1998), (with K.W. Masalski and A. Chalk), Imperial Japan: Expansion and War (1995), and co-editor (with G. Hershatter, E. Honig, and R. Stross) of Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain (1995) and (with S. Harrell) of Violence in Chinese Society: Studies in Culture and Counterculture (State University of New York Press, 1990).

• Editor’s Introduction: Four Centuries of Islamic Thought in Chinese; Jonathan Lipman; Part I: The Qing Empire (1636-1912); Chapter 1. A Proper Place for God: Ma Zhu’s Chinese Islamic Cosmogenesis, Jonathan Lipman; Chapter 2. Liu Zhi: The Great Integrator of Chinese Islamic Thought, James D. Frankel; Chapter 3. Tianfang Sanzijing: Exchanges and Changes in China’s Reception of Islamic Law, Roberta Tontini; Chapter 4. The Multiple Meanings of Pilgrimage in Sino-Islamic Thought, Kristian Petersen; Part II: Modern China; Chapter 5. Ethnicity or Religion? Republican-Era Chinese Debates on Islam and Muslims, Wlodzimierz Cieciura; Chapter 6. Selective Learning from the Middle East: The Case of Sino-Muslim Students at al-Azhar University, Yufeng Mao; Chapter 7. Secularization and Modernization of Islam in China: Educational Reform, Japanese Occupation, and the Disappearance of Persian Learning, Masumi Matsumoto; Chapter 8. Between ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Liu Zhi: Chinese Muslim Intellectuals at the Turn of the 21st Century, Leila Chérif-Chebbi; Bibliography; Glossary of East Asian Names; Glossary of East Asian Terms; List of Contributors.

This book is a captivating narrative of four hundred years of Islamic intellectual history in China. Vivid portraits of Muslim thinkers and luminous studies of complex writings lead the reader into a world of discussions, where the Prophet speaks Chinese while ideograms interpret concepts imported from the Middle East.