100 Self-Perception and Identity
lim identity was rendered socially intelligible and important. Chi-
nese Muslim scholars, through their scholarship, were able to craft
an identify within the cultural norms of Han Chinese society and,
ideally, were (again through their scholarship) able to earn recogni-
tion and validation from that society. Through their scholarship,
Chinese Muslims were able to see a “realm of historically deter-
mined possibility” in which it was plausible for them to think that
non-Muslim Chinese society might accept them as true literati.
The Muslim Scholar
as Chinese Literatus
As we have seen, the ideal Chinese Muslim scholar of Zhao’s text is
well read, possessed of remarkable powers of interpretation and
concentration, and part of a broader and recognized scholarly
community. He reveres his own tradition and adds to its knowledge,
and is familiar with Confucian tradition as well. Not surprisingly,
then, the ideal Chinese Muslim viewed himself as nothing other
than a “literatus.” In many instances throughout the Genealogy,
Zhao referred to or cited scholars referring to themselves as shi,
“literati.”
The term duanshi 端士 (upright literati) or, alternatively, shi oc-
curs throughout the Genealogy as a general reference to Chinese
Muslim teachers. For example, in his biography of Chang Yunhua,
Zhao wrote “at [this] time, people considered the four masters
[Chang] Yunhua, [Li] Dinghuan, [Ma] Junshi, and [Ma] Minglong
as the central figures among eastern [i.e., Chinese] literati” 然時人
以蘊華, 定寰, 君實, 明龍四先生為東土學者之四鎮云. In another
place in the section on Chang, Zhao also refers to the scholars of
network as “talented literary men” 才人文士 (JXCP, p. 58 ). Zhao’s
choice of the term “literati” is deliberate and reflects his commu-
nity’s understanding of its importance as that understanding was
filtered through dominant Chinese cultural categories.
Zhao’s account of Ma Minglong, a teacher from Wuchang, in-
cludes the following story:^55
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55. For the entire story, see JXCP, pp. 45 – 46.