110 Self-Perception and Identity
texts, the majority of them not written in Chinese and not part of
the curriculum of any other school of learning in China. Zhao re-
ferred to all the men he chronicled as duanshi;^70 that is, variously,
“upright scholars” or “learned men.” Similarly, references to mem-
bers of the system as shi or as xuezhe 學者 (scholars) occur fre-
quently in the Genealogy. Simply put, these men are “literati,” but
not according to any narrowly Confucian understanding of that
term. As learned Muslims, they are, in more general terms,
“learned men.”
As the case of Qing Chinese Muslim scholars indicates, our un-
derstanding of the category literatus needs to be reassessed. In this
regard I take my lead from Peter Bol’s suggestion that it is more
appropriate in the context of late imperial Chinese intellectual his-
tory to use “literati” culture rather than “Confucian” culture as a
category of inquiry.^71 The term shi, or “literatus,” according to Bol,
cannot be used exclusively to describe Han Chinese Confucians. In
Bol’s words, shi
was a concept used to think about the sociopolitical order; at the same
time, it referred to an element in that society. Shi as a concept was a
socially constructed idea that those who called themselves shi held. The
transformation of the shi thus can analytically be separated into changes
in the way shi conceived of being shi and shifts in the social makeup of the
men who called themselves shi. As a concept, being a shi meant possessing
qualities thought appropriate to membership in the sociopolitical elite.^72
Although the Han Chinese Confucian intellectual sphere viewed
the term shi as applicable only to its own scholars, teachers, and
thinkers, Bol’s argument reminds us that there is no need for histo-
rians to share the Confucian elite’s limited understanding of the
term. Clearly, Chinese Muslim intellectuals did not share it.
Zhao’s text has the same primary subject matter as genealogies
produced by his Confucian contemporaries: the lineage and his-
—————
70. Zhao, “Jingxue xi chuan zongpu xu,” in JXCP, p. 5.
71. Bol, “This Culture of Ours.” For more on the specific issue of defining litera-
tus as a category that is not exclusive to, or even dominated by, “Confucian”
norms, see ibid., pp. 290 – 91. Bol also takes up this question in “Seeking Common
Ground.”
72. Bol, “This Culture of Ours,” p. 32. Wade-Giles romanizations changed to
pinyin.