112 Self-Perception and Identity
nese Muslim scholars understood themselves in terms that added
up to the category “literati”—one of the most esteemed categories
of their society. This self-interpretation as literati should not be
understood as an effort by Chinese Muslims to appear Confucian;
rather, it is a reflection of the fact that they saw themselves as in
some sense fully Chinese. Again, the model of “sinicization” does
not need so much to be reworked as to be dispensed with, since it
fails utterly to accommodate such nuance and fluidity.
Chinese Muslim scholars similarly viewed the concept of
“schools” as one that could easily expand to encompass their own
educational traditions and institutions. As Elman has observed,
even within Confucian culture the precise meaning of the term
“school” is a difficult to pin down with any precision. Elman
points out that in the Qing, particularly, “in some cases, a school
was little more than a vague category whose members shared a tex-
tual tradition, geographic proximity, personal association, philoso-
phic agreement, stylistic similarities, or combinations of these.”^74
The Muslim Chinese educational system, as we have seen from
Zhao’s Genealogy, clearly contains each of the elements listed by
Elman. It overlaps, too, with Nathan Sivin’s similarly broad defini-
tion, by which, as Elman cites it, a school is defined “as the ‘special
theories or techniques of a master, passed down through genera-
tions of disciples by personal teaching.’”^75 Again, the Muslim Chi-
nese educational system sits squarely within the parameters of such
a definition. As Elman observes of Sivin’s definition, “the act of
passing on the texts through personal teachings was key.”^76 Zhao’s
text is interested primarily in documenting exactly this sort of per-
sonal contact between teacher and student, with special attention
to the texts favored by each teacher.
The Muslim Chinese educational network participated in many
of the features of Confucian literary elite culture. It was organized
into what, even by a far more rigid and codified definition
than Elman’s or Sivin’s, could clearly be called a “school,” and it
—————
74. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, p. 4.
75. Ibid., citing Sivin.
76. Ibid.