The Han Kitab Authors 119
broken them down into three groups. The first consists of transla-
tors, of whom two are discussed at length. The second group is
made up of authors of original works. Of these, three—the most
prominent—are presented in detail. The third is made up of pa-
trons, editors, and publishers—that is, those who contributed to
the literary production of Chinese Islamic knowledge in a less di-
rect, but no less important, way. Of these, again three are treated
in full. Within each group, individuals are presented in chronologi-
cal order.
The Rise of the Chinese Islamic School
Beginning in the 1630 s, Chinese Muslim scholars embarked on
what was to be roughly 100 years of strikingly intense and interac-
tive literary activity. The period between the 1630 s and the 1730 s
saw an unprecedented outburst of Chinese Muslim scholarship. In-
tellectuals translated Arabic and Persian texts into Chinese, com-
piled dictionaries, wrote Persian and Arabic grammars and treatises
on the origins of Arabic letters, produced commentaries on impor-
tant Islamic texts, and authored original philosophical works and
studies of key concepts in the Qur’an and hadith. The period was
also characterized by the consolidation and dissemination of such
written knowledge, a phase that stretched up to 1780 s. Manuscripts
were produced in print form, and already printed texts were repub-
lished with the addition of commentaries and prefaces, greetings,
and postscripts.
Most significant, Chinese Muslim scholarship of the period began
to reflect in important ways the growing sense of its producers that
they were members of a distinct and distinguished Chinese intellec-
tual tradition. Thus, in addition to the publication and republica-
tion of already existing texts, these scholars also began to write
about themselves—their scholarship, their institutions of learning,
and their educational curriculum. Included in such self-reflective lit-
eratures were geographical treatises about the Muslim world, “his-
tories” of the Muslims in China, and Zhao Can’s Genealogy—which
not only provides a wealth of information about specific individuals
and their interrelationships but also outlines the consolidation of a
specifically Chinese Muslim communal intellectual identity.