138 The Han Kitab Authors
an orphan at an early age, and there is no indication whether he re-
ceived an Islamic education during his formative years. He did,
however, receive an education in the Chinese classics, and at the
age of eighteen he passed the first examination and became a xiucai.
He was subsequently appointed to a minor position in the local
prefectural administration. Two years later he joined the court of
the last claimant to the Ming throne, Yongli 永歷, as a minor bu-
reaucrat.^52 After the defeat of Yongli in 1659 , Ma Zhu moved to
several locations in Yunnan, trying to earn a living as a teacher
(particularly in Wuding 武定). In 1669 , when he was about thirty,
Ma Zhu left Yunnan for Beijing.^53 It was there that he undertook
serious study of Islamic texts, probably at the central mosque of
Beijing in Ox Street 牛街, which also served as an Islamic library.
As part of his studies, he visited the Chinese Muslim centers in
Shandong and Jiangnan. Ma Zhu tells us that the major driving
force behind his studies was the memory of his holy Muslim ances-
tor the Sayyid and his admiration for Wang Daiyu, who had been
in Beijing twenty years before him and had perhaps worked in the
same place.^54
In 1678 or 1679 , Ma completed a work that was to have huge in-
fluence, the Qingzhen zhinan. He also gave the book an Arabic title:
Al-Murshid ila ‘Ulum al-Islam, that is, “The guide to the sciences
(literally, ‘red knowledge’) of Islam.”^55 This book is probably the
single most respected of the many works written by Chinese Mus-
lim scholars and is known in the Chinese Muslim scholarly com-
munity simply as Zhinan 指南, the Guide. This huge book has
over 1 , 700 leaves, in eight volumes, covering Islamic law and ritual.
It was republished in many editions; after its first publication in
1683 , it was reissued in 1688 and 1707 , and from 1811 to 1885 , it was
reissued eight more times. In 1864 the great imam of Yunnan, Ma
Dexin 馬得新 ( 1794 – 1874 ), a descendant of Ma Zhu, published a re-
—————
52. QZZN, p. 28.
53. Ibid., p. 29.
54. HRZ (Qingdai), pp. 332 – 34.
55. The idea of writing “guides” is a clear sign of Sufi influence; instructional
literature was very popular within Sufi circles. In addition to the Mirsad, other
texts belonging to this genre were known in China at the time; see Leslie and
Wassel, “Arabic and Persian Sources Use by Liu Chih,” p. 104.