144 The Han Kitab Authors
Genealogy. Ma Chengyin’s primary aim in including this list is to
demonstrate the extent of Chinese Muslim intellectual activity. His
words express his awareness of the immense cultural importance of
the Han Kitab project. Of Wang Daiyu, the first on his list, he
wrote: “Even though I have never seen the man [Wang], his [Zheng-
qiao] zhenquan, which was transmitted all over China, has the
merit [that lasts for] ten thousand generations. Without his [liter-
ary] work, I would not know of him” 雖未及見其人而真詮一集
神游海宇功在万世非其文吾不知其人也.^69 The list of personages
mentioned in Ma Chengyin’s preface along with the list of greet-
ings for the Guide provide a Who’s Who of the leading intellectual
figures of seventeenth-century Chinese Islam. They lay out the
groundwork for a general map of scholars and teachers of the pe-
riod and include individuals from all major Chinese Muslim educa-
tional centers, as well as some peripheral areas like Yunnan.^70
Liu Zhi: The Culmination of Authorship
When Ma Zhu was in Nanjing, he met with Yuan Ruqi and Liu
Sanjie. It is very likely that he also met Yuan Ruqi’s disciple (and
Liu Sanjie’s son) Liu Zhi, who was then in his late teens or early
twenties. Liu Zhi emerged twenty years later as the most system-
atic and prolific author of the scholarly network. His work sym-
bolizes the culmination of Chinese Muslim literary productivity
over the course of the previous century, and he himself represents
the maturation of the educational network and stands as one of its
finest products. He was able to read and write three languages and
—————
69. QZZN, p. 7.
70. In Ma Chengyin’s list, we find Chang Yunhua, the founder of the education
center in Jining. Also from Jining is Li Yanling, and from the Jiangnan area are Ma
Zhiqi 馬之騏 of Jinling (Nanjing), Ma Minglong, and Ma Junshi (Ma Zhongxin),
the teacher of Wang Daiyu. A third person from Jiangsu is Ma Chengyi 馬承益, a
disciple of Ma Junshi. From the northwest are Li Pingxu 李秉旭, a disciple of Feng
Tongyu; and She Qiyun 舍起雲 of Guanxi 關西, Shaanxi, a disciple of Chang Yun-
hua and classmate of She Yunshan. From Hebei in the northeast there is Ma Hua-
jiao 馬化蛟, and from the south one Huangfu Jing from Yue 粵, whom we met as
the disciple of Ma Minglong and an important teacher in his own right and who es-
tablished a school in Xi’an. Huangfu was a contemporary of Zhao Can and appar-
ently at that time had only a few disciples; see JXCP, pp. 98 – 100.