152 The Han Kitab Authors
probably considered this composition to be his most important
work. It, too, shows him working in dialogue with other scholars.
Liu wrote that he tried to compose a biography of Muhammad and
showed it to his friends, but neither he nor they were pleased with
the result.^90 Then he heard about a Mr. Xu 許, who owned a li-
brary in Chenliu 陳留 (in Henan) containing many classics.
“There,” he says, “I came across a ‘western classic’ 西經, which
turned out to be a biography of the great Sage.” This, Liu declared,
felt tantamount to divine intervention, a sign from the “Creator”
approving his work 造物成就我如此其巧耶.^91
The book was completed in 1724 , but Liu was unable to find a
publisher. Only in 1775 , after Liu’s death, was the book published.
The publication of the work, like its composition, came about
through the interaction of a number of different Chinese Muslim
scholars. All scholars of Chinese Islam state that the biography of
the Prophet is the most important of Liu Zhi’s works in terms of
its influence among the educational network’s constituency.^92 The
missionary Isaac Mason, who translated the book at the beginning
of the twentieth century, wrote that it was widely known among
Muslims in China and that its composer was the most famous of
Chinese Muslim authors.^93 Liu also published many more works,
among them the Tianfang sanzijing 天方三字經 (Islam’s Three
Character Classic, an explication of key concepts in the Qur’an)^94 as
well as the Tianfang zimu jieyi 天方字母解義 mentioned above.^95
During the earlier years of his scholarly productivity, Liu en-
joyed the sponsorship and the support of a Chinese Muslim official,
Hei Mingfeng 黑鳴鳳, a military jinshi from Shandong,^96 who con-
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script form throughout the Muslim world from India to Turkey. See Mansour,
“Sirat al-Nabi al-Muntaqa.”
90. Liu Zhi, “Zhushu shu,” in HRZ (Qingdai), p. 358.
91. Ibid.
92. See Leslie, Islamic Literature in Chinese, p. 73 ; HRZ (Qingdai), p. 58.
93. Mason, “Preface,” in Mason, The Arabian Prophet, pp. 6 – 7.
94. Liu Zhi, Tianfang sanzijing 天方三字經 (Islam’s Three Character Classic),
1870 ed.
95. Liu Zhi, Tianfang zimu jieyi 天方字母解義, 1879 ed.
96. Hei Mingfeng received his degree in 1703 ; see his biography in HRZ (Qing-
dai), pp. 66 – 67.