The Han Kitab Authors 157
elite’s interest in bibliographic compilation while focusing on a
specifically Islamic group of texts, Yuan’s work seems to suggest
his view that Chinese Islamic literary knowledge is an important
component of scholarly knowledge in general, notwithstanding the
fact that the very category was one defined and monopolized by
the non-Muslim dominant elite.
Moreover, Yuan’s endeavor points both to Chinese Muslim
scholars’ growing self-consciousness and to their growing vision of
themselves as a distinct collectivity, with a distinct literary tradi-
tion. This aspect of Yuan’s project is reflected in the fact that the
very act of bibliographic compilation is the first stage in a process
whereby a set group of texts come to enjoy a quasi-canonical status.
Bibliographic compilation marked an important step in the codifi-
cation of what would ultimately become a fixed curriculum within
the Chinese Muslim educational network.
Yuan, as an inhabitant of Nanjing—the most vibrant and intense
of Muslim intellectual centers—was surely aware of the Siku
quanshu project. It is even possible that he complied his own list of
texts in direct response to the emperor’s call for his subjects to re-
port to Beijing the existence of books and manuscripts that might
serve the purpose of the project.^105 At the very least, in his creation
of a specifically Chinese Islamic bibliography, he was inspired by
the state-sponsored bibliographic project. In either case, Yuan’s
bibliography is a clear indication that Chinese Muslim intellectuals
viewed their literary tradition as having importance in its own
right. In their choice of genres to write in and their approach to
scholarly knowledge and its documentation, these intellectuals
acted in reference to, and were influenced by, dominant, largely
Confucian scholarly trends. By focusing on specifically Islamic
texts, however, Yuan set Chinese Muslim knowledge apart, estab-
lishing it as a category in its own right as well as a subset of literary
knowledge in general.
These points are perhaps worth some elaboration. As defined by
Yuan Guozuo, the bibliography represents that which “has been
transmitted from past generations”; it is the crystallization and
summarization of the legacy of past scholarly generations. But who,
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105. On the Siku quanshu project, see Guy, The Emperor’s Four Treasuries.