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four
Muhammad and His Dao: Knowledge
and Identity in the Han Kitab
Chinese Muslim scholars faced a twofold task. On one hand, they
had to present themselves to their society as “scholars” as that cate-
gory was understood and constructed by the Confucian elite. This
was not a self-conscious strategy; rather, it developed in cultural dia-
logue with that elite, through the growth and patterning of the edu-
cational network. On the other hand, they had to understand their
Islamic tradition vis-à-vis dominant Chinese cultural paradigms.
The first task was accomplished most effectively through the in-
stitutions and mechanisms of the educational network, which de-
fined Islamic knowledge as an important component of knowledge
in general; created cooperative groups of scholars; and grew to
have a powerful sense of itself as an intellectual (rather than spe-
cifically religious) community. Through participation in this far-
flung educational system, Muslim scholars were able to integrate
themselves conceptually into a category recognized across all com-
munities and strata of Chinese society, the “literatus.”
In this effort, these scholars appear to have been successful inso-
far as they viewed themselves (and portrayed themselves as) schol-
ars worthy of the titles of literati society, and insofar as they came
to understand Islamic teaching as an important part of what they
did not hesitate to call the “Dao.” It is clear, too, that to some ex-
tent at least members of the Confucian elite were willing to accept
them as scholars as they understood the category. The story of Ma
Minglong’s conversation with the officials who came to visit the