China's Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects, and: Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (review)

As these two recent monographs indicate, research on China's minority populations has now established itself as an important area of inquiry among scholars of western China. Long viewed as the "barbarian" fringes of the civilized—and civilizing—Chinese empire, minorities are being studied by a growing number of historians, anthropologists, and political scientists who have successfully expanded the boundaries of sinological research and added new dimensions to our understanding of China's past and present. From challenging the notion of "tribute" to reexamining what it means to be "Han," these studies have led to a reassessment of long-held views and have stimulated new thinking about China's place in the Asian world.

The two studies considered in this review add to our knowledge of minority culture in China, but in very different ways. As the titles indicate, each book offers a history of China's Muslims, today called the Hui and officially recognized as one of China's fifty-five minority nationalities. The organization of the two studies is similar, each beginning with a general introduction and moving chronologically from the Tang period (618-906) to the twentieth century. Both introduce the reader to the complexities of the Muslim Sufi orders established in today's Gansu Province and the Ningxia-Hui Autonomous Region, where the largest concentration of Hui still live. Further, both authors have spent time in the field, meeting with Muslim leaders, scholars, and ordinary Hui workers and farmers, which adds a sense of authenticity to their accounts. And, finally, both conclude that the cultural and political history of the Hui successfully challenges the notion of the power of Chinese civilization to absorb other peoples, a process referred to as sinicization (or sinification). As both books amply demonstrate, the Hui undoubtedly have maintained their separate identity as Muslims despite centuries of existence within the Chinese empire.

Given these similarities, there are profound differences between the two studies that are particularly interesting. Although both are presented as histories of the Hui, a major difference stems in part from differing objectives and choice of sources. Michael Dillon makes it clear that his history is intentionally based primarily on the Hui people's own accounts of their past. He thus draws mainly on Chinese-language Hui sources, particularly the work of Ma Tong, a well-regarded Muslim scholar in the People's Republic of China. Jonathan Lipman has read the same Hui publications, plus additional official histories of the Hui written by PRC scholars. But his account also draws on a variety of other sources, Western and Chinese, which make his study the richer while at the same time problematizing the Chinese-language sources—and early Western sources—in ways not always considered by Dillon. Lipman's varied source materials also allow him to raise intriguing questions about Hui history that the more limited Chinese-language sources do not. For example, after detailing the continuing violence between the feuding Sufi sects of Gansu, he asks the obvious question: why is this history marked by so much violence and what role does Islam play in it? He offers a convincing discussion of the numerous factors involved, and, in reflecting on the role of Islam, concludes that while religion did play a part, it was "neither a consistent nor a dominant role" (p. 137). While he and Dillon both conclude that there was never a unified Hui response to Qing and/or Han Chinese maladministration, considering that some Muslims fought for the Qing and against their own coreligionists, Lipman's account provides the stronger, more persuasive argument on the role of religion in Hui history.

Both books include brief biographical accounts of historically important Hui personalities, but the two histories differ...