This article seeks to develop a framework for thinking about the ways Islam was practiced and understood along a social and religious landscape in late imperial China that was defined by the coexistence of many different cults, rituals, and cultural pressures. It seeks to examine Islam as a factor in local life within the lands “All-Under-Heaven” (tianxia 天下) (Wang, 2017) by applying methods from the study of local history and historical anthropology (Watson, 1982; Szonyi, 2002). Though some points below are best understood as hypotheses or questions to be built upon through further investigation, this approach can offer scholars of both Chinese and Islamic history new avenues for future research.
Many of the first European-language writings on Sinophone Muslims were produced by foreign observers in the aftermath of the Muslim “rebellions” during the nineteenth century and by missionaries in the early twentieth century who came to see Muslim communities as conduits for the conversion...