After crushing the revolt in Zungaria, this same emperor Kʼien Lung, in 1770 transported thither from other parts of China ten thousand military colonists, who were followed by their families and other persons, to re-people the country, and they are all said to have embraced the religion of the surrounding Muhammadan population.[28] Whether such mass conversions occurred in other parts of the empire also, we have no means of telling, but the existence of a considerable Muhammadan population in every province of China can hardly be explained merely by reference to foreign immigration and the natural growth of population,[29] though the numbers are larger in those provinces in which foreign [[305]]Muhammadans have settled.[30] It is unlikely that the Muhammadans in China during the many centuries of their residence in this country, in the enjoyment of religious freedom and the liberal patronage of several of the emperors, should have been entirely devoid of that proselytising zeal which modern observers have noted in their descendants at the present day.[31] To such direct proselytising efforts must have been due the conversion of Chinese Jews to Islam; their establishment in this country dates from an early period, they held employments under the Government and were in possession of large estates; but by the close of the seventeenth century a great part of them had been converted to Islam.[32] Such propaganda must have been quite quiet and unobtrusive, and indeed more public methods might have excited suspicions on the part of the Government, as is shown by an interesting report which was sent to the Emperor Kʼien Lung in 1783 by a governor of the province of Khwang-Se. It runs as follows: “I have the honour respectfully to inform your Majesty that an adventurer named Han-Fo-Yun, of the province of Khwang-Se, has been arrested on a charge of vagrancy. This adventurer when interrogated as to his occupation, confessed that for the last ten years he had been travelling through the different provinces of the Empire in order to obtain information about his religion. In one of his boxes were found thirty books, some of which had been written by himself, while others were in a language that no one here understands. These books praise in an extravagant and ridiculous manner a Western king, called Muḥammad. The above-mentioned Han-Fo-Yun, when put to the torture, at last confessed that the real object of his journey was to propagate the false religion taught in these books, and that he remained in the province of Shen-Si for a longer time than anywhere else. I have examined these books myself. Some are certainly written in a foreign language; for I have not been able to understand them: the others that are written in Chinese [[306]]are very bad, I may add, even ridiculous on account of the exaggerated praise given in them to persons who certainly do not deserve it, because I have never even heard of them. Perhaps the above-mentioned Han-Fo-Yun is a rebel from Kan-Su. His conduct is certainly suspicious, for what was he going to do in the provinces through which he has been travelling for the last ten years? I intend to make a serious inquiry into the matter. Meanwhile, I would request your Majesty to order the stereotyped plates, that are in the possession of his family, to be burnt, and the engravers to be arrested, as well as the authors of the books, which I have sent to your Majesty desiring to know your pleasure in the matter.”[33]
This report bears testimony to the activity of at least one Muhammadan missionary in the eighteenth century, and the growth of Islam, which the Jesuit missionaries[34] noted in the eighteenth century, was probably not so little connected with direct proselytism as some of them supposed. Du Halde, in one of the few passages he devotes to the Muhammadans in his great work,[35] attributes the increase in their numbers largely to their habit of purchasing children in times of famine. “The Mahometans have been settled for more than six hundred years in various provinces, where they live quite quietly, because they do not make any great efforts to spread their doctrines and gain proselytes, and because in former times they only increased in numbers by the alliances and marriages they contracted. But for several years past they have continued to make very considerable progress by means of their wealth. They buy up heathen children everywhere; and the parents, being often unable to provide them with food, have no scruples in selling them. During a famine that devastated the Province of Chantong, they bought more than 10,000 of them. They marry them, and either purchase or build for them separate quarters in a town, or even whole villages; gradually in several places [[307]]they gain such influence that they do not let any one live among them who does not go to the mosque. By such means they have multiplied exceedingly during the last century.”
Similarly, in the famine that devastated the province of Kwangtung in 1790, as many as ten thousand children are said to have been purchased by the Muhammadans from parents who, too poor to support them, were willing to part with them to save them from starvation; these were all brought up in the faith of Islam.[36] A Chinese Musalman, from Yunnan, named Sayyid Sulaymān, who visited Cairo in 1894 and was there interviewed by the representative of an Arabic journal,[37] declared that the number of accessions to Islam gained in this way every year was beyond counting. Similar testimony is given by M. d’Ollone, who reports that this practice of buying children in times of famine prevails among the Muhammadans throughout the whole of China to the present day; in the same way, they purchased the children of Christian parents who were massacred by the Boxers in 1900, and brought them up as Musalmans.[38]
The Muhammadans in China tend to live together in separate villages and towns or to form separate Muhammadan quarters in the towns, where they will not allow any person to dwell among them who does not go to the mosque.[39] Though they thus in some measure hold themselves apart, they are careful to avoid the open exhibition of any specially distinguishing features of the religious observances of their faith, which may offend their neighbours, and they have been careful to make concessions to the prejudices of their Chinese fellow-countrymen. In their ordinary life they are completely in touch with the customs and habits that prevail around them; they wear the pigtail and the ordinary dress of the Chinese, and put on a turban, as a rule, only in the mosque. To avoid offending against a superstitious prejudice on the part of the Chinese, they also refrain from building tall minarets, wherever they build them at all.[40] But for the most part, their mosques conform to the Chinese [[308]]type of architecture, often with nothing to distinguish them from an ordinary temple or dwelling.[41] Every mosque is obliged by law to have a tablet to the emperor, with the inscription on it, “The emperor, the immortal, may he live for ever,” and the Muhammadans prostrate themselves before it in accordance with the regular Chinese custom, though with various expedients to satisfy their consciences and avoid the imputation of idolatry.[42] Even in Chinese Tartary, where the special privilege is allowed to the Musalman soldiers, of remaining unmixed, and of forming a separate body, the higher Muhammadan officials wear the dress prescribed to their rank, long moustaches and the pigtail, and on holidays they perform the usual homage demanded from officials, to a portrait of the emperor, by touching the ground three times with their forehead.[43] Similarly all Muhammadan mandarins and other officials in other provinces perform the rites prescribed to their official position, in the temples of Confucius on festival days; in fact every precaution is taken by the Muslims to prevent their faith from appearing to be in opposition to the state religion, and hereby they have succeeded in avoiding the odium with which the adherents of foreign religions, such as Judaism and Christianity are regarded. They even represent their religion to their Chinese fellow-countrymen as being in agreement with the teachings of Confucius, with only this difference, that they follow the traditions of their ancestors with regard to marriages, funerals, the prohibition of pork, wine, tobacco, and games of chance, and the washing of the hands before meals.[44] Similarly the writings of the Chinese Muhammadans treat the works of Confucius and other Chinese classics with great respect, and where possible, point out the harmony between the teachings contained therein and the doctrines of Islam.[45]
The Chinese government, in its turn, has always given to its Muhammadan subjects (except when in revolt) the same privileges and advantages as are enjoyed by the rest of the population. No office of state is closed to them; and as [[309]]governors of provinces, generals, magistrates and ministers of state they enjoy the confidence and respect both of the rulers and the people. Not only do Muhammadan names appear in the Chinese annals as those of famous officers of state, whether military or civil, but they have also distinguished themselves in the mechanical arts and in sciences such as mathematics and astronomy.[46]
The Chinese Muhammadans are also said to be keen men of business and successful traders; they monopolise the beef trade and carry on other trades with great success.[47] They are thus in touch with every section of the national life and have every opportunity for carrying on a propaganda, but the few Christian missionaries who have concerned themselves with this matter are of opinion that they are not animated with any particular proselytising zeal.[48] Still, many recent converts are to be met with, and the fact that a large number of Chinese Muslims can cite the name of the particular ancestor who first embraced Islam points to a continuous process of conversion.[49] Apparently the Muslims are not allowed to preach their faith in the streets, as Protestant missionaries do,[50] but (as we have seen above)[51] they do not fail to make use of such opportunities as present themselves for adding to the number of their sect. One of their religious text-books, “A Guide to the Rites of the True Religion” (published in Canton in 1668), commends the work of proselytising and makes reference to such as may have recently become converts from among the heathen.[52] The fundamental doctrines of Islam are taught to the new converts by means of metrical primers,[53] and to the influence of the religious books of the Chinese Muslims, Sayyid Sulaymān attributes many of the conversions made in recent years.[54] The Muslim seminary at Hochow in Kansu is said to train theological students who return to their several provinces, at the completion of their studies, to promulgate their faith there,[55] and in upwards of ten provinces centres are said to [[310]]have been started where mullās are to be trained for Muslim propaganda.[56] Military officers convert many of the soldiers serving under them, to Islam, and Muslim mandarins take advantage of the authority they enjoy, to win converts, but as they are frequently transferred from one place to another, they are not able to exercise so much influence as Muslim military officers.[57] Conversions may also occasionally occur, which are not the result of a direct propagandist appeal, e.g. a Turkish traveller who visited Peking in 1895 reported that he found thirty mosques there, among them one that had originally been a temple; this had been the family temple of a wealthy Chinaman, whose life had been saved during the Boxer insurrection by the Mufti Wa-Ahonad (ʻAbd al-Raḥmān); as a token of his gratitude, he embraced the faith of his deliverer.[58]
Turkish and other Muslim missionaries have in recent years been visiting China and endeavouring to stir up among the Chinese Muslims a more thorough knowledge of their faith and to awaken their zeal, but their efforts seem so far to have borne but little fruit.[59]
In 1867 a Russian writer,[60] in a remarkable work on Islam in China, expressed the opinion that it was destined to become the national faith of the Chinese empire and thereby entirely change the political conditions of the Eastern world. Nearly half a century has elapsed since this note of alarm was sounded, but nothing has occurred since to verify these prognostications. On the contrary, it would appear that Islam has been losing rather than gaining ground during the last century, since the wholesale massacres that accompanied the suppression of the Panthay risings in Yunnan from 1855 to 1873 and the Tungan rebellion in Shen-si and Kan-su in 1864–1877 and 1895–1896, reduced the Muhammadan population by millions.[61] The establishment of the new Republic has given to the Chinese Muslims a freedom of activity unknown under any preceding government, but it is too early yet to discover how far they are likely to avail themselves of the [[311]]opportunities offered by the altered conditions of life. The proselytism that still goes on, restricted as its sphere may be, indicates a still cherished hope of expansion. Though four centuries have elapsed since a Muslim traveller[62] in China could discuss the possibility of the conversion of the emperor being followed by that of his subjects, it was still possible for a Chinese Muslim of the present generation to state that his co-religionists in that country looked forward with confidence to the day when Islam would be triumphant throughout the length and breadth of the Chinese empire.[63] [[312]]