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11 - Follow the white camel: Islam in China to 1800

from PART III - THE MARITIME OECUMENE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Zvi Benite
Edited by
David O. Morgan  and
Anthony Reid
David O. Morgan
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Anthony Reid
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
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Summary

Introduction

The inhabitants of Jiezi, a Muslim village of the Salar ethnic group in Qinghai, China, tell an interesting story about the circumstances of their migration from Central Asia many centuries ago. As the story goes, they had left Samarqand centuries earlier, fleeing injustice and tyranny. They had moved generally eastward – to ‘China, the Land of Peace and Harmony’ – but arrived in the specific location of Jiezi ‘following the lead of a white camel with a Qurʾān strapped to its head for guidance’. The white camel in this story is noteworthy. Recall that the caliph ʿUmar entered Jerusalem on a white camel, thereby sending a message of peace and harmony; more importantly, the Prophet Muḥammad determined the spot of his mosque in Medina by letting his white camel loose and following it until it stopped to rest. The implications of the story are quite clear: the journey of Muslims from Samarqand to China – outside the ‘House of Islam’ – was justified and even divinely approved. It was to be seen as akin to other significant events in Islamic history: the making of Jerusalem part of the Islamic world, and the very creation of the first Islamic polity. One could take it even a step further: the journey to Jiezi was nothing less than a re-enactment of the hijra. Just as Muḥammad had fled tyranny and injustice, so too the Muslims from Samarqand.

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The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 409 - 426
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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