The Muslim Connection

Zheng He, quite possibly China’s most famous explorer, is our last stop on this journey through Nanjing Muslim history. Born Ma He to a Muslim family in Kunming, Yunnan Province, during the Ming Dynasty, family records claim that they traced...

Today, if one was to introduce the three Abrahamic faiths systematically to a crowd of people unfamiliar to their beliefs, one might begin by listing their key religious texts (i.e. the Torah, the Bible, the Quran), important figures (prophets,...

By the late Ming dynasty, the highly culturally and linguistically-assimilated Muslim communities of Nanjing presented a new problem. There existed a cavernous gap between existing Arabic/Persian-medium Islamic texts and the Sino-Muslim Chinese-speaking practitioners illiterate in those languages. In Nanjing, this...

Mosques are easy to find due to their tall minarets, as some of the clearest visible symbols of Muslim communities.  But in China, however, the Arab architectural approach with onion domes and tall skinny minarets is less common. Instead, many...

Today, Nanjing is host to a small variety of halal-certified restaurants. One can find Turkish fare in Xianlin, Xinjiang-style barbeque and dishes throughout each district, local Nanjing cuisine in Gulou and simpler, cheaper Northwestern Chinese fare in your next-door...

Today, the Muslim population in Nanjing might best be described as mostly hailing from Northwestern provinces (Gansu and Ningxia; traditionally more Muslim-populated centres), with a growing, foreign-born community. Due to the tricky identity issue of having the “Hui” ethnicity...