From the Silk Road to the Railroad (and Back): The Means and Meanings of the Iranian Encounter with China

Abstract

In view of the recent expansion of Indo-Persian studies, the neglect of the Sino-Persian nexus is a missed opportunity to place Iranian history on a larger Asian stage. While Iranian contact with China has continued episodically from antiquity to modernity, scholars have so far focused almost exclusively on the pre-modern phases of exchange. As a contribution to developing the field of Sino-Persian studies, this article situates two twentieth century Iranian travelers to China against the changing background of Chinese–Iranian exchange from the medieval to modern period. In so doing, it demonstrates the infrastructural and conceptual apparatus that enabled the modern Iranian encounter with China while asking how, if at all, twentieth century intellectuals were able to draw on a longer history of interaction to find meanings for Sino-Persian exchange.

Notes

1. Nodoushan, Kārnāmeh, 277.

2. Here, as throughout this article, “Chinese Islamic” and “Chinese Muslims” refer to the culturally and linguistically Sinicized Hui Muslims and not to the Uighur or other Turko-Mongolian Muslim groups at various times under Chinese rule. On the development of Hui Islam, see Lipman, Familiar Strangers.

3. On China's outreach to the Arab Middle East, see Gladney, “Sino-Middle Eastern Perspectives,” and Ho, “Mobilizing the Muslim Minority.”

4. Mohajer, “Chinese-Iranian Relations”; Schichor, The Middle East in China's Foreign Policy.

5. On the reception of their works among Chinese and Japanese scholars, see Galambos, “Buddhist Relics from the Western Regions,” and Jacobs, “Confronting Indiana Jones.”

6. Mīnovī, Tarjomeh-ye ‘Ulūm-e Chīnī; Tashakkurī, Īrān beh Ravāyat-e Chīn-e Bāstān.

7. Waugh, “Richthofen's ‘Silk Roads’.”

8. Thanks to Touraj Daryaee for this information.

9. Mazāhirī, Jādeh-ye Abrīsham; Yagānah, Semnān.

10. Franck and Brownstone, Jādeh-ye Abrīsham.

11. It is worth noting here that for medieval Persian writers, “China proper” was designated as Chīn, with Chinese Central Asia or Eastern Turkestan designated as Māchīn (or, as a compound, Chīn ō Māchīn), likely from the Sanskrit Mahāchīna (Greater China).

12. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “Chinese–Iranian Relations.”

13. Jahn, China in der islamischen Geschichtsschreibung; idem, Die Chinageschichte des Rašīd ad-Dīn.

14. Afshār, Khitāy-nāmeh. For studies, see Hemmat, “Children of Cain in the Land of Error,” Kahle, “Eine islamische Quelle uber China,” and Yih-Min, “A Comparative and Critical Study.”

15. For an unconvincing attempt to demonstrate Shi‘i currents in Chinese Islam, see Israeli, Islam in China, chapter 9: “Is There Shi‘a in Chinese Islam?”

16. On the changing infrastructure of Central Asian travel, and the different written accounts this produced, see Green, “Introduction.”

17. In the pre-modern period, “China” and “Iran” were evidently not fixed cultural, political or geographical entities, particularly with regard to the intermediary Central Asian domains (now constituting the Central Asian republics and the Chinese Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) through which Iranian contact with East Asia was carried between the antique and early modern periods.

18. For an overview up to the Yuan period, see Park, Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds.

19. Yingsheng, “A Lingua Franca along the Silk Road.”

20. Shi-jian, “The Persian Language in China.” On Il-Khanid connections with China in this period, see Rossabi, “Tabriz and Yuan China.”

21. Ben-Dor Benite, The Dao of Muhammad, chapter 3, and Lipman, Familiar Strangers, 48–51.

22. Lipman, Familiar Strangers, 72–85.

23. On the eastward migration of the Persian Sufi classics, see Zarcone, “Le Mathnavî de Rûmî au Turkestan.”

24. Lipman, Familiar Strangers, 214–15. The ethnonym Hui is used here to define the Sino-Muslims proper who, though cherishing traditions of Middle Eastern genealogy, had by the early modern period emerged as culturally Sinicized Muslims who spoke Chinese, developed a Chinese Muslim syllabus (known as the Han Kitab) and in many cases worked closely with the Ming, Qing and Republican states. On Hui understandings of their Middle Eastern genealogy, see Ben-Dor, “‘Even unto China’.”

25. Shi-Jian and Jin-Yuan, “Chinese–Iranian Relations.”

26. Botham, “Modern Movements,” 296.

27. Lipman, Familiar Strangers, 86–9 and 200–211. On Ma Mingxin's Arabian connections, see also Fletcher, “The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China.”

28. Matsumoto, “Rationalizing Patriotism among Muslim Chinese.”

29. Ben-Dor Benite, “‘Nine Years in Egypt’.”

30. While Chinese Islamic texts from the Han Kitab syllabus had previously been block printed, Arabic-script printing emerged in the Middle East only after around 1820, gaining momentum only by the mid-nineteenth century. See Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen”.

31. Matsumoto, “Rationalizing Patriotism”, 122.

32. On the Arabic, Turkish, Urdu and Malay works read by Chinese in this period, see Matsumoto, “Sino-Muslims’ Identity,” 46–8, idem, “Islamic Reform in Muslim Periodicals,” 97–8, and idem, “Rationalizing Patriotism,” 127–8, 133–4.

33. Ben-Dor Benite, “‘Nine Years in Egypt’,” 117.

34. Ibid., 105–28; Matsumoto, “Islamic Reform,” 46; idem, “Rationalizing Patriotism,” 127, 133.

35. Dündar, “An Analysis on the Documents,” 332, 343; Papas, “Voyageurs ottomans et tatars,” 222.

36. An Ahmadiyya missionary in China by the name of Ghulam Mujtaba is mentioned in numerous Ahmadiyya publications from the 1910s and 20s. See for example the list of worldwide missionaries in the unnumbered front matter to The Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921).

37. Matsumoto, “Islamic Reform,” 42.

38. Ogilvie, “Present Status of Mohammedanism,” 168. Ogilvie also mentioned the presence in Beijing of the two Ottoman teachers, “Ali Riza Effendi … [and] a new arrival from Constantinople,” who taught through Arabic. Their presence was the result of the plans described in the 1904 Ottoman archival documents referenced in the previous footnote.

39. Matsumoto, “Rationalizing Patriotism,” 128. On the substantial intellectual traffic that emerged between Egypt and China in the 1930s, see Ben-Dor Benite, “Taking ‘Abduh to China.”

40. Matsumoto, “Sino-Muslims’ Identity,” 46.

41. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 54.

42. Matsumoto, “Islamic Reform,” 100.

43. Ben-Dor Benite, “‘Nine Years in Egypt’,” 108, Matsumoto, “Rationalizing Patriotism,” 133.

44. This and other letters from the students are translated in Harris, “Al-Azhar through Chinese Spectacles,” 178–82; quotation at 178.

45. Cited from a letter to Yueh-hwa from one of the Chinese students in ibid., 181. For more on the confused and exaggerated Muslim population of China in this period (even sometimes estimated as 80 million), see Matsumoto, “Islamic Reform,” 98, note 21.

46. Dillon, China's Muslim Hui Community, 51–3; Mao, “A Muslim Vision for the Chinese Nation.”

47. Gladney, Muslim Chinese, 54.

48. O'Connor, Islam in Hong Kong, 25–33.

49. Weiss, “South Asian Muslims in Hong Kong.” The ‘local boys’ are the descendants of these mixed marriages.

50. Bodde, “Japan and the Muslims of China,” 311–13.

51. Usmanova, The Türk-Tatar Diaspora. On Harbin's varied international communities before 1918, see Carter, Creating a Chinese Harbin, chapter 1.

52. Dündar and Misawa, Books in Tatar-Turkish, 6–8.

53. Ibrahim, ‘Alem-i Islam. On ‘Abd al-Rashid's meetings with non-Muslims in China, see Papas, “Voyageurs ottomans et tatars.”

54. Azra, “The Transmission of al-Manār’s Reformism”, Laffan, Islamic Nationhood, chapters 6-8 and Yasushi, “Al-Manār Revisited”.

55. Matsumoto, “Why Was Persian Learning Excluded?”

56. For Hedayat's biography, see Bāmdād, Sharh-e Hāl-e Rejāl, vol. 2, 455–9; vol. 4, 184–7; vol. 6, 196–8. See also Barzegar, “Mahdi Qoli Hidayat,” and Kasheff, “Hedāyat.”

57. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 6–8, 12. On Hedayat's wider journey, see Green, “The Rail Hajjis.”

58. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 23. Throughout the following, I have given the period spellings of the cities in the main text and the modern names in parentheses. While establishing where Hedayat went from his diary's phonetic Persian spellings of Chinese place names whose Romanization (let alone Arabization) has changed several times since his journey has been challenging, I am satisfied that the identifications are correct. In identifying his ports of call, I have been helped by Dennys, The Treaty Ports of China.

59. Huenemann, The Dragon and the Iron Horse.

60. Shīrāzī, Ketāb Mirāt al-Zamān. This and Malek al-Kuttab's other books were printed in Bombay for export to Iran. On Bombay's Iranian exile publishers, see Green, Bombay Islam, 118–26. A few Turkish works on Chinese history and geography were similarly printed in the late Ottoman Empire. See Papas, “Voyageurs ottomans et tatars,” 222.

61. Nadīm al-Soltān, Tārīkh-e Chīn.

62. On Iranian interest in Japan and Hedayat's own travels there, see Green, “Shared Infrastructures, Informational Asymmetries.” For newspaper reports about Japan, see Rajabzadeh, “Russo-Japanese War as Told by Iranians.”

63. Wang, “The Iranian Constitutional Revolution.”

64. The Chinese section of the travel diary thus covers Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 23–92.

65. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 23–4, 29–30, 60–61, 64–5, 92.

66. Ibid., 23, 26, 70–73.

67. Ibid., 28-29.

68. Ibid., 37-40, 54-56 on the Forbidden City; 58-59 on the medresseh.

69. He was of course describing Peking University, which was actually established in 1898 rather than 1899.

70. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 25-26, 30-31.

71. Ibid., 34; postcard at 31.

72. Ibid., 36.

73. Ibid., 27.

74. Ibid., 24.

75. Ibid., 60.

76. Ibid., 26, 30.

77. Ibid., 32, 35.

78. Ibid., 26.

79. Ibid., 26.

80. Ibid., 25.

81. Ibid., 64–5. The merchants were named as Hajji Mohammed Taqi and Mohammed Hosayn Namazi.

82. Ibid., 32–3.

83. Ibid., 34.

84. Ibid., 37–47.

85. Papas, “Voyageurs ottomans et tatars,” 221–5. To refer to the Hui, Şükrü used the Turkic term “Tungan (Dungan).”

86. Ogilvie, “The Present Status of Mohammedanism,” 165.

87. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 47–51. Hedayat attempted to transcribe the Chinese name of the mosque in the Tatar city as follows: chin men wa yatu layasheh. The first lexical items (chin men) appear to be a reference to the mosque's location as Qianmen or Ch'ien-men, that is, near the outer southern gate of the imperial palace, at the southern end of modern Tiananmen Square. The other lexical items are less immediately clear. Thanks for Jonathan Lipman for advice.

88. Noack, “Die sibirischen Bucharioten.”

89. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 47.

90. Green, “The Rail Hajjis.”

91. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 66–8.

92. Hedāyat, Safarnāmeh, 70–71. On the wider Middle Eastern proliferation of this concept at the time, see Eich, “Pan-Islam and ‘Yellow Peril’.”

93. Further details on his life and writings are available on his website: http://www.eslamiNodoushan.com/ (accessed June 28, 2013).

94. Nodoushan, Zendagī va Marg-e Pahlavān.

95. Farmān-Farmā’iān, Dar Ānsū-ye Dīvār-e Chīn.

96. Nodoushan, Dar Keshvar-e Shaurahā.

97. Nodoushan, Dar Keshvar-e Shaurahā, 285–93 on Tashkent, 294–319 on Bukhara and 321–46 on Samarqand.

98. Nodoushan, Dar Keshvar-e Shaurahā, 279.

99. Even so, in a few regions, Hui conservatives were able to maintain Persian learning, particularly in the city of Tianjin, which in being ruled by the Japanese from 1937–45 was sheltered from the Arabizing policies of the Hui reformist-nationalists affiliated to the Republic of China. See Matumoto, “Why Was Persian Learning Excluded?”

100. Nodoushan, Kārnāmeh, 9.

101. Nodoushan, Kārnāmeh, 31–41, 85–96, 97–102, 126–43, 209–10. Calling Suzhou a “city of gardens” was itself something of an Iranian emphasis, since its famous canals more often lend it the cliché moniker of the “Venice of the East.”

102. For example, Nodoushan, Kārnāmeh, 235, 237, 243, 257, 290.

103. Ibid., 248–52, 270–77 (communes) and 156–70, 265–78, 346–55 (factories).

104. Ibid., 265–78.

105. On the parks and apartment buildings, see ibid., 262–3.

106. Ibid., 235–6.

107. Ibid., 242–8.

108. Ibid., 31–41.

109. Ibid., 226–7, 279.

110. Ibid., 256.

111. Ibid., 258.

112. Ibid., 257.

113. Ibid., 259–60.

114. Ibid., 264.

115. Ibid., 279–80.

116. Ibid., 280–81. Since there appears to have been no Persian translation made, the edition on which Nodoushan drew was presumably the recently translated Hayashi, The Silk Road.

117. Nodoushan, Kārnāmeh, 296.

118. On Chinese official deployment of Hui Muslims to diplomatically and commercially engage the Middle East, see Gladney, “Sino-Middle Eastern Perspectives,” and Ho “Mobilizing the Muslim Minority.”

119. Ahmad, “Zabān-e Fārsī dar Chīn”; Badī‘ī, Farhang-e Vāzheh-hā-ye Fārsī.

120. Somewhat ironically, these Iranian translations include the writings of the Israeli scholar Raphael Israeli, the most conspiratorial and anti-Islamic academic commentator on Chinese Islam. See Īzrā’īlī, Musalmānān-e Chīn.