1 Introduction

Recent literature on Islamic scholarship in China, and in particular on the scholarship that emerged from the sixteenth century onwards, sheds fresh light on the polyglot and multicultural environment in early modern China’s¹ local communities.² Recent studies suggest that the global circulation of knowledge was not limited to the court and upper echelon of the early modern Chinese society, on one hand; and on another, they provide an alternative narrative to the one that asserts a certain European monopoly on the global flow of information and the introduction of “occidental knowledge” to East Asia. While these studies provide insightful analyses and English translations of some of the main textual outcomes of China’s Islamic scholarship and accord it its due historiographical recognition, much research is still required on the processes by which knowledge that derived from Arabic and Persian texts was presented for, read and interpreted by Chinese readers.

By focusing on the usages of the term xin 信 in Chinese Islamic texts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this chapter will survey some of the inherent features in the processes of translating and acculturating Islam in late imperial China. It will bring out some of the underlying tendencies, anxieties and ideologies that characterize this form of literature. In particular, it will show the pronounced alignment of Chinese Islamic literature with Confucian ethics, the complexity of articulating Islamic theological concepts in Chinese, and the commitment to develop critical methods for textual scholarship.

The broad semantic field that the term xin offers made it a suitable term for Chinese-Islamic authors to designate simultaneously and interchangeably three main meanings. It is the political and inter-personal value of “loyalty” either to the ruling dynasty or to one’s fellow men, an intertwining aspect of Chinese-Islamic and Confucian ethical discourses; the articulation of the Arabic term īmān (“faith in Allah”)—a central pillar of the Islamic faith that draws a marked distinction between Muslim believers and members of other faiths; and, the assessment of a certain text as credible, authentic and authoritative—an outcome of a critical approach to knowledge. These three notions of the term xin will be further expounded in what follows.

2 The Contours of Chinese-Islamic Literature

In the late sixteenth century, a growing openness to accommodate new ideas in China, characterized by a surge in printing and the spread of local schools,³ met with an increase in the activities of Sufi orders in Transoxiana and a rise in the frequency of visits by preachers and travelers from different parts of the Islamicate world to China. These foreign visitors brought ideas and texts that sparked the interest of Chinese Muslims and non-Muslim savants alike, and, in turn, became objects of scrutiny in local schools that were established to develop methods to study such texts.

Hu Dengzhou 胡登洲 (1522–1597), a Chinese-Muslim literatus from the north-western province of Shaanxi founded such a school in his hometown with the objective of training disciples to read Arabic and Persian texts. Hu’s disciples and their disciples expanded Hu’s project and opened local schools in the Shandong, Jiangnan and even Yunnan regions. They taught the foundations of Arabic and Persian grammar and a selection of texts on Islamic theology, Islamic jurisprudence, logic, and rhetoric.⁴ An integral part of this scholarship was the diligent search for Arabic and Persian texts in private libraries or in the possession of foreign visitors. These texts were then copied by hand and analyzed for their grammar and contents. The textual and linguistic emphases of the pedagogy in these schools drew a significant distinction between them and earlier forms of Islamic education in China.

The texts taught in these schools included a considerable number of works on Islamic theology (kalām), law (fiqh), and mysticism (‘irfān). These works comprised lengthy and subtle discussions on the foundations of the Islamic faith in terms of the belief in God and the Islamic creed, as well as guidance to gnostic paths. Students in these schools studied these theological texts in their original Arabic and Persian languages, and employed various methods of marginalia, interlinear annotations, and other para-textual devices to expound the meanings of the texts as well as understand their grammatical substructures.⁵

In the 1640s several members of this Chinese-Islamic network, mainly in the culturally prosperous Jiangnan region, hoped to expand the scholarship beyond the walls of their local schools by publishing Chinese translations of Arabic and Persian texts and original Chinese works on Islam. The transition to writing in Chinese entailed a process of deliberation and experimentation on the ways by which the subtle insights that Chinese-Muslim scholars gained from reading texts in their original languages could be translated into Chinese. During this process, the traditional culture around the reading and copying of the Arabo-Persian manuscript was subsumed under the local Chinese environment of woodblock print. Manipulations of fonts, marginalia and para-textual spaces in printed books attempted to compensate for the rich use of marginalia and interlinear annotations in traditional manuscripts.

Moreover, the alteration of language entailed dilemmas and challenges inherent to textual translation, namely, how to articulate the vocabulary of the original texts in Chinese. The authors borrowed and adapted terms and phrases from the long established Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist canons. They were also influenced to some degree by works in Chinese that the Jesuits and other European missionaries compiled during that period.⁶ Among the terms that Chinese Islamic works employed, to name a few, are jing 經 (“[authoritative] scripture”) as a designation for Islamic religious texts and in particular the Qurʾan; tian 天 (“Heaven”) that took the meaning of divinity; zaohua 造化 (“making and transforming”) for the Islamic theory of creation; and shengren 聖人 (“sage”), to designate the Islamic prophets. Transliterations of Arabic and Persian terms were used for a series of untranslatable terms, such as yi-ma-na 以媽納 (from īmān, “faith in Allah”), ni-ye-te 你葉忒 (from niyyat, “intention [in performance of Islamic ritual]”), and du-a 覩阿 (from duʿāʾ, “invocation of God”).

The process of negotiating meanings and terms was not only a linguistic exercise, but it also mirrored more than anything an attempt to naturalize Chinese-Islamic scholarship and self-fashion it as a legitimate Chinese school of thought. Seeking legitimacy, Chinese-Islamic authors aligned their scholarship with the discourse of the imperially-endorsed Cheng-Zhu school of Confucianism by highlighting their adherence to Confucian ethics. To show that, they appropriated a series of Confucian concepts, such as zhong 忠 (“loyalty”) and xiao 孝 (“filial piety”) and included them in their descriptions of Islamic ethics.

At the same time, Buddhist and Daoist terminologies provided a well-established lexicon of Chinese terms that could be easily adapted and manipulated to meet Islamic definitions and theories. Chinese-Islamic authors appropriated such terms and infused them with new meanings and etymologies. The terms qingzhen 清真 (“pure and true,”) and qingjing 清淨 (“pure and clean”), for example, were re-introduced with the meaning of “Islamic,” giving away their Buddhist origins in favor of an associative connection with the Islamic description of Allah as pure and true and the Islamic emphasis on bodily purity.⁷ Accordingly, the Islamic worship hall, the masjid, became known in Chinese as qingzhen si 清真寺; the term guixin 歸信 (“to submit to and have faith in”) took the meaning of “adhering to the Islamic faith”; zhaijie 齋戒 (“purifying abstinence”)—a term that is widely used in Bud- dhist and Daoist texts was adapted to have the meaning of “fasting for Ramaḍān”; and the Buddhist sansheng 三乘 (“The Three Vehicles,”) was appropriated to refer to the tripartition of the Ṣūfī program: Sharī‘a (“established law”), Ṭarīqa (“school”) and Ḥaqīqa (“truth”).

The growing visibility of European missionaries in the Jiangnan region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not go unnoticed by Chinese- Islamic scholars living and writing in the very same region. Chinese-Islamic scholars read the missionaries’ publications, and compared and contrasted the missionaries’ theologies with their own Islamic teachings.⁸ The Russian Archimandrite and sinologist Pyotr Ivanovich Kafarov (known as Palladius) (1817–1878), who studied the Chinese-Islamic literature in the mid-nineteenth century, even suggests that the arrival of the Jesuits’ and their Chinese publications were strong incentives for Chinese-Muslim authors to begin to publish their works in Chinese.⁹ In contrast to the visible contribution of the Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist discourses to the development of the discourse on Islam in Chinese, the effects of the Jesuits and their works is still unclear and requires further study.

3 The Socio-Ethical xin 信

The aspiration of Chinese-Islamic authors to widen the readership of their works through translation into Chinese was, in many ways, preconditioned on a demonstration of their adherence to the contemporary Confucian orthodoxy. To that end, they took great pains to demonstrate that Confucian ethical precepts are in fact organic components of Islam. They did so by dedicating lengthy discussions to the Confucian set of ethical values in their works, and by demonstrating, using borrowed Confucian terminology, that these shared ethical precepts were effectively realized in the history and contemporary practice of Islam in China.

One of these precepts is xin (translated in this context as “loyalty” or “faithfulness”). Chinese-Islamic authors used the term and its derivatives such as zhongxin 忠信 (literally, “loyalty and faithfulness”) or xinxin 信心 (literally, “faithful mind”) to echo a Confucian socio-ethical value. These terms were used in relation to adherence to an institution of authority, in particular loyalty to the emperor or the ruling dynasty, or within the context of interpersonal relations, loyalty to one’s family or fellow men.

Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 (fl. mid-seventeenth century), one of the precursors of Chinese-Islamic literature, for example, mentioned xin in several of his discussions on the proper practice of Islam. Although xin appears in Wang’s discussions not as a central theme, not even as one of the listed social and personal merits, yet its importance within the context of interpersonal propriety is accentuated. Wang’s 1642 work, titled Zhengjiao zhenquan 正教真詮 (Real Commentary on the True Teaching) describes the importance of xin as an integral part of one’s ethical disposition without which “the way of heaven and the way of man would not be complete.” Xin is listed alongside other socio-ethical values such as piety (xiao 孝), propriety (li 禮) and righteousness (yi 義) that stand at the core of Confucian ethics. Wang writes,

In all these matters—filial piety and respecting elders, loyalty, and faithfulness (xin), propriety and righteousness, modesty and shame—if there is any lack and deficiency, then the way of heaven and the way of man will not be complete. We cannot call this listening to the mandate.¹⁰

凡孝弟忠信，禮義廉恥之間，但有虧損，即于天人之道不全，即不得謂之聽命.¹¹

Faithfulness, according to Wang’s theory, arises together with other socio- ethical values from the Innate Wisdom (benzhi 本智)—the faculty to which Wang ascribes an individual’s ability to “distinguish right from wrong, discern true from false, know oneself and recognize the Lord,”¹² somewhat similar to what we would call a moral compass. The realization of faithfulness is therefore conditioned on what Wang calls the clarity of the innate wisdom. He explains this relationship in his catechism Xizhen zhengda 希真正答 (True Answers to the Very Real, pub. 1658), where he writes,

If the Innate Wisdom is not clear, Humanity and Righteousness will not be thorough, Propriety will not be suitable, and Faithfulness [xin 信] will not be complete.

若本智不明，仁義不徹，禮不中節，信必不全.¹³

Faithfulness thus constitutes a manifestation of one’s Innate Wisdom, or moral compass. Not displaying faithfulness indicates a deficiency in the senses of Propriety, Humanity and Righteousness as well. Therefore, Wang warns against befriending unfaithful (wuxin 無信, literally, “without faithfulness”) people, as they will let a person down in a time of need. He writes,

You should not go near someone who has no faithfulness, for he will abandon you on a dangerous ground at the most important time.¹⁴

無信者不可近，彼當緊要之時，即棄人于險地.¹⁵

The appropriation of the Confucian ethical notion of xin into Wang Daiyu’s view of Islam is captured in a preface written by Ding Yan 丁彥, one of the editors of Wang Daiyu’s printed works. Ding quotes Wang’s statement that Islam greatly venerates the Way of Heaven and advocates for the values of Loyalty, Faithfulness, Piety and Friendliness in an utmost similar manner to Confucianism.¹⁶

The dogmatic ode “Panegyric to the Sages” (Shengzan 聖讚) by the Chinese- Muslim scholar Ma Zhu 馬注 (1640–1711) in his Compass to Islam (Qingzhen zhinan 清真指南, pub. 1683) resonates the same notion that places adherence to loyalty and faithfulness at the fore of Islam’s socio-ethical precepts, suggesting the widespread endorsement of that ethical value into the local version of Islamic ethics.¹⁷ Moreover, a biography of Ma Zhu, assumably written by one of his disciples, and which was appended to a printed version of his Compass to Islam, further illustrates the centrality of xin as a socio-ethical precept in the teaching of Ma. The biography includes the following statement

Hearing the Teacher’s teaching, but not obeying the Lord or respecting the Sages amount to deserting the Teacher; hearing the Teacher’s teaching, but showing disloyalty to the ruler or piety to the parents amounts to deserting the Teacher; hearing the Teacher’s teaching, but not revering educators or exercising faithfulness towards friends amount to deserting the Teacher; hearing the Teacher’s teaching, but not loving one’s parents or showing compassion towards the people amounts to deserting the Teacher. The Teacher possessed the minds of Sincerity, Obedience, Loyalty, Filial Piety, Reverence, Faithfulness, Compassion and Love. He lived in solitude, not rendering service to his family or the state apparatuses, and that is the reason why God showed his kindness towards him.

聞先生之教而不順於主、遵於聖者，皆棄於先生者也；聞先生之教而不忠於君、孝於親者，皆棄於先生者也；聞先生之教而不敬於師、信於友者，皆棄於先生者也；聞先生之教而不愛於親、慈於眾者，皆棄於先生者也. 先生具誠、順、忠、孝、敬、信、慈、愛之心， 而居龍潜豹隐之會, 不為家國用，此主所以厚先生也.¹⁸

Liu Zhi 劉智 (1660–1730), a prolific Chinese Muslim scholar, provided a more nuanced explanation on the relevance of the Confucian concept of xin to the practice of Islam. Liu, who published a series of works on Islamic theology, praxis and history as well as translations of Arabic and Persian works during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, took painstaking efforts to reconcile theoretical differences and demonstrate the compatibility between the Islamic and Confucian ethical and cosmological frameworks. He published in 1710 a work explaining the meanings of the five pillars of Islam under the title “Explaining the Five Meritorious Actions” (Wugong shiyi 五功釋義). In that work, Liu Zhi elaborates on the relationship between the five foremost fundamental religious duties in Islam (which he calls “The Five Meritorious Actions,” Wugong 五功)—namely, testimony to faith in Allah (CH: nian 念, AR: shahāda), five daily prayers (CH: li 禮, AR: ṣalā), fasting during the month of Ramaḍān (CH: zhai 齋, AR: siyām), giving alms (CH: ke 課, Ar: zakā), carrying out pilgrimage (CH: chao 朝, AR: ḥajj)—and the foundation of Confucian ethics. He explains that Human Nature (xing 性) is comprised of five virtues: ren 仁 (“benevolence”), yi 義 (“righteousness”), li 禮 (“propriety”), zhi 智 (“wisdom”) and xin 信 (“faithfulness”). These five virtues, as well as the five virtues of the faculties of Heart-Mind (xin 心) and the Intellect (zhi 智), are realized only when balanced. The role of the Islamic Five Meritorious Actions is “to amend any inclination and restore the balance.”¹⁹ Elsewhere in that work, Liu places xin within a larger framework of fivefold natural correspondences, employing the Confucian cosmological framework that orders and links natural phenomena into a series of five phases. In describing the corresponding relations of the Islamic duty of pilgrimage, Liu suggests that pilgrimage belongs to the category of human nature (xing 性) and corresponds to xin among the five virtues of human nature.²⁰

Liu Zhi not only incorporated the concept of xin into his general description of Islamic ethics, but he also used the concept in his rendering of Islamic history, to show that this ethical value had long been an integral part of Islam. In his Chinese translation of a Persian biography of Prophet Muhammad,²¹ Liu employed the compounds xinxin 信心 (“faithful mind”)²² and zhongxin 忠信 (“loyalty and faithfulness”) in describing high-moral standing. An example of such usage appears in a passage reporting the death of an early convert to Islam. Liu Zhi translated there a quote attributed to the prophet Muhammad with a clear allusion to a famous Confucius’ maxim and includes the compound xinxin 信心 to highlight the high moral standing of the convert. Liu’s translation reads: “The prophet lamented: ‘When a person is faithful, he can hear the Dao in the morning, and die by night’” (聖人嘆曰: 若人信心，朝聞道， 夕死可矣).²³ By embedding the Confucian ethical value of xin in his narration of Islamic history, Liu Zhi naturalized the concept of xin in his overall rendering of Chinese Islam.

The use of xin as an organic Islamic ethical concept displays the commitment of Chinese-Islamic authors to localize their discourse and their anxiety to demonstrate its compatibility with the orthodox ethical program of Confucianism. The term xin provided them with a prism through which they could reinforce a Confucian image of Islamic praxis.

4 The Theological xin 信

If the use of xin described above arose from a commitment to couch Islam in the orthodox Confucian ethical discourse, a second usage of the term displays the painstaking process to bring across an intrinsic pillar of a monotheistic religion, very much foreign to the Chinese cultural landscape. The movement to translate Islamic scholarship into Chinese entailed long and complex negotiations of meanings and finding ways to articulate long- established concepts and theories in Chinese. How to bring across the meaning of faith in the monotheistic God, taking account of the rich Islamic discourse that had grown around it, was among the most perplexing and intricate challenges that authors expounding Islam in Chinese had to overcome.

Xin constituted one node in a semantic web of Chinese terms that Chinese Islamic scholars used to define and expound the Arabic term īmān, faith in Allah as it is realized in the practice of Islam. Other nodes on that web include jiao 教 (“teachings”) or zhengjiao 正教 (“correct teaching”), renzhu 認主 (“acknowledgement in the Lord”), guizhen 歸真 (“returning to the truth”), li 禮 (“ritual”), dao 道 (“the Way”), and jingshi 敬事 (“reverence and worship”). Some authors even coined a transliterated form of the Arabic yi-ma-na 以瑪納 (other spellings appear as well). This web of terms, so it seems, allowed the authors to adopt a rather atomistic view of the concept of faith, and bring across its meaning by translating its specific manifestations. Xin and its derivatives appear as popular nodes on that web, and they seem to be commonly used by authors as a simplified way to translate īmān.

A late seventeenth-century Chinese translation of a Persian theological treatise provides a good example for the appropriation of xin to denote the concept of īmān. The Persian text, Najm al-Dīn Rāzī’s (d. 1256 AD), Mirṣād al-ʿibād was an early attempt to systematize mystical Islam in writing, and became a popular read even outside the Kubrawī order that its author belonged to.²⁴ Wu Zunqi 伍遵契 (1598–1698) completed his translation of the work in 1678, and gave it the Chinese title Guizhen yaodao yiyi 歸真要道譯義 (Translating the Meaning of the Essential Way to Return to the Truth).²⁵ Wu discusses the concept of yi-ma-na in the Editorial Notes (fanli 凡例) section of the work. He articulates the Arabic concept using the Chinese compound guixin 歸信 (literally, “to submit to²⁶ and have trust in”). It reads, “yi-ma-na denotes the mindset [literally, ‘the heart’s light’] of submitting to and having trust in the true God” (以媽納乃歸信真主之心光).²⁷ Similarly, Wu defines the term mu’min, an Arabic participle from the same grammatical root as īman that denotes a holder of the Islamic faith. Wu transliterates the Arabic term as mo-min 摩敏 and explains its meaning using the term guixin. He writes: “Mu’min is a person who submits and has faith [in God]” (摩敏乃歸信主之人).²⁸

In another work, titled Xizhen mengyin 修真蒙引, co-authored by Wu Zunqi and Zhou Shiqi 周士騏, the authors provide a list the six mental states, or “attestations” (zhengyan 徵驗) as they call them, that constitute preconditions for yi-ma-na. The first two of these attestations include derivatives of the term xin, namely guixin and chengxin 誠信 (“sincere faith”). They write:

There are six attestations for yi-ma-na: The first is submission and faith in the unseen. That is, God has no form nor sight or sound, but the unceasing creation of the myriad things on Heaven and Earth relies in its entirety on the one God. The second is sincere faith in the Later World’s judgement. For a person who dwells in this world, when there is morning, there must be night; and when there is sleep, there must be awakening. Therefore, if there is This World, there must be a Later World. Whoever does good, will rejoice; and whoever does evil will be punished. This is a definite principle. Hence, God sent all the prophets to inform people in readiness of the reward and punishment in the Later World and correct their ways. The third is fear of God’s punishment. The fourth is hope for God’s mercy. With fear, one can correct his wrongdoings, and with hope, one voluntarily seeks good and corrects his wrongdoing, and īmān lies within seeking good. Hence it is said īmān lies between hope [for mercy] and fear [of punishment]. The fifth is obedience. That is, carrying out immediately all of God’s commands. The sixth is an observance of prohibitions. That is, not to disobey any of God’s prohibitions. That is the crux of obedience and cannot be unobserved.

以馬納的徵驗有六: 一曰未見歸信，意謂真主無似像，勿見聞，但看天地萬物造化無窮，俱憑止一真主；二曰誠信後世斷法，人生在世，有晝定有夜，有夢必有覺，有今世定有後世，善則慶，惡必懲，此一定之理，是以真主欽差一切聖人，將後世之賞罰預先曉諭使人便於趨避；三曰懼怕主罪；四曰指望主慈，懼怕則能改過，指望自欲趨善改過，趨善則以媽納在其中矣，故曰以媽納在指望與懼怕之中，五曰領命，凡主命令即遵行，六曰奉禁，凡主禁止不違犯，此係順逆關頭不可不慎.²⁹

Xin is described is a state of mind with varying levels of intensity. In their work, Wu and Zhou use the term chengxin and chengxin xin 誠信心 (“the state of mind of a sincere faith”) to describe a mental stage in a practitioner’s attainment of imān. They write: “At a first stage, one has [to attain] sincere faith at heart. [Having attained] sincere faith, one’s tongue will praise [God]” (始有心間誠信心，誠信則舌上誦念).³⁰ Chengxin, as this usage suggests, is a high-intensity state of xin.

In addition to its rendering of the concept of īmān, the term xin was used to translate other states of mind that display close attachment or adherence. In his translation of Mirṣād al-ʿibād, Wu Zunqi uses the term xinxin 信心 (“faithful mind”) to translate the Arabo-Persian term ʿ⁠⁠aqīdah (“the Islamic creed” or “Islamic correct belief”). Devotion to a creed or dogma might seem to be of lesser intensity than faith in God, however, by using the term xin, the Chinese translator equated the two. In a description of the twenty attributes that a disciple (murīd in the Persian original and menren 門人 in the Chinese translation) is required to keep in the company of his master to acquire his master’s wisdom, the original Persian text reads as follows:

The fourth is correct belief [ʿ⁠⁠aqīda]. The morīd must hold the belief of the People of the Sunna and Community, avoiding all innovation and adhering to the school of one of the Imams of former generations. He should be untainted by anthropomorphism, abstractionism, Shi’ism, and Mu’tazilism, but also free of fanaticism, not regarding as unbelievers any group that prays toward the qebla, nor considering it permissible to utter curses.³¹

Wu’s Chinese translation uses the terms xinxin and chengxin to render the same passage:

The fourth is faithful mind [xinxin]. One must possess a sincere faith [chengxin] in the community of tradition, avoid heresies, and be untainted by the illicit [teachings of] te-shi-bi-he [<tashbīh, “anthropomorphism”], te-er-tui-le [<ta‘ṭīl, “abstractionism”], la-fe-zu [<rafż, “rejection,” refers here to “Shiism”], mu-er-ti-ze-le [<mu‘tazila], cannot speak of any person who [prays] towards [the ka‘ba] as subversive, and cannot create cliques or divide into [exclusive] schools.

第四件是信心, 須要在聖行會同之人的誠信上, 遠避異端，從特十必核特而推勒拉非足，木而踢雜勒, 邪類上無干，不可把但凡朝向之人，往背逆上論，不可結黨分門戶.³²

As states of mind, guixin and xinxin are used without a specified object. Chengxin, however, in the above passage is used with a specified object— sincere belief in the Islamic community. Similar usages of the term xin and its derivatives with designated objects are found in Chinese Islamic texts, where the authors wish to describe a person’s devotion to or faith in the Islamic prophets and in particular in Prophet Muhammad. Ma Zhu’s discussion of the nature of prophethood in his Qingzhen zhinan provides an example of such usage. Ma writes: “Since people have called them sages from antiquity to the present-day, the whole world believes (xin) that they are sages” (所以古今稱之為聖，天下信之為聖).³³ Another example appears in the translation of a quote of Prophet Muhammad reminiscing his early follower, Abū Bakr’s devotion to him. The quote is translated in Liu Zhi’s Biography of the Prophet Muhammad, where he employs the term guixin to describe Abū Bakr’s devotion to the Prophet. Liu translated the quote as follows: “The first who had faith (guixin) in me was Abū Bakr” (首先歸信我者，額補白克爾也).³⁴

In his work on Islamic practice and ritual titled Islamic practice and rites, titled Tianfang dianli zeyao jie 天方典禮擇要解 (Selected Commentaries on “Islamic Rituals and Rites,” published in 1710, see below), Liu introduced two categories of xin: zongxin 總信 (“collective faith”) and fenxin 分信 (“specific faith”). These two categories are in fact a translation of the two theological concepts, known in Arabic as īmān mujmal and īmān mufaṣṣal, respectively. Liu provides the following general declaration of faith as a definition of the former: “I have faith in the Lord as He is; In his subtle attributions and respectful names. I accept all of the Lord’s laws” (我信主本然，以其妙用尊命，我承主一切法則).³⁵ The term xin appears at the beginning of declaration and stands in parallel to the verb cheng 承 (“to accept” or “to undertake”). The latter category, as its name suggests, provides a more detailed list of the objects of faith. Liu renders it as follows: “I have faith in the True Lord, faith in all the angels, faith in all the scriptures, faith in all the sages, faith in the Latter World, faith in divine retribution and reward, and faith in resurrection after death” (我信真主，信一切天神，信一切經書，信一切聖人，信後世，信善惡有定自主，信死後復生).³⁶ The term xin appears repeatedly in front of the objects for belief for emphasis as it is not so in the Arabic original version of that declaration.

This second meaning of xin provided Chinese Islamic authors with a way to convey the meaning of faith in the monotheistic God to the unfamiliar Chinese readers, as well as to describe the state of mind that is akin to a sincere faith in Allah, his prophets, or the Islamic creed. Whereas the socio-ethical usage of xin drew its meaning from the Confucian discourse, this second usage of the term adapted its connotations to the interpretation of Islamic theology. A third usage that pertains to the nature of the textual scholarship that Chinese scholars of Islam pursued is described below.

5 The Textual xin 信

Chinese Islamic scholarship from its onset in the sixteenth century and throughout the process of translating its texts into Chinese was, to a large degree, textually bound. The searches for forgotten Arabic and Persian texts in Chinese libraries or newly arrived with visiting foreigners, as well as the activities of copying, collating, and annotating these texts stood at the core of this scholarship. The expansion of the Islamic archive and the increase in the number of available texts brought to light the diversity of interpretations of the Islamic dogma and practice. This, in turn, produced disputes among Chinese Islamic scholars and communities of practitioners on the accuracy of theological theories and proper practice. It also generated anxiety among scholars to distinguish authoritative and legitimate texts from fraudulent or subversive ones. An additional meaning of the term xin, as found in the compound kexin 可信 (literally, “trust-worthy”), provided Chinese Islamic scholars with a way to mark certain texts as reliable, authentic, and trustful.

The issue of textual authority and the authenticity of certain written records had for Chinese Muslim scholars deep theological meanings, as it involved the discussion on the status of the Qurʾan as a divine record of the revelation. Attempting to define that status, Ma Zhu includes in his Qingzhen zhinan the following rhetorical question, using the term xin to assert the authenticity of the Qurʾan: “The Qurʾan is the book of the Lord of all things. It is the discussion of [the nature] of things by the Lord of all things. Just like when a scholar talks about his literature or a farmer discusses his produce, how could it be untrustworthy (bu kexin)?” (天經，物主之書也。以物主而言物，若士之論文， 農之論稼，烏有不可信乎?).³⁷ As a written tradition originating in the divine revelation, the Qurʾan’s authority, according to Ma, cannot be questioned. Elsewhere in that work, Ma compares the authority of the Qurʾan as a revelation to that of the Confucian tradition. The transmission of the Confucian tradition, according to Ma, just like the Qurʾan, relied on writing and hence it maintained its authority. Ma writes: “It is said that he [Confucius] transmitted authentic [knowledge] and not dubious [knowledge], that is to say, that he relied on scriptures and not on [oral] transmission” (盖謂傳信不傳疑，據經不據傳).³⁸

This notion of authority that emerges from a reliable transmission is expressed as well in Liu Zhi’s discussion of the Islamic Tradition, the Sunna, where he quotes the statement: “[The Islamic Tradition] has been unceasingly transmitted, and its truly unchanging grandeur has been firm and magnificent for myriad generations” (亹亹相傳，洵不易之宏規，垂萬世而貞盛也).³⁹ Liu goes on and expounds the meaning of this statement. He uses the term xin to explain the quality of tradition expressed by the attribute xun 洵 (“truly”):

“Unceasingly” means constant and without stop; “truly” means reliable. Our teachings have been passed down from A-dan (<Ādam, Adam) through Shi-shi (<Shīth, Seth), Nu-hai (<Nūḥ, Noah) and Yi-bu-la-xin (<Ibrāhīm, Abraham) and down to some hundred generations of prophets, until it reached Mu-han-mu-de (<Muḥammad), who gathered the great accomplishments. Later wise men and disciples have expounded [the tradition’s] main ideas and continued to transmit them for seven thousand years until this day. Its system is as grandeur today as it was in the past, and even more extensive, prosperous, widespread, and far-reaching. Its magnificence is sufficient to continue for myriad generations. Today as it was in the past. No doubts about it.

亹亹不倦不絕之意，洵，信也。吾教自阿丹，歷施師，努海， 易卜刺欣而下數百代聖人，接踵相繼，迄穆罕默德為集大成。後賢後學，闡其要旨，傳者不倦，受者不絕，至今閱七千餘年， 制度規模，視今猶古愈延愈盛愈播愈遠，其足以垂萬世而隆，今古也， 復奚疑哉.⁴⁰

Liu Zhi, whose studies focused on meticulous readings of Arabic and Persian commentaries on the Qurʾan, Ḥadīth collections, biographies of Prophet Muḥammad (sīra, plural siyar), theological works and other texts, was very sensitive to the textual authenticity of his sources. The meticulous nature of his work and his attentiveness to the quality of his source is displayed in detailed bibliographies of his Arabic and Persian sources appended to two of his magna opera—his work on natural philosophy titled Tianfang xingli 天方性理 (Nature and Principles in Islam, pub. 1704) and the one on Islamic practice and rites, titled Tianfang dianli zeyao jie 天方典禮擇要解 (Selected Commentaries on “Islamic Rituals and Rites,” pub. 1710). In his various works, he included editorial prefaces in which he discussed the methodologies he employed in interpreting and translating his sources. In a few cases, Liu used the term xin to refer to his assessment of his sources.

In 1724, Liu completed a translation of a Persian biography of the Prophet Muhammad. The original text was written by Saʿīd al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Masʿūd Kāzarūnī (d. 1357) in Arabic and translated into Persian during the author’s life.⁴¹ The title that Liu gave to his translation was Tianfang zhi sheng shilu nianpu 天方至聖實錄年譜 (literally, “Veritable Records and Chronological Tables on the Life of Islam’s Most Revered”). The compound shilu 實錄 (“veritable records”) is borrowed from the official chronicles of China’s imperial court and reveals Liu’s view of his source. In his introduction to the work, Liu discusses his methodology and objectives in writing history, defining history as reliable accounts of the past. To express the notion of reliability of historical records, he employs the term xin. Liu writes:

These Veritable Records are [a work of] history. [Works of] history serve to illuminate and be reliable [xin]. I have meticulously surveyed [the literature], and omitted any zazhuan (literally, “miscellaneous biographies,” texts with questioned historiographical reliability), xiaoshuo (literally, “minor discourses,” often refers to literary novels) or extraordinary and abnormal discourses. I omitted accounts of the sages’ miraculous acts that do not have didactic value. In addition, I omitted from this work the sayings, laws, and rites of the Prophet [Muhammad] that I mentioned in other works.

是錄即史也，史以昭信，徵往察來，其有雜傳小說，希異不經之談，悉置弗錄，其有聖人感應神奇，非可為教戒者亦弗錄，至聖人所說經律教典，另有分著，不載錄中.⁴²

An interesting appendix to the work is titled “Methodology of Reading the Biography of the Prophet” (Du Zhisheng lu fa 讀至聖錄法). In that short essay, Liu describes four reading skills that are required for reading historical records such as the biography of Prophet Muhammad. Among these skills, Liu includes xinxin 信心 (“faithful mind”). Liu’s usage of xinxin as the following passage shows differs from those described above, and seems to refer to an epistemic state of mind in which one trusts the source he reads: “The early Wiseman ‘Imād said: ‘Readings the [historical] records of the Prophets require the possession of four types of capabilities: the first is the faithful mind [xinxin 信心], the second is the ability to discern, the third is enlightened intellect, and the fourth is high wisdom’” (先賢爾馬篤曰，讀聖人錄須具四種力，一曰信心，二曰辨才，三日明智，四曰高識).⁴³ Liu goes on to define what he means by xinxin:

Trustful mind means to wholeheartedly and sincerely believe [shixin chengxin 實心誠信] without any doubts the accounts on deeds and sayings of the sages that go beyond the normal. Those who cast doubt are not the prophets’ followers.

信心者，凡間見聖人所事所言出乎尋常見聞之外者, 實心誠信, 不可疑議, 少有疑議即非聖人之徒也.⁴⁴

This third usage of xin, as shown in the passages quoted above from Ma Zhu and Liu Zhi, represents an anxiety about heterodoxy and heteropraxy and a resulting sensitivity to the authenticity of texts and validity of knowledge that prevailed among Chinese Muslim scholars during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The term xin and its derivatives mirror new critical approaches to textuality and knowledge and honest attempts to devise and systematize ways to assess textual authenticity, religious authority, and the validity of transmitted knowledge.

6 Conclusion

Three usages of the term xin appear in Chinese Islamic literature, mirroring tendencies, anxieties and programs that characterized the development of Chinese literature on Islam. The socio-ethical meaning of xin brings to light the aspiration of Chinese Islamic authors to portray Islam as fully compatible with Confucian ethics; second, the theological meaning of xin allowed authors to bring across the perplexing notion of the belief in the monotheistic God; finally, the textual meaning of xin was part of a framework that sought to assess the credibility, authenticity, and authority of written sources of knowledge.

The investigation of the different usages of the term xin provides a lens into the intellectual and socio-political development of literature on Islam in China, and in turn, into the history of local scholarship in early modern China. It introduces some of the processes by which foreign knowledge was introduced to a Chinese audience, the intricate negotiations of meanings and methods of expression that were integral parts of these processes. This investigation aims to supplement the available research on early modern China’s polyglot and multicultural landscape and further shed light on the intellectual engagements between China and the Islamicate world.