• 1 The author would like to thank Vincent Goossaert, Marie-Paule Hille, Agnès Rousseau, Adam Chau, Gu (...)
• 2 I introduced elements of this framework in Brown, 2019.

1This article seeks to develop a framework for thinking about the ways Islam was practiced and understood along a social and religious landscape in late imperial China that was defined by the coexistence of many different cults, rituals, and cultural pressures1. It seeks to examine Islam as a factor in local life within the lands “All-Under-Heaven” (tianxia 天下) (Wang, 2017) by applying methods from the study of local history and historical anthropology (Watson, 1982; Szonyi, 2002). Though some points below are best understood as hypotheses or questions to be built upon through further investigation, this approach can offer scholars of both Chinese and Islamic history new avenues for future research.2

• 3 The title “Han Kitab” only dates from the nineteenth century (Petersen, 2017: 6).
• 4 The collection of works that now constitutes the Han Kitab is hardly monolithic, and some texts, s (...)

4The second theme has focused on the lives and works of Muslim scholars, with important contributions made by Sachiko Murata (2000), Zvi Ben Dor-Benite (2005), Tatsuya Nakanishi (2007), James Frankel (2011), Kristian Petersen (2017), Roberta Tontini (2016), and Dror Weil (2016). Central to this body of work is the analysis of a corpus of texts, produced and published by Muslim literati in eastern China and the southwest, now commonly collectively termed the “Han Kitab.”3 These Chinese-language texts shared an aim of defending and explaining Islam by putting the tenets of the tradition into conversation with Neo-Confucianism, which shaped ritual norms, statecraft, and civil examination content in the centuries following the Song Dynasty (960-1279), as well as certain aspects of Buddhism and Daoism. While valuable for intellectual history, many texts that came to be associated with the Han Kitab were more prescriptive than descriptive, which makes deriving conclusions about the historical practice of Islam from them a challenging task.4

• 5 For a discussion of “lived religion,” see McGuire, 2008.

6But how exactly can the category of popular religion be applied to Islam in imperial China? Anthropological literature on religiosity and “lived religion” is valuable for framing this question.5 Adam Chau has underlined the importance of examining how people “do” religion in China, where “non-confessional kinds of religiosity” proliferate for the majority of the population (Chau, 2019: 8). Because Muslims are often thought as belonging to confessional, congregational communities, situating the practice of Islam along the landscape of Chinese popular religion may seem surprising. However, imperial records reveal that Muslims were hardly isolated from the ritual, cosmological, economic, and political orders which shaped the society in which they lived. Though congregational worship was central to their religious lives, Muslims were also neighbors, merchants, doctors, butchers, soldiers, officials, and held a variety of other diverse and heterogeneous occupations and identities. Muslims sometimes conducted rituals that appealed to broad segments of Chinese society. As such, Eugenio Menegon’s approach to analyzing Christianity as a local religion in China provides a useful model for Islam, and indeed, scholars such as Jianxiong Ma, Oded Abt, and Jide Yao (Ma, Abt, and Yao, 2020; Abt, 2014) have already begun situating Islam’s practice during the late imperial period along the axes of genealogy and popular religion.

• 6 For more on Christianity in relation to Chinese Islam, see Aubin, 2016.

7In centering the localness of Islam with parallels to Chinese Christianity, we should be wary of two potential pitfalls.6 First, searching for a local Chinese Islam could, as Henrietta Harrison points out for the Christian case, lead to a preoccupation with trying to determine when Islam became a genuinely Chinese religion, or judging different strands of Islam by the standard of which is deemed most authentically “Chinese” (Harrison, 2013: 4-9). Practices of Islam in China and elsewhere were indubitably informed by both the necessity of local adaptation as well as by appeals to foreign sources of authority, such as Persian and Arabic texts or pilgrimage to Mecca (Petersen, 2017; Ben-Dor Benite, 2017).

• 7 For the reports referenced above, see National Palace Museum Palace Memorial and Grand Council Arc (...)
• 8 For a discussion of the legal implications of this classification, see Ma, 2008. For a description (...)
• 9 National Palace Museum Palace Memorial and Grand Council Archives: 031255.

8Second, Muslims occupied a different social and historical position from Christian missionaries and Chinese converts to Christianity, and thus it follows that the varieties of “local” Islam looked different from Christian movements. As Menegon observes, the Christians of Fujian lived on a societal fringe marked by periods of underground missionary activity to the extent that, in the 1780s, the governor allegedly claimed that “There really are no Catholics in Fujian!” (Menegon, 2009: 145). Such a statement could scarcely be made for Muslims, who lived in the country continuously for centuries and by the Qing inhabited most provinces. As an illustrative counterpoint to the Christian case, following a violent escalation in Gansu in 1781, provincial governors were asked to submit reports detailing the conditions of Muslim communities in their jurisdictions, specifying whether any local Islamic leaders held the title of “head religious specialist” (zong zhangjiao 總掌教), which state authorities initially associated with the unrest.7 While this drive for increased state oversight of Muslim communities arose from a fear that the “New Teaching” (xinjiao 新教), an umbrella term applied to variety of Sufi movements, had penetrated into the Muslim communities of the interior, the Qianlong Emperor (1735-1796) primarily assumed that Muslims were and should remain loyal subjects (“Muslim-commoners”; Huimin 回民) of the dynasty.8 During his review of a memorial from the governor of Jiangsu that year, the Qianlong Emperor responded: “The custom of the Jiang-Zhe area is so gentle and timid that even Muslims [there] have been gradually influenced for a long time! They should continue to follow the old customs [of Islam]” 江浙柔懦之風, 即回民亦漸染久矣! 循其舊俗可也.9

• 10 A qāḍi is the judge of a sharī‘a court. Zongbao Ma argues that the title of qāḍi existed in Ch (...)

9This article argues that Muslims engaged in rituals, discourses, and arrangements that allowed their communities to legibly and legally practice Islam during the Qing, when the comprehensiveness and penetration of imperial law limited the possibility for the comprehensive practice of sharī‘a (Islamic law). These popular practices complemented and were sometimes reflected in the philosophical and prescriptive ideals formulated by Muslim literati for envisioning a Chinese-language sharī‘a that could be practiced in the absence of Islamic courts and qāḍis, an imperially designated Shaykh al-Islam, or a ruling Muslim caliph.10 Strategic engagement with imperial institutions and popular practices did not lead to complete assimilation into Chinese society, but rather allowed Islam to survive for centuries in a social context marked by the absence of a Muslim sovereign and where the majority of the population was not Muslim.

• 11 For one example documenting the specific practices of the Jahriyya in northwest China, see Ha, 2014
• 12 For Yunnan’s changing demographics in the Qing, see Atwill, 2005: 27-29. For a discussion of the Qi (...)

11My approaching Islam through the lens of local religion should be considered with certain limitations. To convey the overall thrust of this framework, I have admittedly flattened the late imperial period as well as distinctions between the regions of China. There is no doubt that the conditions in which Islam was practiced in Yunnan were different from those in Beijing.11 Relatedly, the conquest of Xinjiang, changes in imperial law, and rapidly changing demographics, both on a provincial basis (most notably, Yunnan) and even on an empire-wide basis, all contributed to changes in the relationship between Muslims and the state.12 Furthermore, a historian’s selection of sources, as always, shapes the resultant narratives. It is undeniably true that the sources cited herein – mosque inscriptions, Muslim family genealogies, and state lawsuits – are by definition more likely to record engagement with state actors and institutions, and thus more research will be needed to give a fuller picture of instances when such engagement was consciously not pursued. As such, these sources cannot be uncritically taken as disinterested windows into what was happening on the ground. These documents, like a treatise of the Han Kitab, had strategic agendas and intended audiences.

• 13 This term was also used for the synagogue of Kaifeng, said to be constructed during the Song (960- (...)
• 14 For a discussion of these terms in the Islamic context, see Brown, 2014.

14A common term for mosques in imperial China was qingzhensi 清真寺.13 This term literally designated a “temple” of the Qingzhen (“pure and true”) teaching, which broadly denoted Islam in imperial times. The word si had referred to a type of government office during the Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) and was appropriated by monks as a term for monasteries after the arrival of Buddhism (Robson, 2010: 1, 384).14 The adoption of this longstanding term by Muslims to refer to their mosques is a small example of the ways in which the management of Islamic estates was modelled on Buddhist institutions (Brown, 2013). On further examination, we can see that Muslims, like Buddhists over the centuries, proclaimed the cosmological and religious significance of mosques and shrines to audiences beyond their immediate communities. This section will show that there is evidence that mosques also addressed community interests by selectively adopting descriptions of popular shrines and that Muslims sometimes engaged with non-Islamic shrines.

• 15 Trees and gardens exist around mosques in many parts of the Islamic world. Planting trees within m (...)

15The Jianchang Mosque supported at least one if not more ancient trees that could be seen rising above its walls. Such trees, which were commonly found in Buddhist and Daoist temples of the late imperial period, were often called “spirit trees” (shenshu 神樹) or “fengshui trees” (fengshuishu 風水樹) and visually demarcated temple spaces as sacred and auspicious places (Xu, 2008). Well-aware of their monetary value, magistrates extended special protections to temple trees to prevent illicit attempts to steal their timber (Huang, 1994: 153-154). Though Muslim communities did not necessarily adopt the same terms for these trees across the many regions in which they lived, similar groves often grew within the grounds of mosques and Islamic shrines in and beyond Sichuan.15 One example is found in the photograph below of a mosque in Shandong Province, taken by Claude L. Pickens in the early twentieth century.

• 16 For an overview of how these cosmological principles were invoked and applied in law, see Brown, 2 (...)

18Mosques, unlike most private gravesites, occupied prominent positions on a town’s landscape and hence had to address the sensibilities of the surrounding communities. Muslims sometimes stressed the auspicious qualities of these edifices in writing or mentioned that structures had been erected at auspicious times.16 The following record, composed in the early twentieth century in Hanshou County, Hunan Province, captures the architectural layout and environs of a mosque:

• 22 For more on the structure and design of Chinese mosques, see Steinhardt, 2015.

19The passage above presents Islam as the ancestral practice of the Huang lineage, with the mosque’s good fengshui invoked to highlight the sacredness of its precincts and also underscore the accumulated merit of the Huangs, who were able to finance such a large building venture.22 The point here is simply to emphasize not only that mosques incorporated prevailing architectural forms, but also that some Muslims sought to make their religious sites legible to wider communities through adopting geomantic terms which would have been also used to influence and describe the layout of entire towns, public temples, and popular shrines.

• 23 Bishop William White (1873-1960) noted that the synagogue in Kaifeng also displayed an imperial ta (...)
• 24 Academia Sinica Archives of the Grand Secretariat: 010438-001.

21Writing over a century ago, the missionary Marshall Broomhall observed that these tablets were commonplace in mosques and assumed that it was obligatory for Muslims to erect them (Broomhall, 1910: 228).23 The degree to which officials monitored them remains unclear, and oversight may have depended on region and political context. It is also possible that the erection of tablets was simply habituated into Islam on the ground by the late imperial period. In a memorial concerning the Yongzheng Emperor’s birthday in 1730, the governor of Sichuan, Hiyande (Ch. Xiande 憲德; d. 1740), conveyed the imperial blessings for longevity on behalf of the Muslims of the entire province following a public celebration involving the recitation of scriptures.24 Imperial tablets showcased mosques as places where offerings were made to the emperor and may have served to allay doubts about sectarianism or subversion in wider society. That is, like the select mobilization of fengshui, these tablets helped establish the legitimacy of a mosque as a legal and sacred house of worship within the broader religious landscape.

• 25 For a description of the term tianfang, see Tontini, 2016: 21-22.

22Muslims also occasionally patronized non-Islamic shrines. They may not necessarily have done so not as worshippers of the enshrined deities, but rather to establish themselves as upstanding members of a local community and elevate social status. The following episode, composed in an early twentieth century Muslim genealogy from Guizhou Province, captures one moment of inter-community engagement. The Wa lineage claimed their ancestors hailed from “Arabia” (Tianfang 天方; alternatively interpreted as denoting the Kaaba, Mecca, or in its broadest application, “Islamic lands” outside of China) and had settled in northwest China during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE).25 More probably, the Was had arrived during the Mongol Yuan (1271-1368 CE), but like many Muslims families, desired to identify the earliest feasible arrival date in the country.

• 26 The cross-community patronage of religious institutions has continued in some places (Caffrey, 201 (...)

25The construction of a City God Temple in this frontier region likely signified or retroactively symbolized the area’s administrative incorporation into the empire. Just as the Was claimed to have been dispatched to settle the area at the behest of the first Ming emperor, here at the end of the Ming they presided over the construction of a City God Temple in the region, thus highlighting their consistent support for the imperial project. It is possible that the Was helped build the temple during the late Ming to solidify elite status in the area. It is also possible that the story was embellished much later in reaction to the events and memory of the Panthay Rebellion (1856-1873), a prolonged conflict involving Muslim communities in the neighboring province of Yunnan. While we cannot know the exact details surrounding the temple’s creation, we can view the passage as one example of Muslim engagement with the broader religious landscape.26

• 27 Mosques that possess stele inscriptions tend to be prominent sites that attracted patronage. I wou (...)

26Another way in which mosques were legitimated as lawful places of worship was through inscribed records of support from members of the imperial bureaucracy. Monetary donations and literary gifts to mosques from officials were ubiquitous.27 This section will focus on the links between Muslim participation in the military and official support for Islamic institutions. The records herein suggest that Muslim military officers and officials were important interlocutors between Muslim communities and the imperial state. These officers not only provided financial support for mosques and Islamic education, but also lent their names, ranks, and titles to be recorded on steles for public display at mosques, thereby helping to secure their own reputations.

• 28 For more on the history of Xinjiang around the time this source was composed, see Schluessel, 2020 (...)

27A number of local records from the southwest identify close ties between Muslim communities and the military. A late Qing gazetteer from Sichuan describes the Muslim community of Langzhong in the following terms: “their ancestors were originally ‘Arabs’ of Huijiang (Xinjiang), and at the beginning of the dynasty they migrated to Sichuan and settled in Langzhong, where the great households grew and prospered, and many relied on military registration to make a living” 先本回疆阿刺[拉]伯人，國初轉徙入蜀，因家閬城，世族蕃滋，多逮軍籍為活 (Yao, Wang, 2009: 387).28 This gazetteer record, which was compiled by non-Muslims, appears to take the Qing territory of Xinjiang as a proxy for the “Islamic lands” west of China. While the entry should not be taken as an expression of historical fact, it captures a general perception in the area that Muslim families were tied to military service.

• 29 Muslim merchant networks were also extended financial ties between regions, particularly along the (...)

28This perception was likely fostered in part through the generous patronage bestowed to Islamic institutions by Muslim military officers. The previously mentioned Pavilion of Lingering Illumination, located in Langzhong, was constructed at the beginning of the dynasty with the support of a Muslim regional commander from Guyuan, Gansu Province, Ma Ziyun 馬子雲 (d.u) (Yu, Lei, 2001: 491-92). The deployment of Muslim military officers, coupled with the growth of Muslim merchant investment, coincided with the further construction of mosques and shrines across this area of Sichuan in the following decades.29 From the gazetteer cited above, one suspects that non-Muslim residents took note of these dynamics.

• 30 For more on these campaigns, see Herman, 1997: 47-74.
• 31 The original record reads, “many of the military officers were Muslim” (jiangbian duo xi Huijiaotu (...)

29Because military officers were deployed across the empire, channels of investment flowed with them. Ma Ziyun for instance also supported the construction and reconstruction of mosques in Hubei Province during his tenure there (Ma, Zhang, 2006: 167-69, 170-71). During the Yongzheng Emperor’s reign, a Muslim provincial commander from Zhili Province, Ha Yuansheng 哈元生 (1681-1738), was dispatched to Guizhou to pacify unrest resulting from campaigns associated with frontier consolidation (gaitu guiliu 改土歸流; “replacing native chieftains with state officials”).30 According to a gazetteer, the great number of Muslim soldiers serving under Ha required a larger mosque for prayer, galvanizing him to help organize a campaign to relocate and rebuild the mosque of Anshun Prefecture (Chen, 2004: 364-365).31 Ma and Ha are just two examples of Muslim military officials supporting mosque construction across several provinces. Further research may reveal how the empire-wide network of military garrisons and posts fostered financial support for mosques across the country.

• 32 For more on the life of Ma Liangzhu, see Dai, 2011: 157, 161.

30In other instances, Muslim communities erected inscriptions commemorating the military achievements of celebrated Muslim officers. Such was the case in 1762, when Chengdu’s Tuqiao Mosque erected a stone inscription in recognition of Gansu-native Ma Liangzhu’s 馬良柱 (d. 1762) support for the mosque as well as his meritorious military career, including his service in the Jinchuan War (Yu, Lei, 2001: 300-302).32 Such records shed light into the longstanding traditions of military service within elite Muslim families. Nearly forty years after Ma Liangzhu’s passing, his descendant, Ma Yu 馬瑜 (d. 1819), was officially recognized for his service during the White Lotus War (1796-1804) and awarded the title of “Great Warrior” (“Hero”; Ma. baturu; Ch. batulu 巴圖魯) (Dai, 2019: 436, 542).

• 33 For more on Tian Yongtong, see Yang, 2006: 32.

31While the links between the imperial armies and mosque construction or refurbishment are found, unsurprisingly, in frontier regions where many Muslims lived and where the army was often dispatched, they also existed in provinces to the east. Beijing’s Niujie Mosque was reconstructed in 1613 with the donations of over a dozen military officials and ranked elites (Yu, Lei, 2001: 3-5). In another instance, the Commander-in-Chief of Jiangnan, Tian Yongtong 田永桐 (d. 1813) oversaw the 1812 restoration of Songjiang Prefecture’s central mosque alongside the aforementioned Muslim officer Ma Yu (Yu, Lei, 2001: 45-46).33 Since officials often donated funds or presided over ceremonies at Buddhist and Daoist religious sites where they were stationed, one could read these sources as simply extensions of that practice to mosques. However, as I have shown elsewhere, there are instances where official patronage for Islamic sites outpaced those for Buddhist and Daoist shrines located in the same county, which suggests that a number of factors – including frontier politics, a congregation’s ties to the imperial bureaucracy, general perceptions of efficacious religious sites, and Muslims’ desires to have their mosques adorned with the names of Qing officials – may have influenced these charitable trends (Brown, 2019).

• 34 Some non-Muslim officials contributed prefaces to Islamic literary works such as Liu Zhi’s Norms a (...)

32Private charity of Qing officials supported the creation and maintenance of some mosques across the empire. And yet, our ability to document this charity through inscriptions suggests that such patronage was hardly private. Through displaying records of donations from officials, Muslims legitimated their houses of worship along the landscape of Chinese religion. Patronage extended beyond mosque donations: some texts now classified under the term Han Kitab were produced and disseminated in part with the financial and networking support of Muslim military officials (Sa, 2019).34 Woodblocks for the printing of Chinese-Islamic texts were endowed to mosques, which made them important centers of not only religious worship, but also of knowledge dissemination. Further, some Muslim communities were closely associated in local records from Sichuan and Guizhou with military deployments and the imperial armies. The military was an institution through which Muslims could ascend the state hierarchy and achieve imperial rank. The civil examination route was also possible, but from both the surviving records from Muslim communities and local gazetteers, the military bureaucracy was particularly represented.

• 35 For another example, see Hille, 2008: 128-131.
• 36 For a full discussion of the original petition, see Ma, 2007: 45-57.
• 37 Legal cases over Islamic doctrine from the nineteenth century typically saw imperial officials rul (...)

33In addition to inscriptions and genealogies, lawsuits presented by or against Muslims in law courts provide insights into the local practice of Islam. Muslims presented lawsuits for many reasons, including to accuse other Muslims of practicing heterodox versions of Islam.35 In one well-known case from 1747, Ma Yinghuan 馬應煥 accused another Sufi leader, Ma Laichi 馬來遲 (c. 1681-1766), of practicing heterodoxy in regard to the order of prayer for the breaking of the Ramadan fast (Lipman, 1997: 68).36 The Muslim literatus Ma Zhu 馬注 (1640-1711) became involved in a case in Yunnan over what he perceived to be the heterodox practices of itinerant Qalandar Sufis from South Asia (Ma, 1988: 418-428; Lipman, 1997: 81). To be clear, the majority of officials were not equipped to explain Islamic doctrine, and labels of heterodoxy in these contexts derived primarily from discourses inherent to Qing politics concerning illicit cults.37

• 38 Ritual slaughter (dhabīḥa or zabiha) is an important concept in Islamic law that received much att (...)
• 39 Every year on festival days, the Great Shrine in Linxia oversees the ritual slaughter of thirty cat (...)

34Most lawsuits presented by Muslims to Qing authorities did not concern questions of doctrine or sectarian affiliation; lawsuits could be about any range of matters related to property, marriage, or taxation. A considerable number of cases involving Muslim communities touched on questions of beef, cattle slaughter, and ritual sacrifices.38 In imperial times, there was a ban on the slaughter of cattle for profit, since farm cattle were deemed essential for plowing and soil fertilization (Goossaert, 2005a). This ban posed an issue for Muslim communities, many of which depended on butchery for income, in addition to the fact that they were bound to perform the ritual slaughter of animals on, for example, Eid al-Adha (‘Īd al-aḍḥá).39 This section explores a legal realm where Islamic and imperial concepts diverged and documents the ways in which Muslims addressed those contradictions.

• 41 Some emperors were aware of the Islamic requirements for the slaughter of animals. Khubilai Khan f (...)
• 42 Beijing Number One Historical Archive: 05-13-001-000009-0005, 02-01-007-021739-0003, 02-01-007-031 (...)

37Records preserved in the palace archives suggest the ban on the slaughter of cattle was sometimes enforced.41 Muslims were punished for allegedly selling beef in Beijing in 1734, for a dispute over beef resulting in a violent brawl in Henan Province in 1773, and for a variety of other incidents involving beef through the nineteenth century.42 In the wake of flooding or drought, Muslims could be specifically targeted by officials, who would often issue bans on animal slaughter during such periods (Deng, 2020: 254). When Yizheng County in Jiangsu Province was afflicted by flooding in 1848, farmers had no means to feed their cattle and thus sold them cheaply to Muslim butchers, drawing the ire of the presiding magistrate (Zhao, 2019).

• 43 Translation and citation from Tontini, 2016: 145.

41Returning for a moment to the Yongzheng Emperor’s edict prohibiting the sale of beef, we can make note of an important yet easily overlooked exception to the policy. The emperor had ruled that, “As for the needs of the present court, with the exception of the sacrifices conducted in accordance with precedent, we do not use beef for any other purposes.” The slaughter of cattle was effectively legal as long as the beef was intended to be used for ritual sacrifices. Turning to editions of the popular religious text, Three-Character Classic of Islam (Tianfang sanzijing 天方三字經), we find noticeable additions to “Islamic” laws on ritual slaughter that directly resonate with these regulations. Consider for instance the following lines from Ma Wenmeng’s 馬文夢 (d.u.) 1874 edition: “Unless it is for a great sacrifice, abstain from slaughtering camels. Unless it is for a big banquet, abstain from slaughtering cows. Sheep can be [objects of] trade, [while] cows [should] not be exchanged” 非大祀，不宰駝。非賓會，不宰牛。羊可業，牛無互.43 It will be evident to readers that there is nothing in Islamic law to justify discouraging or banning the private sale of beef produced by halal butchers (Armanios, Ergene, 2018: 205). Why, then, was such a line included in this edition of the text?

• 44 The statute begins, “Everyone who, without authorization, slaughters his own horses and cattle wil (...)
• 45 Translation and citation from Murata, 2017: 209.

42Writing in the wake of the northwestern rebellion, Ma Wenmeng, a Shaanxi-native, jinshi-degree holding official, was clearly aligning Islamic law on animal slaughter with imperial law by reserving the butchery of camels and cattle for large ritual banquets while forbidding the sale of beef for profit. These lines, drawn from Liu Zhi’s 劉智 (c. 1660-1739) earlier work, echo Article 233 of The Great Qing Code, which forbade the private slaughter of horses, cattle, and camels without authorization.44 Three-Character Classic of Islam was not unique among Islamic writings in making such claims. Wang Daiyu observed that animals possessing of “great merit” such as cows should not be slaughtered frivolously: “the classical law of the true teaching holds that when someone makes slaughtering cows his profession in order to cater to people’s appetite to eat savory food, this should be more prohibited than slaughtering all other living creatures. There is no greater sin than this.”45 Jin Tianzhu was even more explicit in aligning Islamic practice with imperial law, writing, “The Son of Heaven (after 221 BCE, “the emperor”) does not slaughter cattle without reason, and Grand Masters (officials) do not slaughter lambs without reason; because they value life and feel compassion for animals, they do not dare to indiscriminately slaughter for the sake of nourishing the desires of human appetites. Our country’s rites accord with these [principles], and the regulations of our teaching (Islam) do as well” 天子無故不殺牛，大夫無故不殺羊，蓋重命卹牲，不敢率意以滋口腹之欲。禮在則然，而吾教之規亦然 (Jin, Hai, 2002: 103).

• 46 Nanbu County Qing Archive: 20.544.01.

43These careful presentations of Islamic law by Muslim literati do not seem to have reflected local practices, at least in some regions. In 1911, an order concerning illicit slaughter and butchery fees from the office of Sichuan’s police superintendent (xunjingdao 巡警道) alleged that Muslim butchers were slaughtering over 10,000 cattle annually in Chengdu, and required county magistrates to submit reports on the butchery activities of Muslims living in their jurisdictions.46 It is possible that this statistic might have been exaggerated, but there was clearly a perception that cattle slaughter was not rare across the province. The writings of the Muslim literati cited above, perhaps presenting an idealized picture for state authorities, reflect the rhetorical demands of a political discourse which held that the slaughter of cattle was a highly serious affair – one potentially detrimental to the cosmological ideals and well-being of the empire.

• 47 Late imperial Muslim literati may have been aware of or even encouraged Muslim participation in Co (...)
• 48 Ba County Qing Archive: 06-50-39210.
• 49 I am not suggesting Muslims served as the ritual officers of the proceedings, only that in the cas (...)

44It would appear that one avenue around the official prohibition on the sale of beef was for Muslims to argue that their butchery activities were primarily intended for sacrificial purposes. A few cases suggest that Muslims did make this precise argument with some success in law courts.47 One late Qing lawsuit from Sichuan’s Ba county concerning a non-Muslim’s alleged theft and improper slaughter of a bovine raised by Muslim butchers that was intended for the state sacrifices opened by claiming that the “two teachings of the Han and the Hui (Muslims)” (Hui-Han liangjiao 回漢兩教) were responsible for undertaking the Spring and Autumn Sacrifices.48 The Spring and Autumn Sacrifices, which marked key moments in the agrarian cycle, required the presentation of cattle, goats or lambs, and pigs as ritual offerings. The lawsuit named five Muslim bovine brokers who claimed to be responsible for the county’s sacrificial cattle arrangements. Central to the presentation of their lawsuit was the claim that it had been tradition in Ba County from ancient times for Muslims to provide cattle for the sacrifices.49

• 51 An order, dated 1800, issued by the magistrate of Mile County, Yunnan Province, provided a tax exe (...)

46In the notice, an official acknowledged Muslims’ unique role in the butchery industry and its importance for the ritual life for the entire area. The community received a public guarantee from the state that only a Muslim from the village could hold the post of bovine broker. Even more intriguingly, the order records a ritual usage of the imperial tablet displayed at the village’s mosque, in that the broker selected by the Muslim community and appointed by the state to supply the sacrificial cattle also provided the required oil for illuminating the tablet. Although we cannot know whether this dynamic had been institutionalized following the Panthay Rebellion, it is notable that the official had underscored the arrangement’s purportedly ancient pedigree.51 In Dragon Gate, Muslims’ ability to obtain a bovine broker license, their roles in supporting the Spring and Autumn Sacrifices, and the upkeep of the mosque’s imperial tablet were all woven together within the village’s ritual and political economy. More cases will be needed to establish the extent of this trend across time and space.

• 52 That Chinese terms for “Islam” and “halal” in imperial times overlapped in the word qingzhen may h (...)

48Nonetheless, butchery also appears to have been an important arena for inter-community engagement. Muslims had religious and economic motives to engage in bovine brokerage and butchery, and in certain contexts – such as sacrificial offerings during public festivals in Sichuan and Yunnan – the needs of Muslim communities and the needs of the imperial state could be aligned. At the very least, we can observe that Muslim offerings of cattle brokerage services for non-Islamic cults and popular festivals should not necessarily be taken as evidence of assimilation or apostasy, but rather, strategic negotiations to maintain the legality and local support for halal butchery businesses – thereby enabling them to survive. The distinctive status of Muslims, who monopolized bovine butchery in parts of the country, may have legally and ritually accorded them a distinguished channel into the sacred realm in imperial times.52 That is, depending on how broad this phenomenon proves to have been in the Qing, an arrangement that saw Muslims legally providing cattle and beef for the wider sacrificial market may have placed certain communities in important local roles for the functioning of the ritual calendar.