By Cinatra Fernandes
Dar Al Athar Al Islamiyyah kick-started its 24th cultural season with a lecture by Dr Ziad Rajab on ‘Islamic Chinese Calligraphy in the Tareq Rajab Museum of Islamic Calligraphy’, at the Yarmouk
Cultural Centre.
ar Al Athar Al Islamiyyah launched its 24th cultural season with a lecture by Dr Ziad Rajab on ‘Islamic Chinese Calligraphy in the Tareq Rajab Museum of Islamic Calligraphy’, at its Yarmouk Cultural Centre.
Bader Al Baijan, Head of the DAI Steering Committee, welcomed members and guests to the Monday night lecture by highlighting the warm relationship shared by between the DAI and the Tareq Rajab Museum. He pointed out that the Al Sabah Collection shares an affinity with the Tareq Rajab collection as both were developed by the hands on efforts of their founders, both were endangered during the horrific events of the Iraqi invasion and most importantly, both have survived and are even more active today.
Arab and Persian merchants and traders have been plying the silk routes to China for hundreds of years, back to the pre-Islamic era with ancient communities in various coastal cities. These communities expanded with the introduction of Islam and over the years, Middle Eastern peoples intermarried with the local Han Chinese creating a culture with its own unique blend of Confucian and Islamic traditions and practices. Dr Ziad Rajab gave a brief overview of the history of the Arabs in China and provided an introduction to the development of Islamic Chinese calligraphy with examples from the Tareq Rajab Museum of Islamic Calligraphy.
Dr Rajab is the director of the New English School and a Tareq Rajab Museum board member. In addition to being a human resource specialist, he is involved in the arts, and has non-professional certifications in bookbinding, illumination, portraiture, oil painting and pottery. He is also an accomplished flautist.
The history of the interactions between the Middle East and China go back at least to the Nabatean times where there are indications that trade links between the two existed. But for his talk, Dr Rajab focused on the period after Islam first arrived in China and the first official Embassies were sent to the Tang court.
He shared that the Chinese and the Chinese Muslims believe that Islam first arrived in China in 627 AD during the actual lifetime of the Prophet (PBUH) and it was the Prophet himself who sent a diplomatic delegation to China in which Islam introduced to the Tang emperor and his community. According to local beliefs in China, the first mission to China included an uncle of the Prophet, Saad ibn Abi Waqqas. Dr Rajab shared that he had seen Ethiopian and Chinese sources for this. According to the Ethiopian source, in the year 615 AD, Saad ibn Abi Waqqas travelled from Ethiopia to Chittagong and from there to China, arriving in 616 AD.
There are other sources that the first formal introduction of Islam was when the third Caliph dispatched an official delegation to China in the year 651 AD with the purpose of introducing Islam to China. However, the first delegation officially mentioned in Chinese records comes in 713 AD when an envoy was presented at court who refused to bow to the Emperor because he’d only bow to
God. The Tang Emperor did not have him killed believing that a difference in court etiquette was not a crime.
Chinese Muslims believe strongly that six years after the arrival of Saad ibn Abi Waqqas to Guangzhou, he received permission to build a mosque, Huaisheng Mosque, which is considered the oldest mosque in China. In addition, Chinese Muslims and scholars believe that Saad ibn Abi Waqqas was buried in China and his shrine in Guangzhou is heavily visited, while other sources say that he was buried in Madinah. “Whatever the truth, his connection to China is very strong whether he visited or not, whether he is buried there or not. He is a very important figure to the Chinese Muslims”, Dr Rajab added.
The Tang Empire was one of the most cosmopolitan and open in Chinese history. The Emperor and his court were interested in other countries and cultures, and so they received the first Muslim delegation very warmly and with a lot of enthusiasm.
During the 8th Century, the Arabs were the largest foreign community in Chang’an, the capital at the time. The Tang Dynasty was considered the golden age of China and a period of much commercial, religious and cultural connections took as far as Japan and the Abbasid empire. They encouraged the arts, literature, painting and music and absorbed influences from foreign cultures. For example, the Tang Dynasty dances and music had a lot of Middle Eastern influences.
The Emperor Taizong who was the Second Tang Emperor is considered one of the greatest leaders in China’s history and he credited for creating the golden age of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.
The Huaisheng Mosque, built in the early to mid 7th Century was at the center of Arab and Persian mercantile community lived. When Huaisheng Mosque was first built, a minaret was added and this became the tallest structure in China and remained so for many centuries.
It acquired the name “Lighthouse Mosque” as the light from the top helped guide ships from the harbour. Many people considered the area around the Lighthouse Minaret as the starting point of the maritime silk road. This minaret was the only Lighthouse in China until a modern Western style one was built in the 1860s.
Huaisheng Mosque features six important buildings, the Imam Hall, the Wangyue Attic, the Covered Corridor, the Storehouse of Islamic Scripture, the Stone Steles Pavilion and the Minaret.
He shared that another beautiful mosque in China is the great mosque of Xian built in 742 AD. The architectural elements and decorations are mostly Chinese although there are many beautiful examples of Arabic calligraphy around the mosque. While most of the element today are from the Ming and Song Dynasties, there are some stone tablets that date back to the time the mosque was founded.
He highlighted other important mosques in China including the Daxuexixiang Mosque in Xi’an and the Niujie Mosque in Beijing. The Niujie Mosque, was built during the Liao dynasty. The mosque is Chinese in architecture but with much beautiful Arabic calligraphy decorating it and with a charming pagoda minaret called Wangyuelou, which translates to “Moon Watching Tower”.
Dr Rajab pointed out that the history of Islam and Muslims in China has been through many different phases and there were many different attitudes towards Muslims during each dynasty.
In the Tang Dynasty, when Islam first arrived, it was mainly Arab and Persian immigrants who settled in China and in many cases married Han Chinese women. He shared that a very important point in the history of the arrival and spread of Islam in China was the battle of Talas river where the Abbasid army defeated the Tang Army. While they defeated the Tang Army, they didn’t continue in their eastward expansion. Interestingly, it was after this battle that the Chinese paper making industry was discovered by the Arabs in China and they brought it to the capital of the Abbasid empire and took it through their Empire to Andalucía and to Europe.
This battle was a big turning point because it started a big influx of Muslims into China and it marks the beginning of a change in the religious profile of many parts of China. Not long after this there was a rebellion by a Turkish faction led by a military commander and governor who proclaimed himself emperor. The Tang Emperor Suzong, who was influenced by the Muslim success in the Battle of Talas, wrote to the Abbassid Caliph and asked him to help defeat the rebellion. The Caliph responded by sending 4,000 men who helped retake the capital. These men resettled in China, took Chinese wives and established the first major Muslim community in China.
Dr Rajab shared that the Hui minority group in China are descendants from Arabs, Persians, and Central Asians who intermarried with the Han Chinese communities, and they created new religious and multi-ethnic people who were united only by their religion. Other religions such as Judaism, Nestorianism, and Zoroastrianism, all arrived in China around the same time as Islam, but by the period of the Ming Dynasty, Islam was the only religion to have survived, spread and flourished in China.
The Hui in China form a key part of the fabric of China. In the capital of Xian, which is predominantly a Muslim quarter, visitors can see Arabic scripts all over the place. According to the Chinese census, there are around 22.5 million Muslims in China but unofficial records state much higher numbers. Of these, 10.5 million are the Hui. The Hui, since Tang times, have been through various periods of prosperity and tolerance as well as dark times.
During the Song Dynasty, there were further large arrivals of Arabs, Persians and Central Asians. During the Yuan, Mongol Dynasty in China, the military was heavily dependent on hundreds of thousands of Muslims soldiers brought from the Middle East and central Asian lands which the Mongols had conquered and were crucial in helping the Mongols defeat the Song Empire. One of Kublai Khan’s son was a very devout Muslim and during his leadership he managed to convert most of his army to Islam. All through the Yuan Dynasty there were strong links between the Emperors and the Muslim community and they played a key role in both the bureaucracy and the military.
During the Ming Dynasty, things changed. When China came back into non-foreign, Han Chinese hands, some people expected the Ming Emperors to punish the Muslims for working with the Mongols. But on the contrary it is said that the founder of the Ming Dynasty was a descendant of an officer and a Mongol with links to the Muslim community and set out to protect the community. He did however have a policy of making the Muslims, Chinese. The Ming Empire closed itself off from the world and didn’t want foreign influences. So the Muslims in China started to develop independently from Muslims outside of China. He made the Hui attend Chinese schools, speak only Chinese, to wear Chinese clothes and take Chinese names and also encouraged them strongly to marry Chinese people.
Dr Rajab shared that the Hongwu Emperor had close ties to the Muslim community and was also famous for writing the 100-word eulogy in praise of Islam which is a Chinese classic now.
During the reign of Yongle, there were important developments, expeditions to the Arab world and the establishment of madrasas and the rise of translators. With the Manchu Dynasty, there began a period of persecution against the Muslims in China and millions of people were massacred all over the country.
Dr Rajab shared several examples of how the Arabs and Chinese perceived each other. One of the earliest Chinese descriptions of the Arab world dates to the mid 8th Century and was written by Du Yu while the Arab knowledge of Chinese was found in the chronicles of Sulaiman Al Tajir and Abusaid Al Serafi who wrote accounts of India and China.
Moving to calligraphy, Dr Rajab shared that the Arabic script in China is called Sini and it combines Arabic writing with Chinese flair. It originated in Eastern China and examples of it are found on tombstones and interiors of mosques. When Islam first arrived in China, Arabic writing was first introduced and the script continued to develop through to the Ming Dynasty when Sini reached its peak. That was when the Chinese closed off their country and started developing independently.
He stated that Arabic and Chinese, is perhaps the most important calligraphic art forms, and Sini as the product of the marriage between the two. The script is Arabic but the tools are Chinese. While Arabic is written with a pen, Sini is written with a brush. He showed a Sini manuscript from the Tareq Rajab Calligraphy Museum to illustrate this.
Chinese script is one of the oldest in the world and Dr Rajab briefly described how the characters evolved from symbols to clerical script. Sini, Chinese calligraphy using Arabic script, hasn’t had much academic research on its features. In terms of style Dr Rajab pointed out that the closest Middle Eastern script to Sini is Thuluth, a cursive script that was used a lot in Persia and Central Asia during the Ilkhanid period.
Typical in both are the long vertical strokes and rounded lettering and thin angles. Sini was often compared to the Bihari script of India which also has the thin vertical lines and very thick horizontal lines, the similarity attributed to the use of the brush.
Many scholars believe that the reason it was Naskh and Thuluth that came to China and not Kufic, was that most people from the Middle East who came to China were merchants who predominantly used Naskh instead of the more monumental scripts that were used in buildings.
Dr Rajab showed the audience a number of items from the museum that warrant a personal visit for deeper inspection, and ended his lecture with a lively Q&A session. The Tareq Rajab Museum of Islamic Art is located in Jabriya, Block 12, Street 1and is open Saturday to Thursday from 9am–12pm, and 4pm–7pm, and on Fridays from 9am–12pm.
The DAI 24th cultural season which goes on until the end of April 2019 will feature weekly lectures, musical events, movie nights, special courses and activities. For more information, visit darmuseum.org.kw