The Hui

This woman who sold us some incense belongs to a group of people known as the Hui. Islam in China is known as 'Huijiao,' or the 'teachings of the Hui.' The Hui, known in other parts of the world as Dzungars, are ethnic Chinese muslims and have a very long history in China. In 650 A.D. Uthman, the 3rd Caliph of Islam, sent an envoy to China headed by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas. The Emperor Gaozong who received them a year later in Xi'an did not convert, but ordered a mosque built to show respect toward the new religion. The first muslims in China were merchants and travelers. In 756 the Emperor requested the aid of 8,000 Persian and Iraqi mercenary soldiers from the Abbasid Empire to overturn the An Lushan rebellion. Most of them stayed in China and married Chinese women. In 1070 the Emperor invited nearly 5,500 muslims from Bukhara to settle in China. They were strategically placed to act as a buffer against the Liao people of the Northeast. In 1080 over 10,000 Arab men and women relocated to the Northwest of China. When the mongols conquered China in the 13th Century they employed a tactic that 'shuffled the deck,' so to speak. They put muslims from Central Asia in charge of eight out of twelve districts in China. They also relocated native Chinese to far reaches of the Mongol Empire such as Russia and India. During the Yuan Dynasty of the mongols there were large migrations of Arab, Persian, and Turkic peoples into China. The Hui are the descendants of these various migrations of muslims into China.