{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02109300095877277, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003835091083413231, 'mean_word_length': 5.177514792899408, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Writing Cosmopolitan History in Nineteenth-century China: Li Huanyi’s Words and Deeds of Islamic Exemplars

This chapter suggests that we understand cosmopolitanism among Hui Muslims in nineteenth-century China as the ability to situate oneself in relation to both Chinese and Islamic history. Based on Li Huanyi’s 1874 Words and Deeds of Islamic Exemplars (Ch. Qingzhen xianzheng yanxing lüe), the chapter shows how Hui Muslims forged a universal history addressing two poles of authority—one in the Chinese court and the other in the Prophet Muhammad. In particular, the figure of Saʿd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, the Companion of the Prophet Muhammad reputedly dispatched to Chang’an, emerges in Li’s history as the crucial spatial and temporal link joining Arabia and the Chinese court. By showing how subsequent accounts of imperial Muslim figures are portrayed as continuing Waqqāṣ’ service in China, this chapter argues that Li deploys this universal Islamic history not to undermine but rather to legitimate the power of the Chinese imperial state.