Hui people

Hui حُوِ ذَو
回族 (Huízú)

Hui people
Total population
10 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
China
Languages
Chinese languages
Religion
Islam
Related ethnic groups
Uyghur, Dungan, Panthay, Han Chinese, other Sino-Tibetan peoples

The Hui people (Chinese: 回族; pinyin: Huízú, Xiao'erjing: حُوِ ذَو ) are a Chinese ethnic group, typically distinguished by their practice of Islam.

Hui is the abbreviation of the full name Huihui "回回", which is the diminutive form of HuiE "回纥 / 回鶻". They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They are concentrated in Northwestern China (Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang), but communities exist across the country, e.g. Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Yunnan, etc. Most Hui are similar in culture to Han Chinese with the exception that they practice Islam, and have some distinctive cultural characteristics as a result. For example, as Muslims, they follow Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most common meat consumed in Chinese culture,^{[citation needed]} and have also given rise to their variation of Chinese cuisine, Chinese Islamic cuisine and Muslim Chinese martial arts. Their mode of dress also differs only in that men wear white caps and women wear headscarves or (occasionally) veils, as is the case in most Islamic cultures. ( The definition of Hui after 1949 does not include ethnic groups such as the Uyghur, who live in the Mainland China and also practice Islam.

The Hui people are mixed blood. Their ancestors include Central Asian, Persian, Han Chinese, and Mongols. In ancient China, e.g. Tang and Yuan Dynasty, lots of people from Central Asian and Persia came to trade or pursue political careers. In the following nearly one thousand years, they gradually mixed with Mongols and Han Chinese, and the Hui people were formed. Because the Hui people have lived in China for so many years, they haven't retained Arabic and Central Asian languages, instead becoming Chinese speakers.

Apart from some minor characteristics, the majority of Hui people look much like Han Chinese, especially in eastern China.

Note that prior to 1949, the definition of Hui referred to Chinese Muslim with Turkic ancestry which later extended to non-Turkic Muslim such as Southern Chinese Muslim who were predominantly of Malay and Arabic origin. Included among the Hui in Chinese census statistics (and not officially recognized as a separate ethnic group) are several thousand Utsuls in southern Hainan province, who speak an Austronesian language (Tsat) related to that of the Cham Muslim minority of Vietnam, and who are said to be descended from Chams who migrated to Hainan.

A traditional Chinese term for Islam is 回教 (pinyin: Huíjiào, literally "the religion of the Hui"), though today it is mainly in use in Singapore, Taiwan, and other overseas Chinese communities; the most prevalent term within the PRC is the transliteration 伊斯蘭教 (pinyin: 'Yīsīlán jiào, literally "Islam religion").

Etymology

Under the aegis of the Communist Party in the 1930s the term Hui was defined to indicate only Sinophone Muslims. In 1941, this was clarified by a Communist Party committee comprising ethnic policy researchers in a treatise entitled "On the question of Huihui Ethnicity" (Huihui minzu wenti). This treatise defined the characteristics of the Hui nationality as follows: the Hui or Huihui constitute an ethnic group associated with, but not defined by, the Islamic religion and they are descended primarily from Muslims who migrated to China during the Mongol-founded Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), as distinct from the Uyghur and other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Xinjiang. The Nationalist government had recognised all Muslims as one of "the five peoples"—alongside the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans and Han Chinese—that constituted the Republic of China. The new Communist interpretation of Chinese Muslim ethnicity marked a clear departure from the ethno-religious policies of the Nationalists, and had emerged as a result of the pragmatic application of Stalinist ethnic theory to the conditions of the Chinese revolution.^[2]

Hui people everywhere are referred to by Central Asian Turks and Tajiks as Dungans. In its population censuses, the Soviet Union also identified Chinese Muslims as "Dungans" (дунгане) and recorded them as located mainly in Kyrgyzstan, southern Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. In the Russian census of 2002, a total of 800 Dungans were enumerated. In Thailand Chinese Muslims are referred to as Chin Ho, in Myanmar and Yunnan Province, as Panthay.

History

Origins

Hui people praying in a mosque in China

The Hui Chinese have diverse origins. Some in the southeast coast are descended from Arab and Persian Muslim traders who settled in China and gradually intermarried and assimilated to the surrounding population, keeping only their distinctive religion. A totally different explanation is available for the Mandarin Chinese-speaking Yunnan and Northern Huis, whose ethnogenesis might be a result of the convergence of large number of Mongol, Turkic, Iranian or other Central Asian settlers in these regions who formed the dominant stratum in the Mongol-founded Yuan Dynasty. However, even Guangdong Muslims, of the southeastern coast, typically resemble northern Asians much more so than their typical Guangdong neighbours.

It was documented that a proportion of these nomad or military ethnic groups were originally Nestorian Christians many of whom later converted to Islam, while under the sinicizing pressures of the Ming and Qing states.

This explains the ethnonym "Hui," in close affinity with that of "Uyghur," albeit Sinicized and contradistinctive from "Uyghur" in usage. The ethnonym "Hui," though for a long time used as an umbrella term (at least since Qing) to designate Muslim Chinese speakers everywhere and Muslims in general (for example, a Qing Chinese might describe a Uyghur as a "Chantou" who practiced the "Hui" religion), was not used in the Southeast as much as "Qīngzhēn", a term still in common use today, especially for Muslim (Hui) eating establishments and for mosques (qīngzhēn sì in Mandarin).

An old Hui man.

Southeastern Muslims also have a much longer tradition of synthesizing Confucian teachings with the Sharia and Qur'anic teachings, and were reported to have been contributing to the Confucian officialdom since the Tang period. Among the Northern Hui, on the other hand, there are strong influences of Central Asian Sufi schools such as Kubrawiyya, Qadiriyya, Naqshbandiyya (Khufiyya and Jahriyya) etc. mostly of the Hanafi Madhhab (whereas among the Southeastern communities the Shafi'i Madhhab is more of the norm). Before the "Ihwani" movement, a Chinese variant of the Salafi movement, Northern Hui Sufis were very fond of synthesizing Taoist teachings and martial arts practices with Sufi philosophy.

In early modern times, villages in Northern Chinese Hui areas still bore labels like "Blue-cap Huihui," "Black-cap Huihui," and "White-cap Huihui," betraying their possible Christian, Judaic and Muslim origins, even though the religious practices among North China Hui by then were by and large Islamic. Hui is also used as a catch-all grouping for Islamic Chinese who are not classified under another ethnic group.

Muslim Revolts

During the mid-nineteenth century, a series of civil wars broke out throughout China by various ethnic-lingual groups against the ruling Manchu-Mongol-Han Bannerman and Han Confucians elites. These include the Taiping Rebellion in Southern China (whose leaders were Evangelical Christians of ethnic Han Chinese Hakka and Zhuang background), the Muslims Rebellion in Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia in Northwestern China and Yuannan, and the Miao people Revolt in Hunan and Guizhou. These revolts were supported by European Powers at the beginning but eventually put down by the Manchu government. The Donggan People were descendants of the Muslim rebels who fled to Russia after the rebellion were suppressed by the joint force of Hunan Army led by Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠) with support from local Hui elites.

Population loss during these revolts was staggering. Some have estimated that the population loss in Shaanxi between 1862 and 1879 was as high as 6,220,000, about 44.6% of the original population before the war, of which 5.2 million was due to war. For the Hui, the figure may have been as high as 1.55 million. In 1990, there were only 132,000 Hui in Shaanxi. ^[3]

Panthays

Panthays form a group of Chinese Muslims in Burma. Some people refer to Panthays as the oldest group of Chinese Muslims in Burma. However, because of intermixing and cultural diffusion the Panthays are not as distinct a group as there once were.

Dungans

Dungan (simplified Chinese: 东干族; traditional Chinese: 東干族; pinyin: Dōnggānzú; Russian: Дунгане) is a term used in territories of the former Soviet Union and in Xinjiang to refer to Chinese-speaking Muslim people. In the censuses of Russia and the former Soviet Central Asia, the Hui are enumerated separately from Chinese, and are labelled as Dungans. In both China and the former Soviet republics where they reside, however, members of this ethnic group call themselves Lao Huihui or Zhongyuanren, not Dungans. Zhongyuan 中原, literally means "The Central Plain" is the historical name of Shaanxi and Henan provinces. Most Dungans living in former Soviet Union are descendants of Hui people from Gansu and Shaanxi.

Surnames

These are some common surnames used by the Hui ethnic group:^{[citation needed]}

• Ma for Muhammad
• Mu for Muhammad
• Han for Muhammad
• Ha for Hasan
• Hu for Hussein
• Sai for Said
• Sha for Shah
• Zheng for Shams
• Koay for Kamaruddin
• Chuah for Osman

Prominent Hui

• Bai Chongxi (白崇禧), a general of the Republic of China
• Bai Shouyi (白壽彝), prominent Chinese historian and ethnologist
• Hai Feng (海峰), a professor of Xinjiang University and an author of a book on Dungan language
• Hui Liangyu (回良玉), a Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China
• Lan Yu was a Ming Dynasty general who ended the Mongol dream to reconquer China.
• Li Zhi (李贄), a famous Confucian philosopher in Ming Dynasty, would perhaps be considered a Hui if he lived today because of some his ancestors being Persian Muslims.
• Ma Dexin (马德新), Islamic scholar in Yunnan
• Ma Bufang ( 馬步芳), was a warlord in China during the Republic of China era, ruling the northwestern province of Qinghai.
• Ma Hualong (马化龙), one of the leaders of the Muslim Rebellion of 1862-77.
• Shi Zhongxin, mayor of Harbin from 2002 to February 2007, whose ancestors came from Jilin
• Zhang Chengzhi (張承志), contemporary author and alleged creator of the term "Red Guards"
• Zheng He (鄭和), a Semu Muslim, probably the most famous Muslim in Chinese history, would perhaps be considered a Hui if he lived today

Related group names

• Dungan (in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan)
• Panthay (in Burma)
• Utsul (in Hainan Island; speakers of a Malayo-Polynesian language, but officially classified by the Chinese government as Hui)

See also

• Hui pan-nationalism
• Islam in China
• Hui Minorities' War
• Panthay Rebellion

Further reading

• Chuah, Osman (April 2004). "Muslims in China: the social and economic situation of the Hui Chinese". Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 24 (1): 155–162. doi:10.1080/1360200042000212133. 

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hui people

• Dru C. Gladney, "Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)", 1997, ISBN 0155019708.
• Dru C. Gladney, "Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects", 2004, ISBN 0226297756.
• Dru C. Gladney, "Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic". 1st ed. 1991; 2nd ed., 1996. ISBN 0-674-59497-5.
• "CHINA'S ISLAMIC HERITAGE" China Heritage Newsletter (Australian National University), No. 5, March 2006.