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The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the Northwest China and in the Zhongyuan region. According to the 2010 census, China is home to approximately 10.5 million Hui people. Outside China, the 170,000 Dungan people of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the Panthays in Myanmar, and many of the in Thailand are also considered part of the Hui ethnicity.
The Hui were referred to as Hanhui during the Qing dynasty to be distinguished from the Turkic peoples Muslims, which were referred to as Chanhui. The Republic of China government also recognised the Hui as a branch of the Han Chinese rather than a separate ethnic group. In the National Assembly of the Republic of China, the Hui were referred to as Nationals in China proper with special convention.Muslim Chinese : ethnic nationalism in the People's Republic. Gladney, Dru C. Cambridge, Mass,1996 The Hui were referred to as Muslim Han people by Bai Chongxi, the Minister of National Defense of the Republic of China at the time and the founder of the Chinese Muslim Association. (2025). 9789860459555, 中央研究院近代史研究所. ISBN 9789860459555 Some scholars refer to this group as Han Chinese Muslims, Takahiro Onuma (2025). 9784904039090, Department of Islamic Area Studies, Center for Evolving Humanities, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo. ISBN 9784904039090 Han Muslims, or Chinese Muslims, while others call them Chinese-speaking Muslims or Sino-Muslims.
The Hui were officially recognised as an ethnic group by the China government in 1954. The government defines the Hui people to include all historically Muslim communities not included in China's other ethnic groups; they are therefore distinct from other Muslim groups such as the Uyghurs. or Besides the Hui people, nine other officially recognized ethnic groups of PRC are considered predominantly Muslim. Those nine groups are defined mainly on linguistic grounds: namely, six groups speaking Turkic languages (Kazakhs, Kyrgyz people, Salar people, Chinese Tatars, Uyghurs and Uzbeks), two Mongolic-speaking groups (Bonan people and Dongxiangs) and one Iranian-speaking group (Tajiks).
The Hui predominantly speak Chinese, while using some Arabic and Persian language phrases. The Hui ethnic group is unique among Chinese ethnic minorities in that it is not associated with a non-Sinitic language. Of course, many members of some other Chinese ethnic minorities don't speak their ethnic group's traditional language anymore and practically no Manchu people speak the Manchu language natively anymore; but even the Manchu language is well attested historically. Meanwhile, the ancestors of today's Hui people are thought to have been predominantly native Chinese speakers of Islam religion since no later than the mid or early Ming dynasty. i.e. The Hui have a distinct connection with Islamic culture. For example, they follow Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most commonly consumed meat in China, and have therefore developed their own variation of Chinese cuisine. They also have a traditional dress code, with some men wearing white caps (taqiyah) and some women wearing Headscarf, as is the case in many .
Included among the Hui in Chinese census statistics (and not officially recognized as separate ethnic groups) are members of a few small non-Chinese-speaking communities. These include several thousand Utsuls in southern Hainan Province, who speak an Austronesian language (Tsat language) related to the language of the Vietnamese Chams, who according to anthropologist Dru Gladney, descend from Champa people who migrated to Hainan. A small Muslim minority among Yunnan's Bai people are classified as Hui as well, although they speak Bai language. The Bai-speaking Hui typically claim descent from Hui refugees who fled to Bai areas after the 1873 defeat of the Panthay Rebellion, and have since assimilated to the Bai culture. Some groups of Tibetan Muslims are classified as Hui as well.
The East Asian Y-chromosome haplogroup O-M122 is found in large quantities, about 24–30%, in other Muslims groups close to the Hui like the Dongxiangs, Bonan people, and Salar people. While the Y chromosome haplogroup R1a (found among Central Asians, South Asians and Europeans) are found among 17–28% of them. Western mtDNA makes up 6.6% to 8%. Other haplogroups include D-M174, N1a1-Tat, and Q, commonly found among East Asians and Siberians. The majority of Tibeto-Burmans, Han Chinese, and Ningxia and Liaoning Hui share paternal Y chromosomes of East Asian origin which are unrelated to Middle Easterners and Europeans. In contrast to distant Middle Easterners and Europeans with whom the Muslims of China are not significantly related, East Asians, Han Chinese, and most of the Hui and Dongxiang of Linxia share more genes with each other. This indicates that native East Asian populations were culturally assimilated, and that the Hui population was formed through a process of cultural diffusion.
An overview study in 2021 estimated that West Eurasian-related admixture among the average Northwestern Chinese minority groups was at ~9.1%, with the remainder being dominant East-Eurasian ancestry at ~90.9%. The study also showed that there is a close genetic affinity among these ethnic minorities in Northwest China (including Uyghurs, Huis, Dongxiangs, Bonan people, and Salar people) and that these cluster closely with other East Asian people, especially in Xinjiang, followed by Mongolic peoples, and Tungusic peoples, indicating the probability of a shared recent common ancestor of "Altaic speakers". A genome study, using the ancestry-informative SNP (AISNP) analysis, found only 3.66% West-Eurasian-like admixture among Hui people, while the Uyghurs harbored the relative highest amount of West-Eurasian-like admixture at 36.30%.
Chinese census statistics count among the Hui (and not as officially recognized separate ethnic groups) the Muslim members of a few small non-Chinese-speaking communities. These include several thousand Utsuls in southern Hainan Province, who speak an Austronesian language (Tsat language) related to the language of the Vietnamese Chams. According to anthropologist Dru Gladney, they descend from Champa people who migrated to Hainan. A small Muslim minority among Yunnan's Bai people are classified as Hui as well, although they speak Bai language. The Bai-speaking Hui typically claim descent from Hui refugees who fled to Bai areas after the 1873 defeat of the Panthay Rebellion, and have since assimilated to the Bai culture. Some groups of Tibetan Muslims are classified as Hui as well.
Kublai Khan called both foreign Jews and Muslims in China Huihui when he forced them to stop halal and kosher methods of preparing food:
"Among all the subject alien peoples only the Hui-hui say "we do not eat Mongol food". Cinggis "By the aid of heaven we have pacified you; you are our slaves. Yet you do not eat our food or drink. How can this be right?" He thereupon made them eat. "If you slaughter sheep, you will be considered guilty of a crime." He issued a regulation to that effect... In all the Muslims say: "if someone else slaughters the we do not eat". Because the poor people are upset by this, from now on, Musuluman Muslim Huihui and Zhuhu Jewish Huihui, no matter who kills the will eat it and must cease slaughtering sheep themselves, and cease the rite of circumcision."
The widespread and rather generic application of the name Huihui in Ming China was attested to by foreign visitors as well. Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit to reach Beijing (1598), noted that "Saracens are everywhere in evidence ... their thousands of families are scattered about in nearly every province" Ricci noted that the term Huihui or Hui was applied by Chinese not only to "Saracens" (Muslims) but also to Chinese Jews and supposedly even to Christians.. In Samuel Purchas's translation (1625) ( Vol. XII, p. 466): "All these Sects the Chinois call, Hoei, the Jewes distinguished by their refusing to eate the sinew or leg; the Saracens, Swines flesh; the Christians, by refusing to feed on round-hoofed beasts, Asses, Horses, Mules, which all both Chinois, Saracens and Jewes doe there feed on." It's not entirely clear what Ricci means by saying that Hui also applied to Christians, as he does not report finding any actual local Christians. In fact, when the reclusive Wanli Emperor first saw a picture of Ricci and Diego de Pantoja, he supposedly exclaimed, "Hoei, hoei. It is quite evident that they are Saracens", and had to be told by a eunuch that they actually weren't, "because they ate pork". The 1916 Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 8 said that Chinese Muslims always called themselves Huihui or Huizi, and that neither themselves nor other people called themselves Han, and they disliked people calling them Dungan. French army Commandant Viscount D'Ollone wrote a report on what he saw among Hui in 1910. He reported that due to religion, Hui were classed as a different nationality from Han as if they were one of the other minority groups.Mission d'Ollone, 1906–1909. Recherches sur les Musulmans chinois. Par le Commandant d'Ollone, le capitaine de Fleurelle, le capitaine Lepage, le lieutenant de Boyve. Étude de A. Vissière ... Notes de E. Blochet ... et de divers savants. Ouvrage orné de 91 photographies, estampages, cartes et d'une carte hors texte. Henri Marie Gustave d' OLLONE, Viscount.; Henri Eugène de BOYVE; E Blochet; Pierre Gabriel Edmond GRELLET DES PRADES DE FLEURELLE; Gaston Jules LEPAGE. Paris, 1911. .
Huizu is now the standard term for the "Hui nationality" (ethnic group), and Huimin, for "Hui people" or "a Hui person". The traditional expression Huihui, its use now largely restricted to rural areas, would sound quaint, if not outright demeaning, to modern urban Chinese Muslims. [[File:Shanghai-Lanzhou-Zhengzong-Niurou-Lamian-2782.jpg|thumb| Halal (清真) restaurants offering Northwestern beef lamian can be found throughout the country ]]
Another, probably unrelated, early use of the word Huihui comes from the History of Liao, which mentions Yelü Dashi, the 12th-century founder of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, defeating the Huihui Dashibu (回回大食部) people near Samarkand—apparently, referring to his defeat of the Khwarazm ruler Ahmed Sanjar in 1141. Khwarazm is referred to as Huihuiguo in the Secret History of the Mongols as well.
While Huihui or Hui remained a generic name for all Muslims in Imperial China, specific terms were sometimes used to refer to particular groups, e.g. Chantou Hui (" Hui") for Uyghurs, Dongxiang Hui and Sala Hui for Dongxiang people and Salar people, and sometimes even Han Hui (漢回) ("Chinese Hui") for the (presumably Chinese-speaking) Muslims more assimilated into the Chinese mainstream society.;
In the 1930s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defined the term Hui as indicating only Sinophone Muslims. In 1941, this was clarified by a CCP committee comprising ethnic policy researchers in a treatise entitled "On the question of Huihui Ethnicity" (回回民族问题, Huíhui mínzú wèntí). This treatise defined the characteristics of the Hui nationality as an ethnic group associated with, but not defined by, Islam and 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 by contrast recognised all Muslims as one of "the five peoples"—alongside the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and Han Chinese—that constituted the Republic of China.
A traditional Chinese language term for Islam is "回教" (pinyin: Huíjiào, literally "the religion of the Hui"). However, since the early days of the PRC, thanks to the arguments of such Marxist Hui scholars as Bai Shouyi, the standard term for "Islam" within the PRC has become the transliteration "伊斯蘭教" (pinyin: Yīsīlán jiào, literally "Islam religion"). The more traditional term Huijiao remains in use in Singapore, Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities.On the continuing use of Huijiao in Taiwan, see
Qīngzhēn: (清真, literally "pure and true") has also been a popular term for Muslim culture since the Yuan or Ming dynasty. Gladney suggested that a good translation for it would be the Arabic language tahára. i.e. "ritual or moral purity" The usual term for a mosque is qīngzhēn sì (清真寺), i.e. "true and pure temple", and qīngzhēn is commonly used to refer to halal eating establishments and bathhouses.
In contrast, the Uyghurs were called "Chan Tou Hui" ("Turban Headed Muslim"), and the Turkic Salars called "Sala Hui" (Salar Muslim), while Turkic speakers often referred to Hui as "Dungan".
Zhongyuan ren: During the Qing dynasty, the term Zhongyuan ren () was the term for all Chinese, encompassing Han Chinese and Hui in Xinjiang or Central Asia. While Hui are not Han, they consider themselves to be Chinese and include themselves in the larger group of Zhongyuan ren. The Dungan people, descendants of Hui who fled to Central Asia, called themselves Zhongyuan ren in addition to the standard labels lao huihui and huizi. (1994). 9780313274978, Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313274978 Zhongyuan ren was used by Turkic Muslims to refer to ethnic Chinese. When Central Asian invaders from Kokand invaded Kashgar, in a letter the Kokandi commander criticised the Kashgari Turkic Muslim Ishaq for allegedly not behaving like a Muslim and wanting to be a Zhongyuan ren (Chinese).
Some Uyghurs barely see any difference between Hui and Han. A Uyghur social scientist, Dilshat, regarded Hui as the same people as Han, deliberately calling Hui people Han and dismissing the Hui as having only a few hundred years of history.
Pusuman: Pusuman was a name used by Chinese during the Yuan dynasty. It could have been a corruption of or another name for Persians. It means either Muslim or Persian. Pusuman Kuo (Pusuman Guo) referred to the country where they came from. The name "Pusuman zi" (pusuman script), was used to refer to the script that the HuiHui (Muslims) were using.
Muslim Chinese: The term Chinese Muslim is sometimes used to refer to Hui people, given that they speak Chinese, in contrast to, e.g., Turkic-speaking Salars. During the Qing dynasty, Chinese Muslim (Han Hui) was sometimes used to refer to Hui people, which differentiated them from non-Chinese-speaking Muslims. However, not all Hui are Muslims, nor are all Chinese Muslims, Hui. For example, Li Yong is a famous Han Chinese who practices Islam and Hui Liangyu is a notable atheist Hui. In addition, most Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Dongxiang people in China are Muslims, but are not Hui.
John Stuart Thomson, who traveled in China, called them "Mohammedan Chinese". They have also been called "Chinese Mussulmans", when Europeans wanted to distinguish them from Han Chinese.
Some Hui clans around Quanzhou in Fujian, such as the Ding and Guo families, identify themselves by ethnicity and no longer practice Islam. In recent years, more of these clans have identified as Hui, increasing the official population. They provided evidence of their ancestry and were recognized as Hui. Many clans across Fujian had genealogies that demonstrated Hui ancestry. (1990). 9781853333019, BRILL. ISBN 9781853333019 These clans inhabited Fujian, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. None of these clans were Muslims but they do not offer pork during their ancestral worship.
In Taiwan, the Hui clans who followed Koxinga to Formosa to defeat the Dutch settlers no longer observe Islam and their descendants embrace the Chinese folk religion. The Taiwanese branch of the Guo (Kuo in Taiwan) clan with Hui ancestry does not practice Islam, yet does not offer pork at their ancestral shrines. The Chinese Muslim Association counts these people as Muslims. Also on Taiwan, one branch of the Ding (Ting) clan that descended from Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar resides in Taisi Township in Yunlin County. They trace their descent through him via the Quanzhou Ding family of Fujian. While pretending to be Han Chinese in Fujian, they initially practiced Islam when they came to Taiwan 200 years ago, but their descendants have embraced Buddhism or Taoism.
An attempt was made by the Chinese Islamic Society to convert the Fujian Hui of Fujian back to Islam in 1983, by sending four Ningxia imams to Fujian. This futile endeavour ended in 1986, when the final Ningxia imam left. A similar endeavour in Taiwan also failed.
Until 1982, a Han could "become" Hui by converting to Islam. Thereafter, a converted Han counts instead as a "Muslim Han". Symmetrically, Hui people consider other Hui who do not observe Islamic practices as still Hui, and that their Hui nationality cannot be lost. For both of these reasons, simply calling them "Chinese Muslims" is no longer accurate, strictly speaking, just as with Bosniaks in former Yugoslavia.
Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Gansu Province have a Hui population of more than one million. In Ningxia, 33.95% of the population are of Hui ethnicity. Hui are the major minority in Qinghai (15.62%), Gansu and Shaanxi and is the overall major minority in Henan and Anhui.
Hui people are referred to by Central Asian Turkic speakers and Tajiks by the ethnonym Dungan people. Joseph Fletcher cited Turkic and Persian manuscripts related to the preaching of the 17th century Sufi master Muhammad Yūsuf (or, possibly, his son Afaq Khoja) inside the Ming dynasty (in today's Gansu and/or Qinghai), where the preacher allegedly converted ulamā-yi Tunganiyyāh (i.e., "Dungan ulema") into Sufism., based on:
As early as the 1830s, Dungan, in various spellings appeared in both English and German, referring to the Hui people of Xinjiang. For example, James Prinsep in 1835 mentioned Muslim "Túngánis" in Chinese Tartary.James Prinsep (1835). 9781402156311, The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. ISBN 9781402156311 The word (mostly in the form "Dungani" or "Tungani", sometimes "Dungens" or "Dungans") acquired currency in English and other western languages when books in the 1860–70s discussed the Dungan Revolt.
Later authors continued to use variants of the term for Xinjiang Hui people. For example, Owen Lattimore, writing ca. 1940, maintained the terminological distinction between these two related groups: the Donggan or "Tungkan" (the older Wade-Giles spelling for "Dungan"), described by him as the descendants of the Gansu Hui people resettled in Xinjiang in the 17–18th centuries, vs. e.g. the "Gansu Moslems" or generic "Chinese Moslems".
The name "Dungan" sometimes referred to all Muslims coming from China proper, such as Dongxiang and Salar in addition to Hui. Reportedly, the Hui disliked the term Dungan, calling themselves either Huihui or Huizi.
In the Soviet Union and its successor countries, the term "Dungans" (дунгане) became the standard name for the descendants of Chinese-speaking Muslims who emigrated in the 1870s and 1880s to the Russian Empire, mostly to today's Kyrgyzstan and south-eastern Kazakhstan.
Early European explorers speculated that T'ung-kan (Dungans, i.e. Hui, called "Chinese Mohammedans") in Xinjiang, originated from Khwarezm who were transported to China by the Mongols, and descended from a mixture of Chinese, Iranian and Turkic peoples. They also reported that the T'ung-kan were Shafi'ites, as were the Khorezmians. (2003). 9788179360118, Vedams eBooks. ISBN 9788179360118
The Hui people of Yunnan and Northwestern China resulted from the convergence of Mongol, Turkic, and Iranian peoples or other Central Asian settlers recruited by the Yuan dynasty, either as artisans or as officials (the semu). The Hui formed the second-highest stratum in the Yuan ethnic hierarchy (after the Mongols but above Chinese). A proportion of the ancestral nomad or military ethnic groups were originally Nestorian Christians, many of whom later converted to Islam under the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty dynasties.
However, Hui peoples from Gansu, along with their Dongxian neighbors, did not receive substantial gene flow from Western and Central Asia or European populations during their Islamization.
Ma Tong recorded that the 6,781,500 Sunni Hui in China followed 58.2% Gedimu, 21% Yihewani, 10.9% Jahriyya, 7.2% Khuffiya, 1.4% Qadiriyya, and 0.7% Kubrawiyya Sufi schools.
Among the northern Hui, Central Asian Sufi schools such as Kubrawiyya, Qadiriyya, and (Khufiyya and Jahriyya) were strong influences, mostly of the Hanafi Madhhab. Hui Muslims have a long tradition of synthesizing Confucian teachings with Qur'anic teachings and reportedly have contributed to Confucianism from the Tang dynasty period on. Before the "Yihewani" movement, a Chinese Muslim sect inspired by the Middle Eastern reform movement, northern Hui Sufis blended Taoism teachings and martial arts practices with Sufi philosophy.
converted to Islam and became Hui people.
Kuomintang official Ma Hetian visited Tangwang town and met an "elderly local literatus from the Tang clan" while he was on his inspection tour of Gansu and Qinghai.(Original from the University of Michigan)
In Gansu province in the 1800s, a Muslim Hui woman married into the Han Chinese Kong lineage of Dachuan District, which was descended from Confucius. The Han Chinese groom and his family converted to Islam after the marriage.
Around 1376 the 30-year-old Chinese merchant Lin Nu visited Ormuz in Persia, converted to Islam, and married a Semu girl ("娶色目女") (either Persian or Arab) and brought her back to Quanzhou in Fujian. The Confucian philosopher Li Zhi was their descendant.
The Cultural Revolution wreaked much havoc on all cultures and ethnicities in China. The quelling of Hui militant rebels at the hands of the People's Liberation Army in Yunnan, known as the Shadian incident, reportedly claimed over 1,600 lives in 1975.Yongming Zhou, Anti-drug crusades in twentieth-century China : nationalism, history, and state building, Lanham u.a. Rowman & Littlefield 1999, p. 162
Hui religious schools are also allowed to establish a large autonomous network of mosques and schools run by a Hui Sufi leader, which was formed with the approval of the Chinese government even though he admitted to attending an event where Osama Bin Laden spoke.
Hui Muslims who are employed by the state are allowed to fast during Ramadan. The number of Hui going on Hajj is expanding. Hui women are allowed to wear hijab. Many Hui women wear veils and headscarves. There is a major halal industry and Islamic clothing industry to manufacture Muslim attire such as skull caps, veils, and headscarves in the Hui region of Ningxia.
China banned a book entitled Xing Fengsu ("Sexual Customs") which insulted Islam and placed its authors under arrest in 1989 after protests in Lanzhou and Beijing by Chinese Hui Muslims. During the protests, the Chinese police provided protection to the Hui Muslim protestors, and the Chinese government organized public burnings of the book. The Chinese government assisted them and gave into their demands because Hui do not have a separatist movement.
In 2007, anticipating the coming "Year of the Pig" in the Chinese calendar, depictions of pigs were banned from CCTV "to show respect to Islam, and upon guidance from higher levels of the government".
At least two Hui Muslims have allegedly been included in reeducation camps, termed "Vocational Education and Training Centers" which the Chinese government claims are aimed at reforming the political thought of detainees, including extremist religious beliefs and separatist or terrorist sympathies. One or more of the Hui within these camps may have faced torture, and are allegedly grouped in different cells from Kazakhs and Uighurs, and on rare occasion die from stress.
The Uyghur militant organization East Turkestan Islamic Movement's magazine Islamic Turkistan has accused the Chinese "Muslim Brotherhood" (the Yihewani) of being responsible for the moderation of Hui Muslims and the lack of Hui joining militant jihadist groups in addition to blaming other things for the lack of Hui Jihadists, such as the fact that for more than 300 years Hui and Uyghurs have been enemies of each other, no separatist Islamist organizations among the Hui, the fact that the Hui view China as their home, and the fact that the "infidel Chinese" language is the language of the Hui.
Even among Hui Salafis (Sailaifengye) and Uyghur Salafis, there is little coordination or cooperation and the two have totally different political agendas, with the Hui Salafists content to carry out their own teachings and remain politically neutral.
Hui Muslim are accused by Uyghurs Muslims of pushing heroin onto Uyghurs. There is a typecast image in the public eye of Hui being heroin dealers.
A small but growing number of Huis who supported or even joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Chinese officials were believed to have ignored growing Hui Sufis' resentment against growing Salafi movement until recently. ISIL had released a music video called "I am a mujahid" (我們是Mujahid) in Mandarin to reportedly attract Hui Muslims into joining the organization.
Muslim general Ma Bufang allowed to openly worship and Christian missionaries to station themselves in Qinghai. Ma and other high-ranking Muslim generals attended the Kokonuur Lake ceremony where the God of the Lake was worshipped, and during the ritual, the Chinese national anthem was sung, participants bowed to a portrait of Kuomintang party founder Sun Yat-sen, and to the God of the Lake. Offerings were given to Sun by the participants, including Muslims. Ma Bufang invited Kazakh Muslims to attend the ceremony. Ma Bufang received audiences of Christian missionaries, who sometimes preached the Gospel. Alternate URL: His son Ma Jiyuan received a silver cup from the missionaries.
The Muslim Ma Zhu wrote "Chinese religions are different from Islam, but the ideas are the same."
During the Panthay Rebellion, the Muslim leader Du Wenxiu said to a Catholic priest: "I have read your religious works and I have found nothing inappropriate. Muslims and Christians are brothers."
In Yunnan province, during the Qing dynasty, tablets that wished the Emperor a long life were placed at mosque entrances. No were available and no chanting accompanied the call to prayer. The mosques were similar to Buddhist temples, and incense was burned inside.
Hui enlisted in the military and were praised for their martial skills.
Circumcision in Islam is known as khitan. Islamic scholars agree that it is required (mandatory), or recommended. However, circumcision is not universally practiced among the Hui. In the regions where it is undertaken, Hui tradition is that the maternal uncle ( Jiujiu) play an important role by the circumcision and wedding of his nephew.
Hui people usually have a Chinese name and a Muslim name in Arabic, although the Chinese name is used primarily. Some Hui do not remember their Muslim names.
Hui people who adopt foreign names may not use their Muslim names. An example of this is Pai Hsien-yung, a Hui author in America, who adopted the name Kenneth. His father was Muslim general Bai Chongxi, who had his children adopt western names.
A Ningxia legend states that four common Hui surnames—Na, Su, La, and Ding—originate with the descendants of Nasruddin, a son of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, who "divided" the ancestor's name ( Nasulading, in Chinese) among themselves.
A new edition of a book by Ma Te-hsin, called Ho-yin Ma Fu-ch'u hsien-sheng i-shu Ta hua tsung kuei Ssu tien yaohui, first printed in 1865, was reprinted in 1927 by Ma Fuxiang. General Ma Fuxiang invested in new editions of Confucian and Islamic texts. He edited Shuofang Daozhi, a gazette and books such as Meng Cang ZhuangKuang: Hui Bu Xinjiang fu.
Published in 1844, The Chinese repository, Volume 13 includes an account of an Englishman who stayed in the Chinese city of Ningbo, where he visited the local mosque. The Hui running the mosque was from Shandong and descended from residents of the Arabian city of Medina. He was able to read and speak Arabic with ease, but was illiterate in Chinese, although he was born in China and spoke Chinese.
Zhao nuxu is a practice where the son-in-law moves in with the wife's family. Some marriages between Han and Hui are conducted this way. The husband does not need to convert, but the wife's family follows Islamic customs. No census data documents this type of marriage, reporting only cases in which the wife moves in with the groom's family. In Henan province, a marriage was recorded between a Han boy and Hui girl without the Han converting, during the Ming dynasty. Steles in Han and Hui villages record this story and Hui and Han members of the Lineage celebrate at the ancestral temple together.
In Beijing, Oxen street Gladney found 37 Han–Hui couples; two of which were had Hui wives and the other 35 had Hui husbands. Data was collected in different Beijing districts. In Ma Dian 20% of intermarriages were Hui women marrying into Han families, in Tang Fang 11% of intermarriage were Hui women marrying into Han families. 67.3% of intermarriage in Tang Fang were Han women marrying into a Hui family and in Ma Dian 80% of intermarriage were Han women marrying into Hui families.
Li Nu, the son of Li Lu, from a Han Chinese Li family in Quanzhou visited Ormus in Persia in 1376. He married a Persian people or an Arab girl, and brought her back to Quanzhou. He then converted to Islam. Li Nu was the ancestor of Ming dynasty reformer Li Chih..
In Gansu province in the 1800s, a Muslim Hui woman married into the Han Chinese Kong lineage of Dachuan, which was descended from Confucius. The Han Chinese groom and his family were only converted to Islam after the marriage by their Muslim relatives. In 1715 in Yunnan province, few Han Chinese married Hui women and converted to Islam.
Jiang Xingzhou, a Han Eight Banners, married a Muslim woman in Mukden during Qianlong's late reign. He fled his position due to fear of being punished for being a bannerman marrying a commoner woman. He was sentenced to death for leaving his official post but the sentence was commuted and he was not executed.GZSL,juan1272, QL 52.1.8 (25 February 1787).
In the Dungan Revolt (1895–96) 400 Muslims in Topa did not join the revolt and proclaimed their loyalty to China. An argument between a Han Chinese and his Muslim wife led to these Muslims getting massacred, when she threatened that the Muslims from Topa would attack Tankar and give a signal to their co-religionists to rise up and open the gates by burning the temples atop the hills. The husband reported this to an official and the next day the Muslims were massacred with the exception of a few Muslim girls who were married off to Han Chinese.
In the 21st century, Hui men marrying Han women and Han men who marry Hui women have above average education.
During the Ming dynasty, Hui generals and troops loyal to Ming fought against Mongols and Hui loyal to the Yuan dynasty in the Ming conquest of Yunnan.
(2009). 9789812308375, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ISBN 9789812308375
Hui also fought for the emperor against aboriginal tribes in southern China during the Miao Rebellions. Many Hui soldiers of the Ming dynasty then settled in Yunnan and Hunan provinces.
During the Qing dynasty, Hui troops in the Imperial army helped crush Hui rebels during the Dungan revolt and Panthay Rebellion. The Qing administration in Xinjiang also preferred to use Hui as police.
(1977). 9780521214476, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521214476
Yang Zengxin, the Han Chinese governor of Xinjiang, extensively relied on Hui generals like Ma Shaowu and Ma Fuxing. Qing Muslim general Zuo Baogui (1837–1894), from Shandong province, was killed in Pyongyang in Korea by Japanese cannon fire in 1894 while defending the city, where a memorial to him stands.
Hui troops also fought western armies for the first time in the Boxer Rebellion, winning battles including the Battle of Langfang and Battle of Beicang. These troops were the Kansu Braves led by General Dong Fuxiang.
Military service continued into the Republic of China period. After the Kuomintang party took power, Hui participation in the military reached new levels. Qinghai and Ningxia were created out of Gansu province, and the Kuomintang appointed Hui generals as military governors of all three provinces. They became known as the Ma Clique. Many Muslim Salar people joined the army in the Republic era; they and Dongxiang people who have joined the army are described as being given "eating rations" meaning military service.
The Chinese government appointed Ma Fuxiang as military governor of Suiyuan. Ma Fuxiang commented on the willingness for Hui people to become martyrs in battle (see Martyrdom in Islam), saying:
They have not enjoyed the educational and political privileges of the Han Chinese, and they are in many respects primitive. But they know the meaning of fidelity, and if I say "do this, although it means death," they cheerfully obey.
Hui generals and soldiers fought for the Republic against Tibet in the Sino-Tibetan War, against Uyghur rebels in the Kumul Rebellion, the Soviet Union in the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang and against Japan in the Second Sino Japanese War. The Japanese planned to invade Ningxia from Suiyuan in 1939 and create a Hui puppet state. The next year in 1940, the Japanese were defeated militarily by Kuomintang Muslim general Ma Hongbin. Ma Hongbin's Hui Muslim troops launched further attacks against Japan in the Battle of West Suiyuan. The Chinese Islamic Association issued "A message to all Muslims in China from the Chinese Islamic Association for National Salvation" in Ramadan of 1940 during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
We have to implement the teaching "the love of the fatherland is an article of faith" by the Prophet Muhammad and to inherit the Hui's glorious history in China. In addition, let us reinforce our unity and participate in the twice more difficult task of supporting a defensive war and promoting religion... We hope that ahongs and the elite will initiate a movement of prayer during Ramadan and implement group prayer to support our intimate feeling toward Islam. A sincere unity of Muslims should be developed to contribute power towards the expulsion of Japan.
"Ahong" is the Mandarin Chinese word for "imam". During the war against Japan, the imams supported Muslim resistance, calling for Muslims to participate in the fight against Japan, claiming that casualties would become shahid (martyrs). Ma Zhanshan was a Hui guerilla fighter against the Japanese.
Hui forces were known for their anti-communist sentiment, and fought for the Kuomintang against the CCP in the Chinese Civil War, and against rebels during the Ili Rebellion. Bai Chongxi, a Hui general, was appointed to the post of Minister of National Defence, the highest military position in the Republic of China. After the Communist victory and evacuation of the Kuomintang to Taiwan, Hui people continued to serve in the military of the Republic as opposed to the Communist-led People's Republic. Ma Bufang became the ambassador of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to Saudi Arabia. His brother, Ma Buqing, remained a military general on Taiwan. Bai Chongxi and Ma Ching-chiang were other Hui who served in Taiwan as military generals.
The PLA recruited Hui soldiers who formally had served under Ma Bufang, as well as Salafi soldiers, to crush the Tibetan revolt in Amdo during the 1959 Tibetan uprising.
Hui put Kuomintang Blue Sky with a White Sun party symbols on their Halal restaurants and shops. A Christian missionary in 1935 took a picture of a Muslim meat restaurant in Hankou that had Arabic and Chinese lettering indicating that it was Halal (fit for Muslim consumption). It had two Kuomintang party symbols on it.
One of the reasons for the trend in China, is that Hui Muslims play a vital role as being middlemen in trade between the Middle East and China, and the China-Middle East trade has become increasingly important to the country. Consequently, the government has started constructing a $3.7 billion Islamic theme park called "World Muslim City", in Yinchuan, one of Hui Muslims hubs. Additionally unlike Uyghurs, who faces far more restrictions in religious freedoms, Hui Muslims generally do not seek independence from China and have a cultural affinity to the Han, and are far more Sinicization. "It's not an issue of freedom of religion," says Gladney, "Clearly, there are many avenues of religious expression that are unfettered in China, but when you cross these very often nebulous and shifting boundaries of what the state regards as political, then you're in dangerous territory. Obviously this is what we see in Xinjiang and in Tibet".
Hui people also joined the wave of Chinese migrants that peaked between 1875 and 1912. They inhabited Penang, Sabah, Singapore and Pangkor prior to World War II. Most were Min Nan-speaking coolies and merchants from Fujian. The colonial British welfare system was commissioned according to language groups, so the Hui were classed as Hokkien. A small number of Hui may have become assimilated into mainstream Chinese society and local Muslim populations. In 1975, five Hui leaders started a campaign to get every clansman to put up a notice listing their ancestors for 40 generations, as a way of reminding them of their origins. The exact Hui population is unclear today as many families left Islam before independence. In 2000 official census figures gave the number of Muslim Chinese in Malaysia as 57,000 but most were Han converts. According to the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association, the surnames Koay, Ma, Ha, Ta, Sha, Woon, and An (or Ang) may indicate Hui ancestry.
Saudi Arabia was settled by hundreds of Hui Muslim soldiers under Ma Chengxiang after 1949. The Hui General Ma Bufang settled permanently in Mecca in 1961. For a while Cairo was the dwelling place of Ma Bukang and Ma Bufang in between the time they were in Saudi Arabia. The death of Ma Jiyuan in Jeddah on 27 February 2012 was greeted with sorrow by the Chinese consulate.
The Panthays in Myanmar and some of the Chin Haw in Thailand are Hui Muslims, while Hui in Central Asia and Russia are called Dungans.
In 1936, after Sheng Shicai expelled 20,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang to Qinghai, the Hui led by Ma Bufang massacred their fellow Muslims, the Kazakhs, until only 135 remained.
The Hui people have had a long presence in Qinghai and Gansu, or what Tibetans call Amdo, although Tibetans have historically dominated local politics. The situation was reversed in 1931 when the Hui general Ma Bufang inherited the governorship of Qinghai, stacking his government with Hui and Salar and excluding Tibetans. In his power base in Qinghai's northeastern Haidong Prefecture, Ma compelled many Tibetans to convert to Islam and acculturate. Tensions also mounted when Hui started migrating into Lhasa in the 1990s. In February 2003, Tibetans rioted against Hui, destroying Hui-owned shops and restaurants.
Tensions with Uyghurs arose because Qing and Republican Chinese authorities used Hui troops and officials to dominate the Uyghurs and crush Uyghur revolts. Xinjiang's Hui population increased by over 520 percent between 1940 and 1982, an average annual growth of 4.4 percent, while the Uyghur population only grew at 1.7 percent. This dramatic increase in Hui population led inevitably to significant tensions between the Hui and Uyghur populations. Many Hui Muslim civilians were killed by Uyghur rebel troops in the Kizil massacre (1933). Some Uyghurs in Kashgar remember that the Hui army at the 1934 Battle of Kashgar massacred 2,000 to 8,000 Uyghurs, which caused tension as more Hui moved into Kashgar from other parts of China. Some Hui criticize Uyghur separatism and generally do not want to get involved in conflict in other countries. Hui and Uyghur live separately, attending different mosques. During the 2009 rioting in Xinjiang that killed around 200 people, "Kill the Han, kill the Hui" was the recurring cry spread across social media among extremist Uyghurs.
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