Diasporic Identities in the Historical Development of

the Maritime Muslim Communities of Song-Yuan China

John Chaffee
Department of History
SUNY at Binghamton

Paper submitted to the
J ournal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient


Chinas Muslim maritime communities are remarkable in several regards. They
are old dating to the Tang (618-907) in Guangzhou and at least the Song (960-1279) in
Quanzhou and the contemporary presence of coastal Muslim communities is a
testament to their longevity. Compared to other Asian maritime diasporas, they are well
documented, appearing in both Arabic and Chinese sources, and having bequeathed a
material legacy of mosques, cemeteries, and archaeological remains. The historical
literature on these communities, however, has suffered from the tendency either to focus
narrowly on specific events or topics, or to paint them with exceedingly broad strokes,
often in the course of dealing with their role in maritime trade, with the result that they sit
almost outside of history. We know from the study of modern diasporas that significant
changes occur in their composition and identity, not only from one era to the next but
even from one generation to the next. Yet despite their historical importance as
economic, cultural and political intermediaries between the Chinese and their Asian
maritime neighbors, we have little sense of the development and evolution of the Muslim
communities in China, or of their variable relationship to the Muslim trade diaspora of
maritime Asia.
Trade diaspora has been defined by Andr Wink, following Abner Cohen, as
the interrelated commercial network of a nation of socially interdependent, but spatially
2
dispersed communities which over time remains an alien element in the wider society
in which they become settled.
1
This definition accords well with our knowledge of the
medieval Muslim trading world of maritime Asia, though one might question whether it
consisted of a single diverse diaspora, or a number that were overlapping (Arab, South
Asian, etc.). In either case, it is safe to say that the Chinese Muslim communities
constituted a part of the broader diaspora, occupying important nodes in the diasporic
network. It is also important to recognize that diasporas and their communities exist
within history, with varying patterns of sojourning versus settlement and separateness
from the host cultures versus assimilation. But connectedness to the broader diaspora is
what gave the communities their diasporic character, and it is a character that was
maintained by Chinas maritime Muslim communities throughout the long period under
consideration.
I have chosen to focus upon the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) periods
in this paper because that period represented not only a highpoint of Asian maritime
trade, and therefore of interactions between China and the rest of the maritime world, but
also because it is marked by events at its beginning and end that set it off from the Tang
and Ming. At the early end, the rebel Huang Chaos sacking of Guangzhou in 879
and his killing of large numbers of foreigners there 120,000 Muslims, Jews, Christians

1
Andr Wink, Al-Hind. The Making of the Indo-Islamic World. Vol. I. Early Medieval India and the
Expansion of Islam7
th
to 11
th
Centuries. (3
rd
edition Leiden, New York, Kln: E. J. Brill, 1996), p. 66;
Abner Cohen, Cultural strategies in the organization of trading diasporas, in Claude Meillassoux, ed., The
development of indigenous trade and markets in West Africa: studies presented and discussed at the Tenth
International African Seminar at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, December 1969 (London: Oxford
University Press, 1971), pp. 266-281. Cohen raises a host of questions about the nature of trading
diasporas, as he calls them their organization, structures of authority, forms of communication, etc.
which interrogates through an investigation of West African diasporas. However, he also speaks to the
antiquity of trading diasporas, mentioning medieval Arab and Jewish trading diasporas among them (267).
3
and Mazdeans according to the Arab historian Ab Zaid of Srf, writing in 915
2
caused
a rupture in trade relations between China and its maritime partners, to the benefit of
southeast Asian ports where much of the business moved, for perhaps as long as a
generation or two.
3
And the massacre and trade shift presumably had deleterious
consequences for the Guangzhou Muslims, who had been numerous and prosperous,
though we have only silence from the sources. Thus the pro-trade policies of the Southern
Tang, Min, and Wuyue during the period of Ten Kingdoms (or Five Dynasties, 907-960),
and especially of the Song in the late tenth century, marked a new beginning for the
foreign community in Guangzhou. This was followed in close order by the spread of
traders to other southeastern ports, among them Hangzhou, Mingzhou, and especially
Quanzhou.
At the latter end of this era, the transition from the Mongols with their generally
pro-foreign, pro-Muslim policies, to the Ming with its far more restrictive policies, can be
seen to mark the end of an era, especially in Quanzhou, where the destructive rule of the
so-called Persian Garrison for much of the 1360s damaged the commercial underpinnings
of that great merchant city and brought its Muslim population into disrepute. Although
the Muslim communities remained large, and had a resurgence during the Zheng He
voyages of the early fifteenth century, generally their roles and activities during the Ming
were much diminished.

2
Cited by Howard Levy, Biography of Huang Chao (Berkeley: Chinese Dynastic History Translations, no.
5, 1961), p. 109. The number itself cannot be taken literally, but it attests to the existence of a sizeable
community as well as to a massacre of foreigners when Huang Chao captured Guangzhou.
3
See Wink, Al-Hind, p. 84; G. F. Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early
Medieval Times. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 78; and K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and
Civilization in the Indian Ocean. An Economic History fromthe rise of Islamto 1750. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 51. One prominent theory is that most of the China trade moved to
Kalah, an island off the west coast of the Malay peninsula.
4
For four centuries, however, the Muslims of southeastern China flourished, and it
is on that period that I am focusing, in an attempt to map the contours of change. Briefly,
I propose a tripartite timeframe. In the first, from the Ten Kingdoms period through at
least the 1020s, trade and merchants were concentrated in Guangzhou, with frequent
tribute missions playing a major role. In the second, covering the rest of the Song,
maritime trade involved multiple ports and free trade, albeit under the supervision of the
maritime trade superintendencies, and the Muslim communities became increasingly
integrated into the society of southeastern China. In the third period, Mongol rule
elevated the status of the Muslims while the Mongol ecumene made possible a large
influx of Muslims from the Middle East and provided unprecedented mobility for them,
both within China and between China and their home countries, thus significantly
altering the nature of the communities and their diasporic identity.
The Chinese communities with which we are concerned were by no means unique
in the medieval maritime world. During the first millennium and a half of the common
era foreign merchant settlements could be found in Champa, Annam, Sumatra, Java, Sri
Lanka, Malabar, and the Sind, not to mention the many settlements in southwestern Asia
and the Mediterranean. They varied widely in terms of their size, history, ethnic and
religious composition, and relations with local powers, but their common participation in
long distance trade created far flung networks and, according to K. N. Chaudhuri, , a
shared commercial culture:
There were certainly well-established conventions in commercial contracts in all the
trading cities of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. The legal corpus protected
merchants when the contracts were concluded between inter-communal members, and
the reputation of a port of trade turned on the fairness of its legal traditions.
4



4
Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization, p. 12.
5
Nor were the Muslim merchants in Chinese ports alone in their activities.
Hangzhou, Mingzhou, and especially Guangzhou and Quanzhou were host to multiple
diasporic populations, of which those from Annam, Srivijaya, Chola India, and Korea
were noteworthy. But given the preeminent role played by the largely Arab and Persian
Muslims in long-distance trade, and perhaps even in the regional trade between China
and southeast Asia, they seem to have been the most prominent of the trade diasporas in
China. In Chinese discussions of foreign merchants or foreign guests (fanshang
, fanke ), specific examples most typically involve Arabs (Dashi ) or
individuals with Arabic names. This accords with economic reality, for according to
Zhou Qufei writing in 1178, As for the wealth and largest quantities of
valuable goods, none can compare with Arabia. Then comes Java, then Srivijaya, and
then all the other countries.
5

Any attempt to trace the evolution of the Muslim communities in China must
begin by considering the macro-historical factors that helped to shape them. In the
Middle East, the increasing importance of the Mediterranean economy and the emergence
of what Janet Abu-Lughod has famously described as a world system in maritime Asia
were arguably factors behind the decline of long-dominant Baghdad during the late
Abbasid and Buyyid, and the corresponding rise of the Fatimid and then the Mamluk

5
Zhou Qufei , Lingwai daida jiaozhu . Yang Wuquan , ed. (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 3:126. Mention should also be made of the Tamil merchants from Chola India,
whose considerable role in the maritime trade of the 11
th
-13
th
centuries made them a visible presence on
Quanzhou and elsewhere. See John Guy, Tamil Merchant Guilds and the Quanzhou Trade, in Angela
Schottenhammer, ed., The Emporiumof the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000-1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2001),
pp. 283-309.

6
regimes in Cairo. The unprecedented economic growth of the maritime Asia, driven in
large part by the size and dynamism of the Song economy, created new powers such as
Chola, Srivijaya, Java and Champa, new ports like Calicut, Palembang and Quanzhou,
and new merchant diasporas, among them the Chinese, as Kenneth Hall shows in his
article in this issue. Where Abbasid-Tang trade had relied upon dangerous but direct sea
voyages from the Persian Gulf to China, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a more
lucrative and secure system of segmented trade involved the transshipment of goods in
South Indian, and sometimes Southeast Asian ports.
6
Shipping changed as well, with
large Chinese-style seagoing junks with nailed hulls replacing the smaller Arab and
Southeast Asian vessels as the preferred ships for long-distance trade among merchants
of all nationalities.
7

For Muslim traders, the expanded trading system meant more business in more
places, albeit with more rivals. The largely dyadic ties between Guangzhou and the
Middle East were replaced by a network of Muslim communities, and given the spread of
Islam into India and even into certain segments of Southeast Asian society, one could no
longer assume that these communities would consist just of Arabs and Persians, although
in China at least the Arabs and Persians appear to have dominated the Muslim maritime
communities in the Song-Yuan period. At the same time, the fluidity of the Asian
maritime world was such that Arabs were commonly used as tribute envoys to China by
South and Southeast Asian kingdoms, Chola, Champa and Srivijaya among them. For
example, Pu Jiaxin (probably Abu Kasim) first appears in Chinese records as a

6
Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization p. 39; Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment
of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 160-1.
7
Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade, pp. 176-7. See, too, his article in this issue.
7
foreign guest in 1004, and subsequently as the Muscat envoy at in 1011, the Chola vice
envoy in 1015, and the Arabian vice envoy in 1019.
8

Two things served to distinguish the diasporic communities in the ports of China
from those elsewhere in Asia. One was the enormous size and wealth of the Chinese
market. In its heyday, the city of Quanzhou had a population in the hundreds of
thousands, making it the most important port in the world, and while we have no figures
on the size of the foreign communities there, it is reasonable to assume that they were
correspondingly large. Second was the role of the Chinese government, in the form of the
tribute system and the maritime trade superintendencies (Shibosi ) that regulated
overseas trade in Chinas ports, institutions that did much to shape commerce and the
merchant communities from the tenth through the thirteenth centuries. As we shall see
these factors did much to shape the historical development of the Muslim maritime
communities in China.
* * * * *
Although most of our evidence for the revival and then burgeoning of maritime
trade in the tenth and eleventh centuries comes from the Song, it clearly had its origins
under the southern kingdoms during the Five Dynasties period (907-960). According to
Hugh Clark, Guangzhou in Southern Han (917-971), Quanzhou in Min (909-945), and
Mingzhou in Wuyue (907-988) all flourished as a result of the trade, and their respective

8
Robert Hartwell, Tribute Missions to China, 960-1126 (Philadelphia, 1983), pp. 188, 198, 200, 206. See
Tansen Sens discussion of this phenomenon in Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade, 167-8. Hartwells
privately published work consists of tables by country which collate information concerning each of the
tribute missions from a variety of Song sources. He intended it as a supplement to a planned monograph on
the tribute mission, international trade and politics, which unfortunately he never wrote.
8
kingdoms all benefited fiscally as a result.
9
While we have no direct evidence about the
Muslim communities in those cities, they must have been there since in the tenth-century
maritime trade was still the exclusive domain of non-Chinese.
During the early years of the Song, the government was proactive in its
encouragement of maritime trade. The first Song maritime trade superintendency was
opened in Guangzhou in 971, and this was subsequently followed by the creation of two
new superintendencies in Hangzhou and Mingzhou.
10
During the Yongxi reign
period (984-987), eunuch officials were sent abroad on four missions to invite the trade
of merchants from all foreign countries in the southern seas, with instructions that they
were to go to the maritime trade superintendency in Hangzhou to obtain their licenses.
11

While the maritime trade superintendencies were an extremely significant
innovation,
12
during the first half century of the Song tribute missions may well have
been more important for the practice of maritime trade. During the reigns of the first three
emperors (960-1022), the high water period of the Song tributary system, fifty-six
missions came from the kingdoms of the southern seas. Of these, almost half (twenty-
three) were from the Middle East.
13
The Song tributary system was a complex institution

9
Hugh R. Clark, The Southern Kingdoms between the Tang and the Sung draft chapter, Cambridge
History of China, Volume 5, The Sung, Part I.
10
Tuo Tuo , Song shi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 186:4558. Hereafter cited as SS.
11
SS 186:4559
12
There is some disagreement among scholars on this point. As early as the eighth century the Tang had a
supervisor or superintendent of foreign trade (shibo shi ), but whether this meant that there was an
office or superintendency, as some have argued, is debatable. Wang Zhenping has argued persuasively that
the shibo shi were ad hoc commissioners, typically eunuch, and representing imperial palace interests,
certainly a far cry from the superintendencies of Song times. Wang Zhenping, Tang Maritime Trade
Administration, Asia Major 4.1 (1991), pp. 25-27.
13
The figures have been compiled from Hartwell, Tribute Missions to China. A fuller breakdown is given
below:

9
that reflected the unique international configuration that obtained in East Asia at the end
of the first millennium. Song relations with its continental neighbors to the north the
Liao and Xixia, and later the Jin were notable for the pragmatic willingness by the Song
emperors to compromise the hierarchical principles of the tributary system in order to
maintain peace.
14
Along the southern frontier, more traditional notions of hierarchy and
hegemony predominated in Song relations with Vietnam (Nanyue or Jiaozhi )
and Champa (Zhancheng ), though they also utilized the loose rein (jimi )
system of frontier administration begun by the Tang.
15
In contrast to both of these
tributary relationships, commerce was central in the Songs tribute relations with the
countries of the southern seas, which were too distant to be militarily or geographically
consequential to the Song. The connection between trade and tribute went beyond the
lavish and mutual gift-giving that characterized tribute missions generally. According to
one Southern Song source, This year (968), the Arab kingdom sent an envoy bearing

Tributary Missions from the Southern Seas in the Northern Song

Maritime
Southeast Asia
South
Asia
Southwest
Asia
Totals
Taizu 960-75 9 4 4 17
Taizong 976-97 9 2 8 19
Zhenzong 998-1022 3 6 11 20
Renzong 1023-63 1 4 2 7
Yingzong 1064-67 0 0 0 0
Shenzong 1068-85 4 3 7 14
Zhezong 1086-1100 3 1 3 7
Huizong 1101-26 2 0 1 3
Totals 31 20 36 87

14
See Morris Rossabi, ed., China Among Equals: the Middle Kingdomand Its Neighbors, 10
th
-14
th

Centuries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), especially Wang Gungwu, The Rhetoric of a
Lesser Empire: Early Sungs Relations With Its Neighbors.
15
See James Anderson, The Rebel Den of Nng TrCao: Eleventh-Century Rebellion and Response along
the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), Chapter 1.
10
tribute goods, and from that tribute mission on, merchant ships have come and gone
without ceasing.
16
Part of the connection was physical. The maritime missions all
stopped first in the city of Guangzhou, where they were undoubtedly welcomed by their
fellow countrymen, since they would have been bearing news, letters and goods.
But there is also evidence of a direct connection between tribute and trade. The
Arab envoys, in particular, are frequently identified as ship owners (bozhu ), and
in some cases they were actually from the Guangzhou community. The examples of the
Arab merchant Pu Ximi (Abu Hamid?) and his son Pu Yatuoli
(Abu Adil?) are instructive in this regard. In 976, Pu Ximi was sent by the Arab King
Kelifu .
17
Seventeen years later, in 993, he was back again, but the stated
circumstances were very different:
Formerly when I was at home, I received a letter from the foreign headman of
Guangzhou urging me to go to the capital and offer tribute. He said much in praise of
the emperors virtues, who had commanded a liberal treatment towards the foreigners
to the viceroy of Guangnan, in order to console the foreign traders and make them
import things from distant countries.
18


Two years later Pu Yatuoli explained his own mission in a memorial to the throne:
My father Pu Ximi, seeking commercial profits, took ship and came to Guangzhou,
and when five years had passed without his return, my mother sent me this long
distance to see him. Upon my arrival in Guangzhou I saw him.
19



16
Shantang kaosuo by Zhang Ruyu = O , cited in Song huiyao jigao
(Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1964), Fanyi, 7/3a. This will be cited hereafter as SHY.
17
SS, 3:47. According to Robert M. Hartwell, Tribute Missions, p. 195, Al-Muti was Caliph of Baghdad at
the time. Perhaps ke-li-fu was a translation of caliph rather than his name.
18
SS, 490:14119; largely following the translation of Jitsuzo Kuwabara, On Pu Shou-keng, a Man of the
Western Regions, who was the Superintendent of the Trading Ships Office in Chan-chou towards the
End of the Sung dynasty, together with a General Sketch of Trade of the Arabs in China during the Tang
and Sung Eras, Part 1, Memoirs of the Research Department of the Ty Bunko 2 (1928):41.
19
SS, 490:14119-20; Kuwabara, Pu Shou-keng, p. 78.
11
The Pu father and son surely represent the Arab trading elite of the late tenth
century. Theirs was a wealthy family with a well-established involvement in the China
trade, but maintaining their primary residence in the west (Ximis wife remained there).
Although the missions of 976 and 998 were both sent by the caliph of Baghdad, their
own accounts make it clear that they were the initiators. The role of the headman,
moreover, accords with the observation of Zhu Yu (early 12
th
c.) that the headman
is specifically responsible for exhorting the foreign merchants to send tribute.
20

I would suggest that the initiative for many though certainly not all of the
maritime tribute missions came from the foreign merchant community of Guangzhou.
This is not to say that they were fraudulent, but rather that they were often proposed by
the merchants and undertaken with the support of their rulers. This helps to explain an
apparently anomalous memorial from 1016 by the Guangzhou prefect, Chen Shiqing
, proposing that limits be set on the size of tribute missions:
The embassies with their envoys, vice-envoys, subordinate officials (panguan ),
and assisting officials (fangshouguan ) should be limited to 20 for Arabia
(Dashi), Chola (Zhunianguo ), Srivijaya (Sanfoqi ), and Java (Shepo
), and 10 for Annam (Zhancheng ), Tambralinga (Danliumei ),
Borneo (Boni ), Guluo , and the Philippines (Moyi ), and they should
be given documents for their travel. Guangzhou foreign residents (fanke ) who
falsely substitute for them should be found guilty.
21


At first glance, the last sentence would appear to deny the participation of the merchants
in Guangzhou. But since we know that merchants in Guangzhou legitimately participated

20
Zhu Yu, , Pingzhou ketan (Song; Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989), 2:27.
12
in tribute missions, the concern here was presumably about proper credentialing rather
than barring the merchants as such. Moreover, since the Song government had no means
of enforcing quotas on the size of missions at their purported point of departure, this
proposal was almost certainly aimed at the envoys as they assembled their retinue for the
trip to the capital.
Given the close connection between trade and tribute missions, it seems likely
that most foreign merchants were sojourners, like Pu Ximi having close family members
in their home countries or possibly other Asian port cities and maintaining a foreign
political identity. Su Che e (1039-1112) provides a prime example of just this sort
of sojourning merchant. Xinya Tuoluo was an Arab merchant who served as
an envoy for Arabia and Muscat and lived in Guangzhou for several decades and was
reported to have amassed a fortune of several hundred wan strings of cash that is,
several million. After returning to his home country around 1072 he was executed by
his ruler. Xinyas case came to Sus attention because of the question whether Xinyas
adopted son, a former slave, could inherit his estate (the answer was no), but for us it
demonstrates how merchant-envoys could play a consequential role in both their home
countries and Guangzhou.
22
At the same time, the late eleventh century date makes him
something of an anomaly, since for reasons that are not entirely clear, the maritime
tribute missions virtually ceased after the 1020s, and although they revived somewhat in
the late eleventh century, they never regained the prominence that they had had for the

21
SHY, Fanyi, 7/20b; Li Tao _, Xu zizhi tongjian changbian - > O 4 (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju), 87:1998. This will hereafter be cited as XCB.
22
Su Che , Longchuan le zhi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 5:28-9.
13
first sixty years of the dynasty.
23
With the missions curtailed, the maritime trade
superintendencies and the legal framework developed by the Chinese for the treatment of
foreign merchants became the paramount factors shaping the Muslim communities, no
longer just in Guangzhou, but in various port cities along the coast, particularly
Quanzhou.
* * * * * *
The maritime trade superintendencies were unique institutions in the medieval
maritime world. In addition to the three established in the early Song at Guangzhou,
Hangzhou and Mingzhou, five others were created, most notably at Quanzhou in 1087,
which quickly assumed the position of the premier port for overseas commerce.
24
The
multiple superintendencies provided overseas merchants with a choice of ports at which
to do their business, while the superintendencies themselves provided a remarkable
attention to a wide range of trade-related activity. According to Zhu Yu, foreign ships
entering Chinese waters from the south first encountered signal beacons set up every 30 li
as lighthouses and, once spotted by the Song navy, which maintained naval stations along
the coast, they were escorted to Guangzhou or one of the other officially sanctioned ports.
After they had docked, the ships were placed under armed guard until the
superintendency officials had had a chance to inspect and tax their goods (including the

23
The major exceptions to this pattern of sharply decreased tribute activity after the 1020s were the
Uighurs, Tibetans, Vietnamese, and Champans, all of them continental neighbors of the Song. Hartwell,
Tribute Missions, passim.
24
As Hugh Clark has shown, Quanzhous role as a major port for maritime trade dates back to the tenth
century, and although in theory, ships from overseas either had to stop first at one of the other
superintendencies, or risk being caught for smuggling, officials seem to have often looked the other way.
Hugh Clark, The Politics of Trade and the Establishment of the Quanzhou trade Superintendency, in
Zhongguo yu haishang sichou zhi lu (China and the Maritime Silk Route),
edited by Lianheguo jiaokewen zuzhi haishang sichou zhilu zonghe kaocha Quanzhou guoji xueshu
14
compulsory purchase of certain commodities), after which the foreign merchants were
permitted to market them.
25

In emphasizing the role of the superintendencies, I do not mean to suggest that
they caused the flourishing trade of this era. *****
Did the superintendencies serve to promote or curtail trade. As Zhus account
suggests, many of the maritime trade superintendencies functions concerned the
supervision of trade (departing ships were also inspected to guard against the export of
copper specie), the collection of tariffs, and compulsory purchases,
26
and free market
advocates could well argue that these inhibited trade. However, the superintendencies
were also charged with the promotion of trade, and this included providing for the
welfare foreign merchants, or as Zhou Qufei put it, The superintendency [of
maritime trade] taxes the merchants and protects them.
27
In the Southern Song
provisions were made for those in urgent need, such as shipwrecked seamen, who were
given allowances while they awaited repatriation.
28
In addition, in the tenth month of
every year, the Quanzhou and Guangzhou maritime trade superintendencies each hosted
the foreign merchants to a great feast, at the substantial cost of 300 strings of cash in each
place.
29
Although we lack the economic data to prove or disprove the efficacy of the
superintendencies, my own impression is that their bureaucratic character and their

taolunhui zuzhi weiyuanhui
(Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1991), pp. 376-81.
25
Zhu Yu, Pingzhou ketan, 2:25.
26
Laurence J. C. Ma, Commercial Development and Urban Change in Sung China (960-1279) (Ann Arbor:
Department of Geography, University of Michigan, 1971), pp. 37-8.
27
Zhou Qufei , Lingwai daida jiaozhu . Yang Wuquan , ed. (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1999), 3:126
28
SS 491:14137. The citation specifically concerns Japanese sailors, but presumably sailors from other
countries would have been similarly treated.
15
regulations provided merchants with relatively reliable expectations of the cost of doing
business in China that was beneficial to them in their commercial calculations. These
could be upended by official corruption a problem that elicited considerable discussion
by officials but the evidence suggests that the Song regulation of maritime trade was far
less corrupt than it had been in the Tang, when postings to Guangzhou were commonly
regarded as an avenue to instant wealth.
30

The Song government viewed the foreign merchant communities as a group apart,
and it was content to let them live separately and govern themselves. Zhu Yu gives a
vivid depiction of the Guangzhou community in the late eleventh century:
The foreign ward (fanfang E e) is where those from the various countries from
across the ocean congregate and live. There is a foreign headman (fanzhang E )
who administers the public affairs of the foreign quarter and is specifically
responsible for exhorting the foreign merchants to send in tribute. Foreign officials
(fanguan E -) are used for this, and their hats, robes, shoes and tablets are like
those of Chinese (Huaren ). When foreigners have a crime, they go to
Guangzhou for investigation of the particulars (jushi ), then the matter is sent
to the foreign quarter to dispose of it. [The guilty party] is tied up on a wooden
ladder, and is beaten with a bamboo cane. ... In cases of serious crime (shangzui
. ) the Guangzhou [government] adjudicates.
31


The practice of legal extraterritoriality, to which the second half of this description refers,
had its origins in the Tang, if not before,
32
and despite some complaints the Song

29
SHY, Zhiguan, 44/24a-b; Zhou Qufei, Lingwai daida, 3:126.
30
See Jitsuzo Kuwabara detailed treatment of corruption related to maritime trade in the Tang and Song in
Pu Shou-keng, Pt. II, Memoires of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, No. 7 (1935), pp. 48-55.
Although his many examples span the Tang and Song, those relating to the Tang tend to be accounts of the
fabulous wealth garnered by Guangzhou officials, while those in the Song are largely related to legal cases
forbidding or prosecuting corruption.
31
Zhu Yu, Pingzhou ketan, 2:27
32
According to the Tang Code, As to the Hua-wai-jen living in China, all offences committed by
persons of one nationality shall be tried according to the laws of that nation, but the offences committed
between a person of one nationality and that of another shall be tried according to the Chinese laws.
(Kuwabara, p. 46, citing Tangl shuyi, zh. 6)
16
authorities were quite accommodating in allowing its use, including some cases involving
Chinese and foreigners together.
33

Like extraterritoriality, the use of foreign headmen (fanzhang) had Tang
precedents, as reported in an Arab account:
The merchant Sulayman reports that at Canton, which is the point for the gathering
of merchants, there is a Muslim man who is invested by the chief of the Chinese with
the power to settle conflicts among Muslims who are in the district [of Canton]. This
is according to the wishes of the Chinese sovereign. At the time of festivals, it is he
who directs the Muslim prayers, makes the khotba, and pronounces vows in support
of the legal authority that governs the Muslims. The manner in which he exercises his
charge does not raise up any criticism among the merchants of Iraq (Irak?) when the
sentences conform to justice, according to the stipulations of the Book of God and of
Islamic law.
34


Song references to foreign headmen are few in number but revealing. We learn from a
1073 case that the position was not hereditary, for when the Arab headman in
Guangdong, the Maintaining Submission Commandant
35
Pu Tuopoli Ci
, asked to have his son Mawu (Mahmud) succeed him, he was turned
down, though Ma-wu was given the lesser rank of Commandant (langjiang ). The
account then provides this gloss on the headmans jurisdiction:
The countries [with merchants] subordinate [to the headman] were varied
in name. Thus there was Wuxun (Muscat, Oman), Tuopoli [the

33
For example, Kuwabara, p. 47, quotes Lou Yues Gongkui ji, zh. 88: The foreign traders live together
with the Chinese people, and according to the old custom, when they quarreled with the local people,
unless it be bodily injury, they were tried according to their own laws. See John Chaffee, Medieval
Extraterritoriality: Law and Maritime Merchant Communities in Tang-Song China, paper presented at the
Asian Merchant Cultures at the Crossroads Conference, Hofstra University, March 2006.
34
Sulayman, Akhbar al-Sin wa l-Hind. Relation de la Chine et de lInde, rdige en 851 , Jean Sauvaget,
trans. (Paris, 1948), p. 12.
35
Hucker, Charles, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1985), p. 369 (#4496): Sung laudatory title conferred on friendly alien military chiefs.
17
tuo is not right], Yuluhedi (Al-Katif, a port in Bahrein), Maluoba
(Merbat), and others, but all are headed by the Arab kingdom.
36


Since the Arab headmans authority was confined to Middle Easterners, there must have
been other headmen for other groups, though apart from a Southern Song reference to a
Champa headman (in Quanzhou), we can only speculate about how many there were.
37

From 1072, the year before Pu Tuopoli Cis request, we have another intriguing
incident. Xinya Tuoluo , the Muscat envoy whose personal fortunes were
discussed above, requested that during the course of his return [to Muscat] he be given
permission to examine the affairs of the headmasters office in Guangzhou (fanzhangsi
), and he also offered to make a donation for the restoration of Guangzhous city
walls. His request was referred to the Guangzhou authorities for decision, while his offer
was declined.
38
Most scholars in discussing this passage have focused on the city wall
proposal, but Pus request is, if anything, more revealing, both for its reference to the
unsurprising but important fact that the headman had an administrative apparatus, and
also for suggesting an interest by the home government in the Guangzhou community.
39

Thanks, perhaps, to the vividness of Zhu Yus earlier quoted description of
Guangzhous foreign ward and the similarities between it and the quarters for foreign
merchants found in many other Eurasian ports, which were often legally designated as
such, the idea that foreign merchants in China resided in foreign quarters has gained wide

36
SS 490:14121.
37
SHY, Fanyi 4, 84a.
38
SHY, Fanyi 4, 84a; SS 490:14121.
39
It is of course possible that Pus request was personally motivated, but his request was made in his
capacity as envoy and received a positive response from the court.
18
acceptance among historians.
40
In fact, historical records reveal a rather more
complicated picture. Although it seems likely that localities or quarters where
countrymen or kinsmen congregated were common in China as elsewhere, there is little
evidence for the existence of foreign wards. Billy So has argued that there is no evidence
for them in Quanzhou.
41
In one of the few extant references to foreign residents in
Quanzhou, Zhu Mu (d. after 1246), it is true, wrote that: There are two types of
foreigners. One is white and the other black. All live in Quanzhou. The place where they
are living has been called foreigners lane (fanren xiang ).
42
Apart from its
intriguing division of foreigners along racial lines Arabs vs. south and southeast
Asians? the passages use of lane suggests a rather more informal unit than ward
(fang), with its connotations of a walled block. The Northern Song scholar-official Zheng
Xie (1044-1119) had this description of Quanzhou: Maritime merchants crowd
the place. Mixing together are Chinese and foreigners. Many find rich and powerful
neighbors.
43
Although he could have been talking only about conditions in the
marketplace, the maritime commercial district, which lay between the citys southern

40
See, for example, Wheatley, Paul, Geographical Notes on Some Commodities Involved in the Sung
Maritime Trade, J ournal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society32.2, no. 186 (1959), p. 28-
9; Kuwabara, p. 34; and John Guy, p. 287. For an excellent consideration of the evidence concerning
foreign quarters, see Chen Dasheng , Synthetical Study Program on the Islamic Inscriptions on
the Southeast Coastland of China, in Zhongguo yu haishang sichou zhi lu
(China and the Maritime Silk Route), edited by Lianheguo jiaokewen zuzhi haishang sichou zhilu zonghe
kaocha Quanzhou guoji xueshu taolunhui zuzhi weiyuanhui
(Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1991), pp. 173-
4.
41
Billy So [So Kee Long], Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China. The South Fukien
Pattern, 946-1368. (Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 54.
42
Zhu Mu , Fangyu shenglan (Taipei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1981), 12/5a.
19
wall and the river, was also the location of three of the citys mosques, strongly
suggesting that the foreigners generally resided in that district. We also have a thirteenth
century description of Quanzhou as a place where foreign merchants live scattered
amidst the people.
44

In contrast to Quanzhou, Guangzhou most definitely had a foreign ward, as the
earlier quotation by Zhu Yu makes clear. But many foreign merchants did not live in it.
An official in 1018 described how In Guangzhou there are many foreign and Chinese
great merchants [whose homes] lack the protection of the city walls and
proposed some military protection for the district.
45
It is conceivable that he was in fact
referring to the foreign ward, but Zheng Zai , the former fiscal intendent of
Guangdong, clearly was not, when he wrote in 1036 that: Every year in Guangzhou
there are many foreign guests (fanke) who take their wives and sons to reside outside of
Guangzhou. Hereafter we should ban [those in] Guangzhou from selling them any real
estate. The issue was referred to the Guangzhou prefect and the current fiscal intendent
for consideration.
46
Then there were those who settled within the city walls. Yue Ke
(1183-1240) also recounts the case of a merchant, a white foreigner (baifanren

43
Zheng Xia , Xitang ji (Siku quanshu ed.), 8:20b.
44
Liu Kezhuang , Houcun xiansheng da quanji , zh. 62, cited in Chen
Gaohua and Cheng Shangsheng , Zhongguo haiwai jiaotong shi
(Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1992), p. 153.
45
XCB 94:2166.
46
SHY, Xingfa, 2/21a.
20
an Arab?) from Champa, who had received imperial permission to stay in
Guangzhou, where he ran a lucrative shipping business.
In the course of time he took a permanent residence inside the city. His house and
rooms were very luxurious even trespassing the laws. But as the inspector of trading
ships object was to encourage the coming of foreign traders, thereby to increase the
national revenue, and also as he was not Chinese, the authorities did not make any
investigation of the matter.
47


These quotations suggest that attempts by the government to limit the residences of
foreigners were commonly ignored in the free and easy commercial atmosphere of Song
Guangzhou.
Two other institutions played a crucial cultural role in the lives of Chinas
maritime Muslim communities: mosques and cemeteries. Donald Leslie has suggested
that the mosques were built for the needs of the local community rather than for the
glory of Allah or the spreading of the faith,
48
and indeed, I have found no evidence of
active proselytizing among the maritime Muslims. It seems likely that the Guangzhou
community had both a mosque and a cemetery in Tang times, though the evidence is
poor. For the Song, however, we have evidence of two mosques in Guangzhou (the
Huaishengsi and Guangta or Shining Pagoda), two in Quanzhou (the
Shengyousi and Qingzhensi ), and one each in Hangzhou and
Changan.
49
Guangzhou and Quanzhou both had Muslim cemeteries as well. The Song
writer Fang Xinru describes a cemetery for several thousand foreigners ten li

47
Yue Ke , Tingshi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 11:125, following Kuwabara Jitsuzo, On
Pu Shou-keng, Part 1 Memoirs of the Research Department of the Ty Bunko 2 (1928), p. 44
48
Donald Daniel Leslie, Islamin Traditional China (Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education,
1986), p. 41.
21
west of Guangzhou in which the deceased were buried with their heads to the south but
facing west.
50
For Song Quanzhou, we have this wonderfully detailed account by Lin
Zhiqi (1112-76) of the creation of a cemetery by a Srivijayan merchant:
There are scores of rich merchants from Srivijaya who are living or were born in
Quanzhou. Among them is a man called Shi Nuowei _. Shi is famous for his
generosity among his fellow foreign residents in Quanzhou. The building of a
cemetery is but one of his many generous deeds. This cemetery project was first
proposed by another foreigner named Pu Xiaxin [who did not see it
through]. The idea has been carried out and accomplished by Shi. The location of this
cemetery is on the hillside to the east of the city. After the wild weeds and rubble
were cleared, many graves have been built. The cemetery is covered with a roof,
enclosed by a wall, and safely locked. All foreign merchants who die in Quanzhou are
to be buried there. Construction started in 1162 and was finished a year later. Such a
benevolent deed releases all foreigners in this land from worry [concerning their own
graves after death] and enables the dead to be free of regrets. Such kindness will
certainly promote overseas trade and encourage foreigners to come. It is much
appreciated that Shi has carried it out. Therefore, I write this essay to commemorate
the event so that [news of it] will be widely circulated overseas.
51


Many scholars have argued from a slightly later account of this cemetery in Zhao
Rukuas Zhufan zhi that Shi was an Arab from Siraf. Billy So has
shown conclusively how Lins account, with its description of Shi as a Srivijayan, is the
earlier and more reliable.
52
However, I would suggest that the early role of Pu Xiaxin (Pu
being the surname of many Arabs, probably deriving from Abu) in proposing the
cemetery and the reiterated statement that it was for all foreign merchants suggests that
Shi was a Muslim and the cemetery intended for the use of the Muslim community, given

49
Leslie, Islam, pp. 40, 44
50
Fang Xinru , Nanhai bai yong , cited in Leslie, Islam, p. 43
51
So, Prosperity, Region and Institutions, pp. 53-4, from Lin Zhiqi , Zhuozhai wenji
(Siku quanshu ed.), 15:1b-2a.
52
So, Prosperity, Region and Institutions, pp. 54-5.
22
the preeminent role played by the Muslims among the foreigners in Quanzhou.
53

Moreover, given the common use of Arab merchants by various maritime Asian states to
serve as tribute envoys in the early Song that was mentioned above, it is quite plausible
that a leading Srivijayan merchant would have been Muslim.
* * * *
With the possible exception of residential patterns, most of the aspects of the
merchant communities that we have discussed thus far served to foster a sense of
corporate identity, of otherness from surrounding Chinese society. But there were other
forces at work that fostered their integration, especially over the course of generations.
First, a number of foreigners, most of them with Arab names, were given official
rank during the course of the Song. Zhu Yus description of the Guangzhou headman
describes him as a foreign official with the appurtenances of a regular official, and in
fact we know that some of the headmen, at least, were granted official rank, as were
many of the tribute envoys. In 1136, the cash-strapped Song court rewarded the Arab
merchant Pu Luoxin with the official title of chengxinlang (Gentleman
of Trust a prestige title for officials which had the rank of 9B) for importing a cargo of
frankincense valued at 300,000 strings.
54
Although such honors may well have had the
primary effect of setting such individuals above their fellow merchants, I would suggest

53
In further support of this argument is the fact that the major Muslim cemetery in Quanzhou, dating to
Song-Yuan times and existing to this day, is found to the east of the city. That merchants with a common
geographic and/or ethnic origin might be widely dispersed geographically and move from one point on
their periphery to another (e.g., Srivijaya to Quanzhou) is entirely in keeping with the idea of a trade
diaspora.
54
SS 185:4537-8; SHY, Fanyi, 7:46a. The motivation behind this was clearly to encourage the maritime
trade so as to raise revenue for the cash-strapped government. In addition to Pu, a Chinese merchant named
Cai Jingfang was similarly rewarded for a cargo worth 980,000 strings. The edict further stated that
maritime affairs officials in Guangzhou and Fujian would be promoted one rank when cargoes of 120,000
ounces of silver.
23
that the sartorial and ritual privileges that accompanied official rank would also have
given them respectability and entre into local elite society. It is noteworthy that in the
Southern Song we find cases of foreigners contributing to public works, a typically elite
activity. Although Xinya Tuoluos offer of funds to rebuild the Guangzhou city walls was
turned down in 1072, as noted above, in 1211 the foreign merchant Pulu , was
publicly acknowledged for his contributions to the rebuilding of the walls of Quanzhou.
55

Foreign merchant contributions also underwrote the coast guard ships in the Quanzhou
region in the late twelfth century.
56

During the last years of the Song, the Pu family of Quanzhou achieved a far more
substantial measure of political success. The family had come to China from Arabia via
time in the south seas probably a Southeast Asian kingdom. Pu Kaizong
migrated to Quanzhou, and was able to obtain an official rank, most likely due to the
value of the goods he imported, and established his family. At least one possibly two
of his sons served as prefects. The third, and most famous, was Pu Shougeng (d.
1296), who by the mid-1270s was serving concurrently as Superintendent of Maritime
Trade and zhaofushi or master of pacification, a term used for local military
commanders.
57
Shougengs even more important role in the early Yuan will be treated

55
Kuwabara, On Pu Shou-keng, p. 52, citing Quanzhou fuzhi , zh. 4.
56
Kuwabara, On Pu Shou-keng, p. 52. As Tansen Sen notes in his article in this issue, the Southern
Song government relied heavily upon Chinese maritime merchants for the support of the navy.
57
The literature on Pu Shougeng is large, and complicated, for elements of his biography and genealogy are
disputed. My account follows that of Billy So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, pp. 107-10, and
Appendix B (pp. 301-5).
24
below. Here it is enough to note that the success of the Pus reflects the remarkable
acceptance that the Muslim community had gained by the end of the Song.
Official toleration and even at times, encouragement of expanding foreign
activities in Song life extended beyond the granting of titles and office to select
individuals. In 1104 permission was given for foreign merchants and locally-born
foreign guests to travel to other prefectures and even Kaifeng, so long as they had first
procured a certificate from the superintendent of maritime trade. This was done at the
suggestion of the Guangzhou superintendent, who stated that foreign guests from Arabia
and other countries had recently requested permission to do so.
58

Even more striking was the governments willingness to countenance and, indeed,
encourage foreign boys to study in Chinese schools. The biography of Cheng Shimeng
describes his educational activities while serving as prefect of Guangzhou during
the Xining era (1068-77): [He performed] a major restoration of the [prefectural] school,
and daily led the students in their instruction, so that those who arrived with their books
on their backs came one after the other. The sons of foreigners all desired admission to
the school.
59
Cai Tao (d. after 1147) describes how, during the Daguan
(1107-10) and Zhenghe (1111-17) eras, the prefectures of Guangzhou and

58
SHY, Zhiguan, 44/8b-9a; Song huiyao jigao bubian O (Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan
wenxian shuwei fuhi zhongxin chuban, 1988), 642.
59
Gong Mingzhi , Zhongwu jiwen , (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1986), 3:55.
25
Quanzhou asked to establish foreign schools (fanxue ).
60
The Song huiyao provides
an account of the appointment of a preceptor for the Guangzhou foreign school. This was
done in 1108 at the suggestion of Zeng Tingdan , the former preceptor of the
Jiazhou prefectural school in Guangdong, who received the appointment. In his
memorial Zeng stated:
I have observed that the school for foreigners in Guangzhou has gradually become
well ordered, and I would like to request that the court select someone of talent from
the southern prefectures who would work [on reforming] the local customs,
committed to the task of instruction, and to working for months and even years. I
anticipate that among the sons sent by foreigners [to the school], those who receive
the pleasure of education will have mutual regard [with the educated] of the southern
provinces.
61


This document is remarkable both for its confidence in the power of acculturation and for
its lack of xenophobia. The merchant community is not viewed as a threat, and indeed,
Zeng looks to its acceptance by the educated elite of the region.
I would suggest that one reason for this liberal attitude is that it reflected an
emerging social reality. By the late Northern Song, the maritime communities had
flourished in Guangzhou for close to two hundred years and elsewhere for several
generations.
62
Although there must have been a constant coming-and-going of merchants
from abroad, there were core communities which, through intermarriage, had settled and
established families, taking on more and more of a settler identity. It would be nice to
know more about the wives whom the foreign merchants married and where they came

60
Cai Tao , Tieweishan congtan , zh. 2; cited by Kuwabara, 59. Cai went on to
describe how Huizong personally examined Korean students who had been studying at the Imperial
University.
61
SHY, Chongru, 2/12a.
26
from, but the records are largely silent. During the Yuanyou era (1086-93), the
court discovered to its alarm that a man surnamed Liu from the foreign quarter of
Guangzhou had married an imperial clanswoman, and forbade any repeat.
63
In another
case, from 1137, a complaint was lodged against a military official for having married his
younger sister to a great merchant by the name of Pu Yali (a two-time envoy
from Arabia) in order to profit from his [Pus] wealth. The emperors response was
interesting; he directed the complainant the Guangzhou prefect to urge Pu to return
to his own country.
64

These examples are, of course, exceptional. The most likely source of marriage
ties for the foreign community were the families of Chinese maritime merchants. As
described by Li Yukun, they were a new and prosperous group during the Song,
including not only those who dealt in maritime commerce from the safety of Chinese
ports, but who also went abroad in large numbers, making their own impact in turn on
port cities of South and Southeast Asia.
65
In light of the large overlap in their economic
interests and activities, and most likely of marriage ties, Billy So has argued that the
foreign and Chinese merchants of Quanzhou collectively constituted a South Fukien

62
According to an edict in SHY, Zhiguan, 44:9b-10a (also in Song huiyao jigao bubian, p. 642), dated
1114, maritime foreigners from the various countries had lived in China for five generations (wushi ).
63
Zhu Yu, Pingzhou ketan, 2:31-2. See John Chaffee, Branches of Heaven: A History of the Imperial Clan
of Sung China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), pp. 92-3.
64
SHY, Zhiguan, 44/20a-b. Pu had been a tribute envoy from Arabia in 1131 and again, in 1134, when his
ship was attacked by pirates off the coast of Champa, losing four men and his goods and suffering injury.
SHY, Fanyi, 4:93-4.
65
Li Yukun , Quanzhou haiwai jiaotong shilue (Xiamen: Xiamen
University Press, 1995), 45-67.
27
merchant group.
66
Although I have some reservations about such a formulation, given
the continuing differences in ethnicity and religion, the trend during the Song was clearly
towards increasing integration between the foreign and Chinese merchant communities.
* * * * *
The southeastern coast of China with its maritime communities was the last
region of the Song to succumb to the Mongol invasions. Indeed, only after the fall of
Hangzhou in 1276 and the flight of the remnants of the Song court down the coast did the
war come to the region. The fall of Quanzhou occurred in early 1277, due to the secret
surrender of Pu Shougeng, about whom we will have more to say below. In Guangdong,
the loyalist forces hung on until 1279, when the Mongol naval victory at Yaishan
extinguished the Song dynasty.
The economic disruptions caused by the Mongol invasion for the southeastern
coast seem to have been minor. There is some evidence that Yuan import taxes on the
maritime trade were higher than they had been during the Song.
67
However, geopolitical
concerns gave maritime trade routes special importance. By the late thirteenth century the
heyday of secure continental travel had passed. Fighting among the Chinggisid branches,
especially the revolt of gdeis grandson Qaidu against Qubilai, added to the dangers of
that travel. At the same time, the close alliance between Qubilai and the Il-khans in Persia

66
Billy K.L. So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, pp. 205-10.
67
According to Marco Polo, the Yuan government levied a general import tax of 10%, but it was 30% on
small wares, 44% on pepper, and 40% on lignum aloes, sandalwood, other drugs and general goods. Marco
Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian, John Masefield, ed. (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1908), p.
318 (Ch. 77). By comparison, a 10% per cent charge imposed on fine quality goods (i.e., small bulk and
high value goods) and a 15 per cent on coarse goods were the norm. Laurence Ma, Commercial
Development and Urban Change, p. 37.
28
made the sea-route between China and the Middle East strategically important and
popular.
68

Following the Song conquest, the Mongols moved quickly both to encourage the
maritime trade and to bring the Muslim merchants under their control. By the mid-1280s,
Shibosi (Maritime Trade Bureaus) had been established in Quanzhou, Hangzhou,
Qingyuan (Ningbo), Shanghai, and Ganpu to supervise the maritime trade. The
Muslim merchants, for their part, were organized into ortoy (wotuo }), merchant
associations long used in the north that were supervised by the state, but also
provided with financing for commercial ventures and various privileges (for example, the
right to bear arms) as well as restrictions for their members.

Most significantly, and most
lucratively, the ortoy had a monopoly on most of the valuable commodities of the
maritime trade, from which private traders were barred.
69

Politically as well as economically, the Muslims in China benefited greatly from
the Mongol policy of favoring non-Chinese, following only the Mongols themselves and
ahead of all Chinese, for use in government. The Semuren ([people of] varied
categories), as they were known, included large numbers of Uighurs and other central
Asians, but also Persians and Arabs. The most famous Muslim official was undoubtedly
the notorious Ahmad, a central Asian Muslim who directed Yuan fiscal administration

68
Elizabeth Endicott-West, Merchant Associations in Yan China: The Ortoy, Asia Major, 3
rd
Ser., 2-2
(1989):147; Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), Chapters 4 and 5.
69
Endicott-West, Merchant Associations, p. 139. The commodities specifically restricted to the ortoy
traders included gold, silver, copper, iron, and boys and girls (that is, slaves). For a treatment of the role
of merchants in the early years of the Mongol empire, see Thomas Allsen, Mongolian Princes and Their
Merchant Partners, 1200-1260, Asia Major, 3
rd
Ser., 2-2 (1989):83-126.
29
from 1262 until his assassination in 1282, but throughout the empire educated Muslims
were in demand.
70

In Quanzhou, Pu Shougeng and his family benefited immediately and greatly
from Mongol policies. He was immediately appointed military commissioner for Fujian
and Guangdong, while continuing on as superintendent for Maritime Trade, and from
then until the end of his life in 1296, he held a succession of high-level provincial posts in
Guangdong, Jiangxi, and especially Fujian. A son and a grandson both held important
provincial positions in Fujian into the 1320s, and his son-in-law, Fo Lian , was a
merchant of great wealth from Bahrain who at the time of his death had a fleet of eighty
ocean-going ships.
71
As for the rest of the southeast, Morris Rossabi provides the
following description:
Some Muslims in the southeastern provinces attained high office. According to the
gazetteer of Chekiang province, they served as censors, darughachi, and pacification
commissioners. Similarly, in Canton, Foochow, and other coastal cities, the Yuan
appointed Muslims to positions in government, particularly in the financial
administration. Khubilais edicts and regulations were often translated into Persian
and Arabic, implying that Muslims played an influential role in government.
72


Despite the advantages provided by the ortoy and Mongol recruitment policies,
there remains a question as to how much these benefited the Muslim merchant elite of
coastal China beyond the Pu family. In his studies of political the politics of the late
thirteenth century, Yokkaichi Yasuhiro has identified three patronage networks that
contested political and commercial domination of Fujian. At their upper end, these
involved close ties between Mongol princes, empresses and generals at the court and

70
See Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988),
71, 178-84.
71
So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, 114-6; Li Yukin, 50-1.
30
powerful Muslim merchant-officials.
73
Those merchant-officials in turn served as patrons
of Chinese merchant families that actually undertook the maritime trade. One of these
networks involved Pu Shougeng and his family, but in the other two cases, Chinese
merchant families of diverse backgrounds, answered to central Asian Muslim officials.
These officials, moreover, were central Asian Muslims with no prior history of
involvement in the maritime trade, though their families soon became major participants
in it.
74
Much work still needs to be done to integrate Yokkaichis findings into our history
of the maritime communities, but it seems like that, with the exception of the Pu family,
the Song Muslim merchant elite was subordinated in the new political order.
There was a key difference between the remarkable record of office-holding by
Muslims under the Yuan and their much more modest accomplishments in the Song:
whereas in the Song office-holding worked to integrate leading Muslims into the Chinese
elite, in the Yuan it served to accentuate Muslim-Chinese differences. I would suggest,
further, that this contrast reflects a broader change in the character of the maritime
Muslim communities.
Numerically, the Muslim communities in Quanzhou and other southeastern ports
flourished as never before under the Mongols. According to a Chinese source from the

72
Morris Rossabi, The Muslims in Early Yan Dynasty, in China under Mongol Rule, ed., John D.
Langlois, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 276. Rossabi also notes that Muslims
accounted for thirty percent of the superintendents of maritime trade in the Yuan. (p. 275)
73
Yokkaichi Yasuhiro- _ - - W, Gencho kytei ni okeru keki to teishin shdan
= . g = _ Bulletin of the Graduate
Division of Literature of Waseda University
] - - 1 1 ` 1 . U 45.4 (2000): 3-15.
74
Yokkaichi Yasuhiro, The Structure of Political Power and the Nanhai Trade from the Perspective of
Local Elites in Zhejiang in the Yuan Period, paper presented at the meetings of the Association for Asian
Studies, San Francisco, March 2006.
31
late Yuan, Quanzhou at that time had six or seven mosques.
75
Writing in the 1350s, the
Arab traveler Ibn Battuta describes large and vibrant communities in Guangzhou,
Quanzhou and Hangzhou, among other places.
76
He is also quite clear in describing the
Muslims as residing in discrete quarters in Zaytun (thought by most to be Quanzhou),
Sin-ul-Sin (Guangzhou?), and Khansa (Linan).
77
Although there are questions about
whether he actually visited China, if he didnt he clearly drew upon the writings of those
who had. For example, in his discussion of Zaytun (Quanzhou), Ibn Battuta speaks of one
Burhan al-Din of Kazerun (in Persia), who maintained a hermitage outside the city and
had frequent visits from Arab merchants, since it was to him that they paid sums that they
owed to Shaykh Abu Ishaq in Kazerun.
78
This same Burhan al-Din is reported in Chinese
records (including a Ming stele) to have served as the Imam of the Qingjing Mosque ca.
1350, right when Ibn Battuta was supposed to have been in China.
79

The disparity between Ibn Battutas descriptions of foreign quarters and our
earlier conclusion that foreign quarters were often ignored when they did exist is striking.
One might argue that Battuta, long familiar with Muslim quarters in other parts of the
Eurasian world, shaped his account to his expectation that this was how Muslim traders
lived in non-Muslim societies. However, I think it more likely that he was reflecting a
real change, that in the Yuan the Muslim residential centers had formalized into quarters.
This accords with Morris Rossabis description of the Yuan Muslim communities:

75
Chen Dasheng, , Quanzhou Yisilan jiao shike . (Fuzhou: Ningxia
renmin chubanshe, Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1984), p. 1, citing A Record of the Qingjingsi Mosque,
written by Wu Jian in 1350.
76
Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, H. A. R. Gibb, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, Ltd., 1929), Chapter IX (292-300).
77
Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, pp. 288, 290, 293-4.
78
Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, p. 288.
79
Chen Dasheng, Quanzhou Yisilan jiao shike, pp. 15-18.
32
A branch office of the Wo-to tsung kuan-fu or Central Bureau
supervising the Ortagh (which was later to be known as the Chan-fu-ssu
or supervising Money Bureau) was established in the city both in order to regulate
the ortagh or Muslim merchant associations and to provide loans and encourage
them. The Arabs and Persians who resided in Chan-chou formed virtually self-
governing communities.
80


Chen Dashengs collection of stone stelae and inscriptions from
Quanzhou provides another perspective on the Yuan Muslim community of that city.
Chen provides forty-two gravestone inscriptions in Arabic or Arabic and Persian (three
contain Chinese as well) and all but three of Yuan origin (the three being Southern Song).
Of these, seven were for women and three are recorded as having performed the Haj, or
pilgrimage to Mecca. Twenty-five of the entries provide nisbs (surnames indicating their
place of origin), and the distribution is striking. Three were from Arabic locales (two
from Siraf and one from Yemen), two from central Asia (Bukhara, Armenia, and
Turkestan), and the remaining nineteen from Persia or cities in Persia. Of the three
inscriptions that use Chinese, two provide no place of origin, while the third, for a
Persian, suggests that his mother or wife was Chinese.
81

These inscriptions are remarkable for apparently reflecting a community of new
immigrants in constant contact with the Muslim world of the Middle East, with uncertain
ties to the pre-Mongol Muslim diaspora which had been characteristic of the Quanzhou
Muslims. There is little evidence of sinicization, and much to suggest that the deceased
were recent arrivals, for example, the seven inscriptions for women; there is virtually no
evidence of foreign Muslim women in the port cities before the Yuan. It has also been

80
Rossabi, The Muslims in Early Yan Dynasty, 275.
33
argued that Quanzhous Ashab Mosque the walls and entrance of which are still
standing is strikingly similar to two famous fourteenth century mosques in Cairo, which
would suggest the rapid transfer of architectural knowledge.
82
The preponderance of
Persians among the deceased is also striking, and surprising, for the Arab ports most
commonly associated with the maritime trade are almost unrepresented.
These findings for Quanzhou are echoed in other localities as well. In an article
surveying Muslim stone inscriptions from the entire southeast, Chen Dasheng found that,
with the intriguing exception of Hainan Island, which has Song and possibly even late
Tang inscriptions, the dated inscriptions were overwhelmingly from the Yuan and the
nisbs indicated primarily Persian origins.
83

Taken together, the evidence points to an influx of Middle Eastern Muslims into
southeastern China during the Yuan with dramatic consequences for the local
communities. The opportunities for Muslim employment in the Mongol empire together
with the unparalleled ease of communication within Eurasia elicited both an influx of
Middle Eastern Muslims into China and their movement between cities in China. The
many Persians represented may indicate that even in Quanzhou many had come via the
overland route, though another possibility is that Muslims from the Ilkhanate, centered as
it was in Persia and northern Iraq, were specially favored and so especially numerous.
Whatever the explanation, the result of the influx on the southeastern Muslim

81
Chen Dasheng, Quanzhou Yisilan jiao shike. The last-mentioned inscription is No. 46, for one Ahmad
bin Khawaja Kakyin Alad, and the Arabic/Persian part of the inscription states that he died in Zaytun, the
town where the mother of the Ahmad family lives. (pp. 38-9)
82
Chen Dasheng, Quanzhou Yisilan jiao shike, p. 10, citing the observations of the Dutch scholar Max van
Berchem. The Egyptian mosques cited are the Mosque-madrasah of Sultan Hasan and the Sultan Faradjs
Khankah of Sultan Barkuks Mausoleum.
83
Chen Dasheng, Synthetical Study Program on the Islamic Inscriptions, pp. 165-7. The datable
inscriptions came from Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Fuzhou, Hangzhou and Yangzhou, as well as Hainan.
34
communities was to make them more insular, more foreign, and probably more orthodox
religiously.
The closing years of the Yuan along with the early Ming mark a further change
for the maritime Muslim communities. Beginning in 1311, the secular powers of the
Muslim headmen (qadi) were circumscribed and in 1328 the qadi were ordered abolished
entirely, though how effective that was is questionable since Ibn Batuta speaks of them.
In addition, around 1340 laws were enacted circumscribing certain marriage practices of
Jews and Muslims. According to Donald Leslie, by the 1350s dissatisfaction with the
Mongols was such that the Muslims gave support to Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming founder.
84

Then in the late 1350s, even as the dynasty was unraveling, a local army in Quanzhou
known as the Persian Garrison (Yisibaxi ) under the leadership of Ya-wu-na
, another Pu in-law, rebelled and held sway over southern Fujian for a period of
almost ten years. Their regime was marked by its destructiveness and damaged both the
local Muslim community and Quanzhous maritime trade.
85

* * * * *
I have tried in this paper to sketch out the evolution of the maritime Muslim
communities of southeastern China from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Although the
resulting picture is far from complete, I believe that we can discern some clear contours
of the significant changes that occurred during that four-century period. In this
conclusion I would like to recapitulate my argument by, first, contrasting the early Song

Concerning Hainan, Chen cites Tang reports that local magnates or chiefs there preyed upon Arab
merchant ships, plundering cargoes and keeping the crews as servants. (p. 168)
84
Leslie, Islam, pp. 88-91
85
So, 2001:122-5; Maejima, 1974:47-71
35
and Yuan, and then by considering the emergence of a Sino-Muslim elite during the
Song, and its fate under the Mongols.
The Muslim communities of the tenth and fourteenth centuries offer striking
contrasts. The former was small and confined largely to Guangzhou, and the merchants
who comprised it were facing a new commercial reality, namely the shift to a segmented
trading system, in which goods moving between the Middle East and China were
typically transshipped in southern India and/or Southeast Asia, rather than going directly.
They were also operating under a Chinese government that promoted maritime commerce
and was accommodating to merchant settlement. The prominent role played by the tribute
system during this period reflects the small size of trade, at least relative to what was to
follow. The tribute records, moreover, indicate that the Middle Eastern envoys did not
always come from their home countries but at times came from the Guangzhou
community, and also that Arabs (or Persians) also served as envoys from South and
Southeast Asia. It would thus appear that the Muslim trade diaspora had come to play a
significant role in inter-state relations as well as commerce in eastern Asia.
At the later end of our timeframe, the southeastern Muslim communities of Yuan
China were far larger in size and more dispersed, with significant concentrations in
Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Mingzhou and Fuzhou in addition to Guangzhou and Quanzhou, a
reflection at least in part of flourishing trade. They, too, benefited from a supportive
government, but in a very different way, since they were preferentially employed by the
Mongols and so attained a level of political power that would have been unthinkable prior
to the Yuan. From the evidence of both tomb inscriptions and Ibn Battutas travel
account, they appear to have been far more directly connected to their homelands
36
(especially Persia) than had previously been the case, a fact that would have accentuated
their foreignness in the Chinese social and cultural landscape.
As for our middle period, three of the major changes from the early Song were the
expansion of maritime trade, especially during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
increase in the number of ports officially involved in that trade, and the decreased
visibility of tribute missions, with government support coming primarily from the
superintendencies. But most notably, we can see clear signs of assimilation. Although the
evidence remains fragmentary, the signs of dispersed residence, of interest in Chinese
education, of intermarriage, and of access to minor office for some leaders together
suggest a process of social integration, albeit one that was qualified by adherence to
Islam and continual interactions with the broader Muslim diaspora of maritime Asia.
Billy Sos earlier-mentioned suggestion that the Quanzhou Muslims be considered part of
a South Fukien merchant group is useful for highlighting the close connection between
the Muslim community and the non-Muslim Chinese maritime merchants. But I would
prefer to view the process of assimilation as producing a Sino-Muslim elite consisting of
wealthy and long-resident Muslim families in Southern Song Quanzhou (and probably
elsewhere), who at the same time remained connected to the broader Muslim trade
diaspora.
This formulation, if accepted, raises further questions. Many relate to the
evolution of the Muslim trade diaspora the relative roles of Chinese and other Asian
communities in it, the role played by political changes in the Middle East, and the impact
of the Mongol imperium on it on which I hope the accompanying papers will shed
light.
37
More specifically, what happened to the Sino-Muslim elite during the Yuan? The
preeminent example of that elite is, of course, the family of Pu Shougeng, which
established itself under the Song but had its greatest power and glory during the Yuan. In
Quanzhou, at least, they played a critical transitional role, not only in Pu Shougengs
orchestrating the surrender of Quanzhou to the Mongols, but also in providing local,
albeit Muslim, leadership in Quanzhou and Fujian during the early Yuan. When we move
beyond the Pus, however, the situation becomes murky, for Yokkaichis research
suggests that the Sino-Muslim elite was not an important source for Muslim officials. At
the least, we can note that both the path to success and the political hierarchy had
changed drastically, transforming families like the Pus from at least semi-assimilated
members of elite society to representatives of the foreign overlords. Although
assimilation and intermarriage undoubtedly continued through the Yuan, the context was
very different. For example, Su Tangshe , a descendent of the Northern Song
official and writer Su Song (1020-1101), not only married a woman from Pu
Shougengs family but also took the Arabic name of Ahmed when he settled in
Quanzhou.
86
While such an inversion of the social hierarchy must have benefited the
Muslims in the short-run, it proved to be a long-term liability.
Let me end with a word about the Ming. Although it is beyond the purview of this
paper, I would suggest that the cessation in the widespread movement of people across
Eurasia which followed the fall of the Mongol empire together with the decline in
maritime trade during the early Ming caused a further, great change for the Muslim

86
Billy So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions, pp. 116-7, citing a Su family genealogy.
38
communities of the southeast. Although it may have been delayed by the Zheng He
voyages under the Yongle Emperor, the ensuing isolation from both the Middle East and
the rest of maritime Asia marked the end of their diasporic identity. The communities
continued and at times even thrived, but as an ethnic minority, not a trade diaspora.