The Shaykh of the great northwest : the religious and political life of Ma Yuanzhang (1853-1920)

Abstract

This is a biographical study of Ma Yuanzhang {u9A6C}{u5143}{u7AE0} (1853-1920 CE), also known as Mawlana Siddiq Allah, the seventh shaykh of the Sufi order known as the Jahriyya order (Chinese: Zheherenye menhuan {u54F2}{u5408}{u5FCD}{u8036}{u95E8}{u5BA6}), and a person of considerabie political influence in northwest China in the early decades of the twentieth century. Sufism denotes various mystical, esoteric or ascetic traditions, the roots of which can be traced back to the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad. Between the 10th and 12th CE (5th to 7th centuries of the Islamic Hijri calendar), various Sufi institutions rose to prominence that were characterized by a set of esoteric practices sanctioned by the spiritual leadership of a shaykh. The most common word for a Sufi order, tariqa, originally referred to the narrow camel tracks that wove their way across the Arabian desert, as distinct from the major trade routes known as shari'a that came to denote the exoteric practices of Islam, or Islamic law. Amongst the shaykhs associated with the rise of Sufi orders as social and religious institutions were Abdul Qadir al-Jilani (d.561/1166 in Baghdad), Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili (d.656/1258 in Cairo) and Baha' al-Din Naqshband (d.791/1389 in Bukhara); the Sufi orders established in their honour are known as the Qadiriyya, Shadhiliyya and Naqshbandiyya respectively. The Naqshbandiyya was the dominant Sufi order in Turkestan during the 15th century CE, and it spread southwards into the Indian subcontinent, westward into the Ottoman lands and eastward to China. The Jahriyya order was established in the mid-eighteenth century in the province of Gansu by Ma Mingxin (d.1781 CE), also known by his Sufi title of Wiqayyat Allah, upon returning from an extended sojourn at several religious centres west of China. Its name is derived from the practice of reciting certain litanies in a vocal (Ar. jahri) rather than silent (Ar. khafi) manner. The Jahriyya order can be considered as an offshoot of the broad cultural tradition defined by the Naqshbandiyya. However, in addition to this Central Asian cultural heritage, the Jahriyya order has its own distinct spiritual lineage and ritual practices which, in the view of the present author, are more properly identified with the North African tradition of the Shadhiliyya. Since its establishement in the late-eighteenth century, the Jahriyya order has been one of the most influential Sufi orders in northwest China. It has a special place in the political history of northwest China as the institution at the centre of three major rebellions against the authority of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911 CE). Ma Mingxin was executed for his association with the first rebellion; then exiled to Yunnan in southwest China where, 60 years later, his great-grandson Ma Yuanzhang was born. Ma Yuanzhang's childhood was spent in the special historical circumstances of the Muslim rebellion of the Tongzhi reign period (1862-74 CE), in which his father in southwest China and the Jahriyya shaykh Ma Hualong in the Northwest played leading roles. In the closing phase of this rebellion, Ma Yuanzhang fled Yunnan and returned to his ancestral home of Gansu, where after several decades he became the most widely recognised shaykh of the Jahriyya tradition, and towards the end of his life was probably the most influential Muslim religious leader in China. A body of scholarship has emerged in the last decade concerning the authority wielded by Sufi shaykhs in various places (particularly North Africa) at particular historical junctures that provides useful comparative insights into what Jahriyya followers may have sought to achieve through their acts of rebellion. Vincent Cornell, in his seminal study of Muslim sainthood titled The Realm of the Saint, describes how the Moroccan shaykh Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli (d.870/1465) consolidated judicial and tribal authority in his homeland region in central Morocco, and how the configuration of Islamic authority and ritual practices that came to be associated with his name played a defining role in establishing the rule of later Islamic dynasties in Morocco. The nature of the autonomy aspired to by Jahriyya Muslim rebels and the institutional configuration of the Jahriyya order's leadership have been debated and discussed by many historians, most of whom characterised the nature of the Jahriyya order and its leadership as mysterious. This present study explores the degree to which Ma Yuanzhang established an autonomous realm of authority in northwest China. In so doing, this dissertation seeks to define the parameters of the Islamic tradition of saintly authority as it existed in northwest China during his lifetime. It also provides new perspectives on the nature of political authority in northwest China during the peculiar historical interval in which Ma Yuanzhang lived, in between the great rebellions that afflicted the Qing dynasty in the mid-nineteenth century and the consolidation of a modern, centralised Chinese state under the Nationalist government in the late 1920s. Ma Yuanzhang's life as shaykh, like those of earlier Jahriyya shaykhs who were involved in rebellions, can seen as part ofan ongoing effort by Muslims to establish an autonomous realm within or beyond the sovereign control of the central government based in Beijing. From his position as Jahriyya shaykh, Ma Yuanzhang exerted considerable influence over the political affairs of the region, as had several of the shaykhs of the Jahriyya spiritual lineage before him, two of whom had been executed as rebels. The rapid changes in the nature of central government in the late-Qing and early-Republican periods provided an opportunity for Ma Yuanzhang to define his own realm of authority in northwest China in a manner that did not lead to direct confrontation with the central government. Extensive use is made in this study of sources that have been compiled or reprinted locally in northwest China over the last two decades, including collections of the Chinese writings of Ma Yuanzhang, narrative histories and many hagiographic and commemorative texts. These represent rich veins of sources on the history of Islam in China and political authority in Muslim borderlands of northwest China that have hitherto been neglected by historians. Show more