{"product_id":"islamic-china-an-asian-history-9780674976801","title":"Islamic China: An Asian History","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA deeply learned reassessment of the history of Chinese Muslims, who since the fourteenth century have been subject to a constant program of minoritization.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFor more than a millennium, Islam has been a Chinese religion, and native-born Chinese Muslims have played important roles in their homeland--as butchers, merchants, and farmers; diplomats, scholar-officials, and royal astronomers. Yet the Muslims of China have often been understood as inherently foreign, incompatible with Chinese culture. In this reappraisal, Rian Thum recaptures the ordinariness of Chinese Muslims. In doing so, he suggests that these communities, whose classification has so often been seen as problematic, can teach us about the ways social categories are made and maintained in the first place. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFirmly rooted in Chinese and long-neglected Perso-Arabic sources, \u003ci\u003eIslamic China\u003c\/i\u003e traces the interlinked histories of twenty Chinese Muslims, some famous and some obscure, spread across multiple ethnicities, sects, and centuries. Their stories--emphasizing the diversity of Chinese Muslim communities and their continuous exchanges with other groups both within and beyond China--cut through the flattening narratives that have obscured China's Muslim heritage. Taken together, the experiences chronicled here offer a fresh view of Islamic China, stretching across Central, Southeast, and South Asia--and of China itself. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhile focused on the Ming, Qing, and early Republican eras, Thum also harkens back to earlier centuries and traces the inheritances of this history to the present. \u003ci\u003eIslamic China\u003c\/i\u003e makes the compelling argument that the abstractions brought to bear on the past have practical implications in today's People's Republic of China, where the state enforces an oppressive regime of differentiation and control aimed broadly at Muslims and is routinely exposed for atrocities committed against particular subgroups.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThum, Rian:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Rian Thum is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Manchester. A contributor to the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eWashington Post, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Nation, \u003c\/i\u003e he is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sacred Routes of Uyghur History, \u003c\/i\u003ewinner of the Fairbank Prize for East Asian History from the American Historical Association and the Hsu Prize for East Asian Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association.","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51735066804498,"sku":"9780674976801","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d2d59dd5-a4eb-4c26-acf8-05884b783d9a.jpg?v=1763493542","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/islamic-china-an-asian-history-9780674976801","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}