Xi'an and its Hui connection

Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, was the starting point of the Silk Road during the Han Dynasty (202-220). Xi'an, then known as Chang'an, became an international metropolis as China's capital during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Diplomatic envoys, businesspeople, missionaries and foreign students visited the city in droves those days.

During the Tang Dynasty, four immigrants from the Middle East and Central Asia reached Xi'an; they were to become the progenitors of the Hui people in China.

The khalifa or ruler of Arabia sent his envoy to Xi'an in 651 and thus introduced Islam to China. In the next 150 years, Arabian envoys came to China in 37 batches, and more than 4,000 of them settled in Xi'an. Some businesspeople from Persia and Central Asia also made Xi'an their home.

The ruler of Arabia also sent soldiers to Xi'an to help the Tang Dynasty rulers quell a rebellion between 755 and 763. Many of the soldiers, who were from Arabia, as well as Turkey and Central Asia, chose to make the city their home.

In the 880s, some Muslims of the Shia sect moved to northern China, earning their livelihoods by trading in cattle, and many of them settled in Xi'an. In the middle of the 9th century, people of nine families from Central Asia traveled to Xi'an and settled in the city. And some families in the suburbs of Xi'an still carry the names of those nine families.

During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the Western Xia (1038-1227) rulers controlled the Hexi Corridor of the Silk Road in Gansu province and stopped immigrants from entering China. During the same period, the already settled immigrants started building mosques and forming their own communities in Xi'an.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), imperial officials moved many Hui people from the Hexi Corridor to Shaanxi and Henan provinces. And during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), some Hui people moved from eastern China to Shaanxi. In late 18th century, Xi'an had eight large mosques and 13 Hui communities. About 91 percent of the 1.7 million Hui people in Shaanxi left the province after a rebellion in 1862, according Lu Weidong, a professor of historical geography at Fudan University in Shanghai.

During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), many Hui people from Henan, Shandong and Hebei provinces fled to Xi'an. And in the early part of this century, about 70,000 Hui people were living in Xi'an, according to the city government.

(China Daily USA 10/03/2016 page9)