The Phoenix Mosque and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou

By Qing Chen, Alexander Morton and Florence Hodous

In the early 1250s, Möngke Khan, grandson and successor of the mighty Mongol emperor, Genghis Khan, sent out his younger brothers Qubilai and Hulegu to consolidate his power. Hulegu was welcomed into Iran while his older brother, Qubilai, continued to erode the power of the Song emperors of southern China. In 1276, he finally forced their submission and peacefully occupied the Song capital, Hangzhou. The city enjoyed a revival as the cultural capital of a united China and was soon filled with traders, adventurers, artists, entrepreneurs, and artisans from throughout the great Mongol Empire—including a prosperous, influential, and seemingly welcome community of Persians. In 1281, one of the Persian settlers, Ala al-Din, built the Phoenix Mosque in the heart of the city where it still stands today. This study of the mosque and the Ju-jing Yuan cemetery, which today is a lake-side public park, casts light on an important and transformative period in Chinese history, and perhaps the most important period in Chinese-Islamic history. The book is published in the Persian Studies Series of the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) edited by Charles Melville.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gingko
• Release date: Feb 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781909942899

Book preview

British Institute of Persian Studies Series published by Gingko Library

Series Editor:

Professor Charles Melville

Editorial Board:

Professor Charles Melville, Professor Houchang Chehabi, and Dr Paul Losensky

The Phoenix Mosque

and the Persians of Medieval Hangzhou

Edited by George Lane

First published in 2018 by

Gingko Library

70 Cadogan Place

London SW1X 9AH

Copyright © George Lane 2018

Chapter One copyright © Chen Qing 2018

Appendix I copyright © The Alexander Morton estate 2018

Translation copyright © Florence Hodous 2018

The rights of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

Copyright for illustrations on pages x, 6, 18, 31, 39, 223, 232, 236, 243, 250, 252, 254, 256 belongs to George Lane.

Copyright for illustrations on pages 99–219 belongs to the Alexander Morton estate.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotation in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978–1–909942–88–2

eISBN 978–1–909942–89–9

Typeset in Times by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Printed in Spain

www.gingko.org.uk

@gingkolibrary

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

An Introduction: Hangzhou and the Persian Community of Medieval Quinsai

George Lane

Chapter One: Islam and China: The Early Years

Chen Qing

Chapter Two: The Emergence of Hangzhou and Persian Khinsai

George Lane

: Libaisi or the Temple of Ritual Salutations

George Lane

George Lane

Chapter Five: Life in Khinsai

George Lane

Chapter Six: A Cultural Capital

George Lane

Appendix I. Tombstones: Translations and Transliterations Alexander Morton

Appendix II. The Islamic Stelae of Hangzhou Introduced by George Lane, translated by Florence Hodous

Bibliography

Index

List of Illustrations

Main Text

1. The Phoenix Mosque before 1920.

2 and 3. Two early pen drawings of the Phoenix Mosque before 1920.

4. A depiction in stone of a merchant caravan from the Yuan period, the Feilai Feng caves, beside the Lingyin Temple Complex above Hangzhou’s West Lake.

5. Map of Hangzhou adapted from Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo , ed. and tr. Henry Yule with Henri Cordier, 3rd ed. (London, 1903), II, opp. p.193.

6. Qianlong period map of West Lake from a scroll held in the West Lake Museum, from a scroll held in the West Lake Museum, Hangzhou. The official Qianlong map is composed of five separate scrolls

Appendix I

7. No. 1a

8. No. 1b

9. No. 2a

10. No. 2b117

11. No. 3

12. No. 4a

13. No. 4b

14. No. 5a

15. No. 5b

16. No. 6a

17. No. 6b

18. No. 7a

19. No. 7b

20. No. 8a

21. No. 8b

22. No. 9a

23. No. 9b

24. No. 10a

25. No. 10b

26. No. 11a

27. No. 11b

28. No. 12a

29. No. 12b

30. No. 13

31. No. 14a

32. No. 14b

33. No. 15a

34. No. 15b

35. No. 16

36. No. 17

37. No. 18

38. No. 19

39. No. 20

40. No. 21

Appendix II

41. The five stelae in the Phoenix Mosque complex

42. Stela no. 1

43. Stela no. 2

44. Stela no. 3

45. Stela no. 6

46. The White Stela in the Bakhtiyari Compound

47. Stela beside Ding Henian’s pavilion, West Lake

48. Mahakala Stela

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement, help and inspiration of my teacher, my mentor, and my friend Alexander (Sandy) Morton who so sadly died before our plans had begun to become a reality. Fortunately, before his death in 2011, he managed to visit the Phoenix Mosque in Hangzhou and he was well received and honoured by fellow Chinese and Japanese scholars attending a conference in the city on the Yuan dynasty to which he contributed his final academic paper. Sandy Morton’s erudite translations of the Hangzhou tombstones remain the centrepiece of this project without which the book might never have happened. Thanks are also due to Florence Hodous who has helped in many aspects of this project and with my own research. Her legendary linguistic abilities have unlocked many dark literary recesses that might have remained secret without her probing and persistence. The presence of so many Chinese texts in the bibliography is just one indication of the debt that is owed Florence. I must also express my gratitude to Chen Qing who allowed me to tap into her deep knowledge and understanding of Chinese Islamic history and who kindly agreed to contribute the chapter on early Muslim history in China. In addition, last but certainly not least, I must acknowledge the role of Charles Melville in stubbornly insisting that I fashion a coherent book from a rather disjointed collection of translations, articles, observations, and notes. His patience and persistence is much appreciated, as is the time and work that he devoted to the proof-reading and practicalities of publishing this volume, which he undertook in recognition of the central role that Sandy Morton contributed to this enterprise.

This project finally came together with the encouragement and enthusiasm of BIPS (British Institute of Persian Studies), their far-sighted and wise anonymous reviewers, and in particular Lloyd Ridgeon who started the ball rolling and initiated the interest and involvement of Gingko and the active participation of Barbara Haus Schwepcke, without whose interest and admirable patience this book might not have materialised.

Finally, I would like to express my personal thanks and gratitude to the British Academy whose generous award, British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship Scholarship, allowed me the time and financial freedom to devote myself to researching this absorbing subject.

Figure 1: The Phoenix Mosque before 1920

An Introduction: Hangzhou and the Persian Community of Medieval Quinsai

George Lane

In 2010, the city government of Hangzhou, supported by the Hangzhou branch of the Communist Party, organised a major three-day conference on Medieval Hangzhou to explore the current state of scholarship surrounding this historical icon, cultural lodestone, tourist showpiece and glorious capital of Song China. The state-sponsored conference attracted widespread media interest with press and television coverage, as well as academic, commercial, and tourist representative delegates who swarmed to the city from all over China, though there was only a mere sprinkling of foreign interest in evidence. The media had been alerted to the conference by the Communist Party and invited to demonstrate their interest, since it coincided with the beginning of a well-financed business and cultural project estimated to be a major drive to attract tourism to what the authorities hoped would become China’s show-piece city of culture and tourism, an example of living history, and a vibrant magnet for the arts. Millions were being invested in the restoration of historical sites, re-construction of historically authentic streets, replication of medieval buildings and artefacts, expansion of parks and public spaces. The resurrection of interest in Hangzhou’s colourful past brought picturesque pedestrian walk-ways, plentiful and extensive bike-hire, canal tours, easily accessible lake excursions, and the opening of numerous museums, exhibition centres, art galleries, public music recitals, and other events and centres all designed to attract millions of tourists and their fat wallets to Hangzhou’s over-crowded streets.

The city’s heyday was under the Song when it was China’s ‘temporary’ capital city, so-called because of the regime’s humiliation at their expulsion circa 1127 from the north and their capital at Kaifeng at the hands of the ‘barbarian’ Jurchen. The Song had vowed to return but it was the Mongol Yuan who would eventually unite the country and establish a new capital on the site of China’s present seat of government, Beijing. Marco Polo made Hangzhou internationally famous when he devoted many laudatory pages of his famous travelogue to Quinsai’s bustling cosmopolitan streets, beautiful lake and multitudinous bridges traversing a network of busy canals, which he witnessed as Quinsai/Hangzhou adapted to the new Yuan (1271–1368) administration and the many foreign residents who now walked its bustling streets. The current authorities fully appreciate their city’s rich heritage, well aware that Hangzhou’s 1281 Phoenix Mosque has been well-known for centuries throughout the Muslim world. They quickly realised that Muslims were very willing to travel great distances to visit holy or revered sites, especially to see one of eastern China’s four ancient mosques, the other three being: the Huaisheng or Lighthouse Mosque of Guangzhou; the Qingjing mosque of Quanzhou; and the Pu al-Din mosque complex of Yangzhou. It is not surprising therefore that one of the first projects with which the ambitious scheme planners chose to commence operations was the restoration of the Phoenix Mosque and the adjacent area of Zhongshanlu Street, formerly Imperial Street.

Although Hangzhou’s Phoenix Mosque is world famous and mention of its existence can be found in documents stretching back to 13th-century Iran, the actual building was not easy to find on my initial visit. The mosque’s very distinctive tall entrance arch, a mixture of Persian, traditional Islamic, and Chinese architecture, was demolished in 1921 in order to facilitate the widening of the busy commercial thoroughfare, Imperial Street or Zhongshanlu Street. The imposing and ornate gateway was replaced by a plain metal doorway painted green and the decorative Arabic calligraphy was replaced by a Chinese sign stating that this was the Phoenix Temple. Nothing suggested the presence of a mosque or an Islamic centre other than a neighbouring Muslim restaurant. Even if the intrepid traveller discovered what lay behind the plain metal gate, the welcome within was less than warm and non-Muslims were not encouraged to stay or investigate further than the bland new prayer room which had been erected opposite the entrance and masked the ancient domed main prayer halls beyond. The annex containing the mosque’s famous stelae and tombstones lay hidden behind bolted doors and curtained windows and two unsmiling janitors made it plain that visitors were unwelcome and that non-Muslims were certainly not allowed into the hallowed precincts of the mosque or stelae annex.

That all changed at the city government’s initiative and first to go was the mosque’s aging and decidedly unwelcoming Imam, who was replaced by an able younger cleric recently graduated from Beijing. He oversaw the re-building of the mosque’s ornate gateway and entrance hall, the Wangyue Pavilion, a perfect replica of the original based on surviving photographs and pictures of the medieval construct. The genial Imam, Masum Idris Ye Mansu, presided over the welcome committee which greeted the delegates to the 2010 conference when they visited the mosque and inspected the stelae and tombstones, now no longer veiled and hidden away but open to tourists, visitors, the curious, and academic researchers alike. The present study grew out of the conference and the contacts gained at that memorable event and afterwards.

I had been visiting Hangzhou for a number of years for my research into the connections between the Ilkhanate of Iran and the Yuan regime of China. I had suffered repeated rebukes in my attempts to gain access to the mosque and the tombstone annex and even the help and sympathy of Zhejiang University’s History Department had failed to move the aging, implacable Imam who ruled the complex until 2009. Not to be deterred, I perceived a certain weakness in the old man’s armour. I noticed that he had no objection to meeting me and would always smile as he once again refused me permission to enter the mosque or the tombstone annex. I also noticed that he was very happy for me to take his picture set against his personal library, for which he would carefully strike a serious and scholarly pose. He was very pleased when I confronted him after Friday prayers as he greeted the respectful Faithful and snapped his picture as he exited the mosque’s prayer hall, dressed in his Friday-best. Racing back to my hotel room I stopped on the way to have the photographs printed out in glossy A3 format. I immediately had these photos laminated and the resulting ‘posters’ were very impressive. Next morning when I presented him with my work, the sparkle in his eyes told me that I had won. The old Imam was so chuffed at his posters that he waved his hands at his watchmen, a dreamy, half-smile flickering over his face, and murmured his permission for me to have access with my camera to the mosque and its priceless annex. I raced trembling into that forbidden sheltered cloister and began frantically snapping as many images as I could before anyone changed their mind. Many of the blurred images betrayed my nervousness as I filled my card to capacity. I was back the next year to take more and better photographs and to let people know that I now had the interest and collaboration of Alexander Morton who had begun work on translating those elusive inscriptions for me. Few of the tombstones had even been examined, let alone photographed or translated, the exceptions being the 1452 Persian/Arabic stela which was translated and published in Cambridge by E.G. Browne in 1911, while a preliminary study in 1993 by Guo Chengmei and Guo Qunmei had appeared in Chinese summarising the tombstone collection and identifying some of the inscriptions. The Chinese scholar Liu Yingsheng soon heard of our work on the tombstones and Morton, myself and Florence Hodous, who at that time was my PhD student, were invited to attend the Hangzhou conference. Professor Liu also requested an article detailing our work for inclusion in the Chinese Journal, Qinghua Yuan shi. As a result of these developments we three were awarded a warm welcome in Hangzhou and later we were approached by the local Communist Party representatives who asked us to continue our work with their backing and support.

Our work appeared in various Chinese publications but my aim to publish a comprehensive illustrated study in English of medieval Hangzhou and its Persian community was resisted. The untimely and tragic death of Sandy Morton in 2011, just after he finally managed to complete his translations of the tombstones, meant that my hopes of getting the work to publication suffered a further blow. However, in 2013 I was generously awarded the Mid-Career Scholarship by the British Academy, which enabled me to devote myself full-time to the project and enlist the help of other scholars to present a fuller picture of medieval Hangzhou and its Persian community. It is tragic that A.H. Morton did not live long enough to see that his hard and persistent work will now reach a wide and appreciative audience.

To put the study into perspective and provide context,two introductory essays have been included. Prior to the Chinggisid occupation of Hangzhou, the city had only a small Muslim community. Little evidence of that community has survived, which contrasts strongly with those in China’s other cities, especially those on its eastern littoral. Chen Qing outlines the development of Islam in China before the 13th century.

While Chen Qing provides the background for the arrival of Islam in China, my own introductory chapter provides the historical context for the presence of an Iranian community in the city. Recent research into the nature of the Mongol conquests has underlined the importance of the Khitans, the Turko-Mongol Liao, in advancing and assimilating the Chinggisids and every stage of their progress out from the steppe and over the sown. The Khitans were crucial in the initial ventures against the Jurchen, they were there when Chinggis Khan’s generals pushed west and absorbed Turkistan, and they were already entrenched in Iran when Hulegu arrived and facilitated his establishment of the Ilkhanate. This introductory chapter explains the significance of the Khitans in the rise of the Chinggisids and explains the link they forged between the Iranian west and the Chinese east.

Following this chapter, which places Hangzhou into the historical context of the Chinggisid Empire, the Phoenix Mosque itself is introduced, outlining its construction in the heart of the cultural capital of the Yuan empire. A separate chapter is devoted to the nearby Jujing cemetery, where in around 1920 approximately a hundred tombstones were discovered buried in the soft mud bordering Hangzhou’s famous West Lake. Unfortunately, only 21 of those gravestones have survived the ravages of China’s recent history but their inscriptions as well as information on other residents of the cemetery provide an historical portrait of the Muslim, mainly Persian, population of medieval Hangzhou. A further chapter examines the nature of the city to which the Persian émigrés moved and the employment they found there. It investigates the nature of the community into which the newcomers merged and the impact they had on the residents. Contemporary gazetteers and literary sources provide a vivid picture of urban life in medieval Hangzhou.

Alexander Morton’s contribution consists of his translations and transliteration of the tombstones on which he worked for several years. He had already published some of the translations in China and after the 2010 conference in Hangzhou he submitted a written version of his own contribution to the heralded event, a short account of the Persian verse present in the tomb inscriptions. He died within weeks of finally completing his main work though unfortunately he did not have time to fully check or edit the final drafts. He also left various notes and observations that he had made while trawling through the many sources which were for him new and exciting and often very obscure, but unfortunately it has not been possible to include these various notes, jottings, and random observations. They must await a more expert and dedicated scholar to unravel, edit, and conclude their secrets.

Florence Hodous has done an admirable job of translating the four stelae which are housed in the mosque complex beside the headstones. They were built and inscribed from the 15th to the 19th centuries and unlike the tombstones have stood above ground ever since. Translations of all four Chinese stelae and the one Persian/Arabic stela dated 1452 have appeared before but only the earliest has been translated into English. Florence has used the French translations of Vissière together with Chinese transliterations, where available, and high-resolution photographs of the original Chinese to aid her translations into English. For the translation of the stela found in the Bakhtiyari compound and by the poet Ding Henian’s pavilion, thanks are due to Hangzhou’s tourist board and their excellent leaflets and brochures.

Though in many ways this is a focused study, the insights and conclusions formed in the following pages should throw considerable light on other Islamic sites in China and assist other scholars working in those areas. In some ways this is an early step in the emerging study of the origins and development of Islam in China and once again it has created more questions than it has answered. However, it casts considerable light on an important and in many ways transformative period in Chinese history, certainly on a very significant period in Chinese Islamic history.

Figures 2 and 3: Two early pen drawings of the Phoenix Mosque before 1920.

1

Islam and China: The Early Years

Chen Qing

The dating of the initial appearance of Islam in China is a subject steeped in controversy and veiled in obscurity, due to the lack of reliable, authenticated texts in Chinese, Arabic or Persian. Textual sources do exist, including epigraphic information preserved in the form of commemorative stone stelae from old mosques, which state that Islam came to the port cities of coastal China during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632). However, these Chinese texts, which purport to record accurately the advent of Islam in China, are primarily from a later date, reflecting an earlier tradition.

Chinese Muslim tradition holds that the coming of Islam to China was the