 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 6,000–10,000 (2007) [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Cairo · Alexandria [2] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Overseas Chinese |
Chinese people in Egypt form one of the smaller groups of overseas Chinese; however, they are a very diverse community with a history reaching back for over a century. [3]
Egypt, and specifically Cairo's Al-Azhar University, has long been an important destination for Chinese Muslims seeking Islamic learning. The earliest Chinese government-sponsored students to attend Al-Azhar were a group of four sent in 1931. [4] However, individual Chinese scholars, such as Yusuf Ma Dexin, the first translator of the meanings of the Qur'an into Chinese, had been going to Al-Azhar on their own as early as the 19th century. [5] The Republic of China (1912–49) sent Hui Muslims like Muhammad Ma Jian and other Hui Muslim students to study at Al-Azhar in Egypt. [6] The Fuad Muslim Library in China was named after Fuad I of Egypt by the Chinese Muslim Ma Songting. [7]
Imam Wang Jingzhai studied at Al-Azhar University in Egypt along with several other Chinese Muslim students, the first Chinese students in modern times to study in the Middle East. [8] Wang recalled his experience teaching at madrassas in the provinces of Henan (Yu), Hebei (Ji), and Shandong (Lu) which were outside of the traditional stronghold of Muslim education in northwest China, and where the living conditions were poorer and the students had a much tougher time than the northwestern students. [9] In 1931 China sent five students to study at Al-Azhar in Egypt, among them was Muhammad Ma Jian and they were the first Chinese to study at Al-Azhar. [10] [11] [12] [13] Na Zhong, a descendant of Nasr al-Din (Yunnan) was another one of the students sent to Al-Azhar in 1931, along with Zhang Ziren, Ma Jian, and Lin Zhongming. [14]
A Hadith(圣训), (it is not a real Hadith but was a popular slogan among Arabic speakers in Middle East in the 19th-20th centuries. It spread to China via Hui Muslim students like Muhammad Ma Jian who studied at Al-Azhar in Egypt) a saying of Muhammad, spread to China, which says "Loving the Motherland is equivalent to loving the Faith" (traditional Chinese :愛護祖國是屬於信仰的一部份; simplified Chinese :爱护祖国是属于信仰的一部份; pinyin :àihù zǔguó shì shǔyú xìnyǎng de yī bùfèn) (Arabic : حب الوطن من الایمانḥubb al-waṭan min al-imān). [15] [16]
Hui Muslim General Ma Bufang and his retinue including Ma Chengxiang moved to Egypt before being appointed as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Exchanges were interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, but resumed in 1981; the group of ten sent from China to Al-Azhar that year included three Uyghurs, six Hui, and one Kazakh. By 1992, that number had reached thirty-four students, of whom twenty-eight were Uyghurs. [17] As of 2006 [update] , there were about 300 international students from China in Egypt, of who the major portion were studying at Al-Azhar. [18] China also provides scholarships to students at other universities, such as Cairo University; some students privately complain that the Chinese government prefers to sponsor those studying science and place various obstacles in the way of those studying religion. [19]
Chinese construction companies began making inroads in Egypt in the early 1980s, soon after the reform and opening up of China's economy; they were able to underbid local construction companies by importing labourers from China, despite high unemployment in Egypt. Chinese workers have a reputation for being skillful, diligent, and efficient. Dru C. Gladney states that the number of Chinese construction workers in Egypt peaked between 1985 and 1987, at about 10,000 people, but declined again to around 5,000 by 1992. [20]
Individual Chinese traders and entrepreneurs began arriving in Egypt in the late 1990s and early 2000s; they came largely from Zhejiang, Fujian, and the Northeast. They commonly open businesses in the restaurant, garment, and telecommunications sectors. Many of their restaurants serve Cantonese cuisine due to its popularity among Egyptians, though there are few migrants actually from Guangdong. [21]
As of June 2008, the more than 500 Chinese companies in Egypt had invested a total of US$450 million of capital. Manufacturing products in Egypt allows them to take advantage of cheap local electricity and water, as well as local labour which may actually be cheaper than that of China in some sectors, such as garments. [22]
The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the northwestern provinces and in the Zhongyuan region. According to the 2010 census, China is home to approximately 10.5 million Hui people. Outside China, the 170,000 Dungan people of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Panthays in Myanmar, Hui Chin Haws in Thailand are also considered part of the Hui ethnicity.
Bai Chongxi was a Chinese general in the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (ROC) and a prominent Chinese Nationalist leader. He was of Hui ethnicity and of the Muslim faith. From the mid-1920s to 1949, Bai and his close ally Li Zongren ruled Guangxi province as regional warlords with their own troops and considerable political autonomy. His relationship with Chiang Kai-shek was at various times antagonistic and cooperative. He and Li Zongren supported the anti-Chiang warlord alliance in the Central Plains War in 1930, then supported Chiang in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. Bai was the first defense minister of the Republic of China from 1946 to 1948. After losing to the Communists in 1949, he fled to Taiwan, where he died in 1966.
Islam has been practiced in China since the 7th century CE. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing around 2 percent of the total population. Though Hui Muslims are the most numerous group, the greatest concentration of Muslims are in Xinjiang, which contains a significant Uyghur population. Lesser yet significant populations reside in the regions of Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai. Of China's 55 officially recognized minority peoples, ten of these groups are predominantly Sunni Muslim.
Al-Manār, was an Islamic magazine, written in Arabic, and was founded, published and edited by Rashid Rida from 1898 until his death in 1935 in Cairo, Egypt. The magazine championed the superiority of Islamic religious system over other ideologies and was noteworthy for its campaigns for the restoration of a pan-Islamic Caliphate.
Muhammad Ma Jian was a Hui-Chinese Islamic scholar and translator, known for translating the Qur'an into Chinese and stressing compatibility between Marxism and Islam.
Die Welt des Islams or the International Journal for the Study of Modern Islam is an academic journal on Islam and the Muslim world published by Brill. The journal was started as an official organ of the German Society for Islamic Studies. It publishes articles in three languages—English, French, and German—and its German title translates into English as "The World of Islam" and French as "Le Monde de l'Islam". It was founded by Martin Hartmann in 1915 and is one of the oldest Western journals for the study of Islam, specialising in topics around Muslim civilisations since the late 18th century. It has published articles by C. H. Becker, Miriam Cooke, Maxime Rodinson, Annemarie Schimmel, Bernard Lewis, Hamid Algar, and Muhammad Hamidullah.
Ma Fuxiang was a Chinese Muslim scholar military and political leader spanning the Qing Dynasty through the early Republic of China and illustrated the power of family, the role of religious affiliations and the interaction of Inner Asian China and the national government of China. He was a prominent Muslim warlord in northwest China. Ma Fuxiang originally served under Dong Fuxiang, like other Ma Clique Muslim warlords such as Ma Anliang.
Ma Buqing (1901–1977) was a prominent Ma clique warlord in China during the Republic of China era, controlling armies in the province of Qinghai.
People's Republic of China – Egypt relations were established on May 30, 1956.
Hu Songshan (1880–1955), a Hui, was born in 1880, in Tongxin County, Ningxia, China. His Muslim name in Arabic was Sa'd al-Din. Although he was born Sufi and turned Wahhabi, he changed his views and turned his back on Wahhabism after a Hajj to Mecca and later became an important imam, scripturalist, and leader of the Yihewani Muslim sect in China. He was influential and played an important role in Chinese Islam in this position as he propagated reformist doctrines in Ningxia in his later life. Hu also played a role in rallying Muslims against the Japanese invasion of China.
Tang Kesan was a Chinese Muslim. In Xikang province during the Sino-Tibetan War Tang Kesan represented the Kuomintang.
Ma Yuanzhang was a Chinese Sufi master, of the Jahriyya menhuan.
Ma Linyi was a Chinese Muslim born in Hunan province during the Qing Dynasty.
The concept of martyrdom in China during the premodern period largely concerned loyalty to political principles and was developed in modern times by revolutionaries, such as the Tongmenghui and the Kuomintang parties during the Xinhai Revolution, Northern Expedition, and Second Sino-Japanese War.
Jingtang jiaoyu refers to a form of Islamic education developed in China or the method of teaching it, which is the practice of using Chinese characters to represent the Arabic language.
Al-Tilmiz was an Arabic language weekly newspaper published from Saint Petersburg, Russia between 1906 and 1907. The first issue was published on July 21, 1906. The publication was directed towards the Caucasian community in the capital of the Russian empire.
Kojiro Nakamura was a Japanese scholar of Islam. He was professor emeritus of Islamic studies at both Tokyo University and Oberlin University. Tokyo University's Department of Islamic Studies was the first such department in Japan, established in 1982 with Nakamura appointed its first professor.
The weekly journal Hikmet, published in Istanbul from 1910 to 1911, was one of the first sufistic journals that were founded during the Second Constitutional Period. It was published by Şehbenderzâde Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi (1865-1914), a Turkish Sufi, author and thinker. The journal had the subtitle “Unity is life and dissension is death“. Two volumes with a total of 79 issues were published and covered political, economic and social topics as well as articles on philosophy, islamic mysticism and sufistic literature. Hilmi's criticism of the “Committee of Unity and Progress” ultimately led to the suspension of the journal Hikmet. In addition to Hikmet Hilmi also published the journals Çaylak, İttihat-ı İslam and Coşkun Kalender.
Rafīq Bey ibn Mahmūd al-ʿAzm was a Syrian intellectual, author, and politician. 'Azm served as the president of the Ottoman Party for Administrative Decentralization and was a key figure in the intellectual formation of Arabism.
Shura was a biweekly literary and political newspaper supplement published in Orenburg, Russian Empire, between January 1908 and January 1918. The magazine featured articles written in both Turkish and Tatar languages. It was one of the most important Tatar language publications.
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