Sons of Ishmael
They are not Salars — these keen, active, vociferous Moslems who throng the East Gate of Hochow and the suburb beyond. What a scene it is of urgency and excitement! One would suppose that some special fair must be in progress and that everybody saw their chance of immediately making a fortune. But it is only the everyday market on the bridge outside the gate and down the main street of the suburb. To escape the throng and obtain a wider outlook let us take advantage of the city wall, deserted at this hour. From above the gate we can see without being seen, no small desideratum in such a community.
For they are sons of Ishmael, though not Salar or Turkish Moslems. The homes of the latter lie behind us, along the Yellow River; this city on the Hochow plain represents a different and much earlier settlement, from Arabia. The city itself is Chinese and no Mohammedan is allowed to reside within its walls, but the population around it is largely Moslem. And yonder in the mountains another Moslem race is to be found, descendants of certain aborigines of the province converted to Islam long ago, at the point of the sword. Farther north, as we have seen, the aborigines retain their animistic faith, but this branch of the old stock, isolated by the Yellow River, had no choice but to submit when the followers of the prophet possessed themselves of the plain. Down there among the crowds one may distinguish them by their appearance — sturdy, simple people, poor-looking and dirty from their rough life in the mountains, very different from the quick-witted Moslems of the suburb — teachers, travellers, merchants, and all the bargaining throng.
What is it that accounts for the extraordinary virility of the Mohammedan as compared with the Chinese, for his business shrewdness and sagacity witnessed to by many a proverb? “A Tibetan can eat (take in) a Mongol,” they say, and “A Chinese can eat a Tibetan, but a Huei-huei (Mohammedan) can eat the lot”; and, still more commonly, “A Chinese awake is not the equal of a Huei-huei sleep¬ ing.” They certainly are alert, always “on the job” wherever you meet them, and the job seems to be to outdo every one else in the matter of push and profit.
But where do they come from — this so-different race scattered in all the provinces of China? How is it that they are here, and what lies behind the bitter hatred and mistrust with which they are regarded? Side by side they have lived for centuries with their Chinese neighbours, and yet they are as distinct to-day as oil from water — fire from water one might rather say, thinking of their history.
China’s knowledge of the Arabs dates back a long way, and may be briefly outlined in the following stages. To begin with, she knew them as adventurous traders, coming over far seas to the ports of
Canton and Hangchow. This was before the birth of Mohammed — earty in the fifth century, when the export trade from Mecca was prodigious in its value. Hira on the Euphrates, south of Babylon, was a great port in those days. Strange-looking junks from China were constantly found there, and details of the course they took are still preserved in the Annals of the T’ang Dynasty, that brilliant epoch in Chinese history (a.d. 618-907) contemporaneous with the rise and culmination of Mohammedan power.
To this period belongs the story of the first Arab embassy to China, said to have been sent during the lifetime of Mohammed. Landing at Canton, the ministers made their way to the capital (Sian), where they were received with favour. They had brought with them a picture of Mohammed which they presented to the Emperor, on the understanding that it should never be worshipped. It is told of a subsequent embassy that when the time came for their return to Arabia a number of them wished to remain in China. They set out with their leaders, however, on the long overland journey by way of this province. Somewhere on the Great Road they parted company. “Huei-ch’u, huei-ch’u,” the leaders said, or the equivalent in their own language, “Return, return” — from which in process of time has evolved the name “Huei-huei,” by which Mohammedans are known throughout China.
When these “Returners” took up their abode in Sian a difficulty arose as to how to provide them with home-makers. Eligible maidens there were not a few, but their families would have feared “loss of face” in espousing them to foreigners.
The Emperor it was who cut the Gordian knot by ordering a great theatrical performance to be held in the palace. One day was reserved entirely for young maidens, and the “Returners” were in hiding, waiting a prearranged signal to spring out and each one capture his bride. The plan worked well, and the liberal-minded citizens were persuaded to receive the Arabs as sons-in-law.
Later on, the prestige of these Arabian settlers must have increased as tidings reached the Chinese Court of the victories attending the march of Moslem arms. Within a hundred years from the birth of its prophet, “the Mohammedan Empire had. spread from the Atlantic on the west to the banks of the Indus and Kashgar,” and these marvellous achievements were not unknown to the rulers of the T’ang Dynasty. Their own far-reaching empire held sway over all the countries west of China proper to the frontiers of Persia, and to them the Persian monarch had appealed for help when faced with subjugation to the conquering sword of Islam. It was not much that China could do for Persia in her extremity. She sent an embassy to the victorious Arabs, doubt¬ less to ascertain their strength and their intentions as much as to plead the cause of Persia, whose fate was sealed. Nothing could shake the confidence of
1 “Firuz, hopeless of regaining the Persian throne, accepted the post of Captain of the Guard to the Chinese Emperor in a.d. 674, and was still courteously styled the King of Persia. Some years later his son also came to Sian, where he was appointed Guard of the Imperial Horse. He died in the city in a.d. 707. Thus the proud successors of the great Chosroes of Persia, fugitives before the erstwhile feeble Arabs, died as proteges of the Chinese Emperor” ( Islam in China, by Marshall Broomhall, M.A., p. 14).
the ruler of the Celestial Empire, however, in those days of its greatness, and he willingly received the return embassy when an Arab General came with official communications to Sian (a.d. 651).
Little more than sixty years later another envoy appeared in a very different spirit. Sent by the redoubtable General Kutaiba, whose campaigns in Central Asia were spreading terror even into Chinese territory, he refused to kotow before the Son of Heaven, and even demanded the submission of China to the world-conquering power he represented. Dealt with more tactfully than he realised, the haughty envoy returned laden with presents for his master, and the assassination of Kutaiba following the death of Walid I., not long after, was doubtless heard of with relief at Sian.
Another phase of China’s relations with the
1 “What the consequences to China might have been but for the death, at this critical period, of Kutaiba’s patron, Mohammed Kasim, and of the Caliph Walid I. himself, it is impossible to say. It is at least probable that China would have been subjected to a Mohammedan invasion. The presents of the Emperor and his wise counsels generally — for the subsequent events of his reign shew him to have been a wise monarch — probably stayed any immediate collision, and the turn in the tide of Mohammedan conquests which followed upon the death of the Caliph Walid I. and the subsequent assassination of Kutaiba, the overthrow of the Omazide Dynasty by the Abbasides, with all the fury of rival princes and contending sects which immediately broke upon the Moslem Empire, in all probability saved China from the sword of Islam.
“It is a profoundly interesting fact and worthy of special consideration that the events in Asia just recorded nearly synchronise with the Battle of Tours in Europe. We thus see the Arab advance checked in the west by Charles Martel in a.d. 723 and the Moslem progress eastward arrested on the borders of the Chinese Empire at about the same time” ( Islam in China, by Marshall Broomhall, M.A., p. 19).
Mohammedan power was entered upon when the later Emperors of the Tang Dynasty sought its aid in suppressing the internal rebellions that had begun to imperil the throne. It was as allies that the first Moslem army marched into the rich provinces within the Great Wall — four thousand men who, like the early Huei-huei, decided to settle in China. With their help the Emperor recovered his capital, and the records of the Tang Dynasty refer to them among the many other foreigners at that time resident in Sian.
Much later China was to know the Arabs as subject with themselves to the rule of the magnificent Khans — the Mongol conquerors who established the Yuen Dynasty (1260-1368). No event in the history of Islam, T. W. Arnold tells us, can compare for terror and desolation with that Mongol conquest, when, “like an avalanche, the hosts of Yenghis Khan swept over the centres of Muslim culture and civilisation, leaving them bare deserts and shapeless ruins, ’ 1 But “Yenghis Khan spared the learned and those of the artisan class who could be of
1 “When the Mongol army had marched out of the city of Her at, a miserable remnant of forty persons crept out of their hiding-places and gazed horror-stricken on the ruins of their beautiful city — all that was left out of a population of a hundred thousand. In Bokara, so famed for its men of piety and learning, the Mongols stabled their horses in the sacred precincts of the mosques and tore up the Qur’ans to serve as litter; those of the inhabitants who were not butchered were carried into captivity, and their, city reduced to ashes. Such too was the fate of Samerkand, Balkh and many another city of Central Asia which had been the glories of Islamic civilisation... such too the fate of Bagdad that for centuries had been the capital of the Abbaside Dynasty” ( The Preaching of Islam, T, W, Arnold, p. 185).
M service to his people, and his sons and grandsons drew such men into their service. From them they chose ministers, governors, generals, doctors and astronomers, etc., and these were Moslems.”
Thus it came about that in the days of Marco Polo — which were also the days of Raymond Lull — many Mohammedans occupied positions of influence throughout the Chinese Empire. Mingling with the earlier settlers of the fifth and eighth centuries, they grew into large communities, supplying brains and leadership which were often requisitioned in Government service. Mosques were built, and commerce carried on by sea as well as over the Great Road, many Arab “embassies” coming to bring their merchandise under the name of tribute.
With the commencement of the recent Manchu Dynasty (1644-1912) a remarkable change came over these relations. Intercourse between the Chinese and their Moslem colonists, up to that time peaceful in its character, began to be strained to the breaking point. However it is to be accounted for, rebellions broke out in this province of Kansu, and spread to other provinces, which have continued at longer or shorter intervals up to the present time. In these rebellions literally millions of people have perished, and so terrible have been the excesses perpetrated that the name Huei-huei has come to be regarded with horror.
The first of these rebellions, only four years after the commencement of the Ts’ing or Manchu Dynasty, was quickly followed by another in the same part of Kansu (not far from the capital) and a third among the Salars in 1785. Then came three rebellions in Yunnan, the province bordering on Burma. The first of these lasted about a year, the second two years, and the third six years, being suppressed in 1840. These led up to the Great Rebellion in Yunnan, which for eighteen years deluged the province with blood, and the Great Rebellion in Kansu, beginning in the middle of the other and outlasting it by three terrible years.
In the Yunnan Rebellion over a million people perished. Trade was largely destroyed, and the province has not yet recovered its former prosperity. In Kansu the desolation was still worse. The population of the province was reduced, Colonel Bell affirms, from fifteen millions to one million — nine out of every ten Chinese having perished and two out of every three Mohammedans. “Rebel bands scoured the country, and great distress, even cannibalism, is said to have prevailed,” In an extended journey through the province he found districts in which “all the villages and farmsteads for miles and miles in all directions were in ruins, and the huge culturable hills were for the most part deserted.” 2
This, then, accounted for the ruins that had excited our wonder on the Liangchow plain, and for the deep racial hatred one cannot but be conscious of in the electric atmosphere of the province. Chinese and Moslem, Tibetan and Moslem, are perpetually at daggers drawn, and if it does not
1 The Panthay Rebellion, as it is called, in Yunnan, lasted from 1855 to 1873; the Tungan Rebellion in Kansu, beginning in 1863, was not brought to a close until 1876.
2 The Asiatic Quarterly Reviezv for January and July 1896; two articles by Colonel Mark Bell, V.C., C.B.
appear on the surface the danger of a fresh outbreak is never far away.
But we are less concerned with the past and possible future than with the present and its great opportunity. The fact for us, as followers of Christ, is that they are here to-day, easily accessible — three million Moslems in this one province, ten to twelve millions throughout the empire, and that few if any missionaries are set apart for their evangelisation. There is no society wholly occupied with this problem; no individual even, freed from other claims, giving himself to this supremely difficult enterprise — the adequate presentation of Christ and His claims among the followers of Mohammed. What a challenge a city like this, “the Mecca of China,” is to the Christian Church! Whether one thinks of the situation politically, socially or religiously, the call is great and urgent. And the burden on our hearts, on the hearts especially of the missionaries in this province, is that almost nothing is being done to meet it.
Take this important centre of Moslem population, with its fourteen mosques, its theological seminary, its learned Ahongs, familiar with Arabic, Persian and Turkish, its thousands of children growing up in homes where they are trained to avarice and cunning, where women have no liberty, no rights, practically no soul, and too often suffer in mind and body in ways that cannot be described, and let the fact be realised that there is not a single messenger of the saving grace of God seeking to bring light into the darkness. There are missionaries in the city — Mr. and Mrs. Snyder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance — but the fact that they are there for the Chinese and in close contact with them socially cuts them off from the Mohammedans, who regard such contact as defiling. They must have missionaries of their own or none at all, missionaries who will live in the Mohammedan suburb and conform to the usages to which Moslems attach supreme importance, especially abstinence from pork and lard.
Our aim is very practical in calling attention to the need and claims of the Mohammedan millions of this great North-West. They are accessible, friendly in many cases, distraught by internal factions and the bitter hatred of opposing sects, dimly conscious of the failure of their creed to meet the needs of the human heart or the problems of the new order of things in China. Caught in the rapids of this changing time, they are seeking to galvanise their religious system into a life it does not possess, and to make up for its lack of purity and power by education on the one hand, and by a new mysticism and spiritualism on the other. However it may be elsewhere in the great Moslem world, it is certainly a day of opportunity for the Christian missionary in China.
Islam has nothing with which to satisfy conscience and heart. It has no atonement and no Saviour. It has no moral power, therefore, for the uplift either of individual or of family life, the corruptions of which are being recognised as never before by thoughtful Moslems, not only in China.
“We cannot have a very high regard for woman¬ kind,” writes an Indian Mohammedan, an Oxford graduate, “with a system which sanctions four wives,” and, he might have added, unlimited concubinage. “Polygamy is destructive alike of domestic peace and social purity. Nor can we have a sound basis for family life with our women sunk in the deepest ignorance and a prey to the wildest superstition.”
But where is the power that can change men’s hearts and make them willing to emancipate woman¬ hood from degrading slavery when their religion encourages licence in its most brutal forms and holds out a paradise in which sensualism reigns supreme?
Tragedies that simply cannot be told lie hidden behind the high blank walls of many a Mohammedan home. Mercifully, here in China, marriages are not consummated as early as in Moslem lands and divorce is not so much a haunting terror, though it may take place for trivial offences and at the will of the husband only. In a Moslem home in Egypt a missionary was pained to see suffering and fear that she could not hide in the face of a little girl under fourteen years of age. There seemed something unnatural about it, but on inquiring what was the matter he could obtain no answer. Finally another girl explained that the father was a poor man and could not keep her at home. “The child was distressed because he was getting her another husband. Her experience with two former husbands had been so horrifying that she dreaded the coming ordeal.” Fuller details of what had taken place cannot be given in these pages, but little girls have to endure such torture wherever Islam holds sway, and in Egypt, in spite of British influence, a Mohammedan doctor asserted that the sufferings entailed were so common that no one took any notice of them.
Abandoning woman to such slavery and pander¬ ing to the lowest lusts of men, Mohammedanism has no deliverance from sin, no transforming power. Its teachings as to God may be a lofty theism, but if its highlands are lifted, as Dr. Henry Jessup puts it,” into the heights of belief in the unity of God and comprehension of His glorious attributes, its foothills run down into the sloughs of wickedness and social degradation.”
“In the library of a Mohammedan University you meet that contrast on every shelf. Take down books of theology, on God and His attributes, His mercy, His compassion, His power, His greatness, His omnipotence, His omniscience, and you can compare them with anything that is taught in a theological seminary on theism; and yet, in those same books you have passages on the traditions and ethics of Islam that are untranslatable because of their vileness.” 2
Such is the system with which we are face to face here in north-west China, and it needs men of ability as well as devotion, and above all men of prayer and faith, to meet the spiritual foes that are entrenched behind mosque and mullah and Koran. For the strength of Islam lies not in its creed or the bigotry of its adherents. True, they are born fighters, these Kansu Moslems, and in many cases dangerous
1 See “Islam and Sex Morality” in The Moslem World for July 1923, p. 309.
2 The Problems of the Mohammedan World, by Samuel M. Zwemer, p. 14.
fanatics. “Once a Huei-huei always a Huei-huei” is their proud boast.
“Do you know what we would do to any of our people who embraced your faith?” said one of them to Mr. Andrew with bitterness. “We would kill him.”
But there is a stronger than “the strong man armed,” and those who know how to bind the arch¬ enemy through faith in the supreme victory of Calvary can enter even the strong man’s house and “spoil his goods.” 1
One of Pastor Hsi’s fellow-workers in the province of Shansi, an old man who was quite illiterate but full of apostolic power, used to say when faced with seemingly insuperable difficulties: “It is all right — Jesus is risen from the dead” That one fact, the efficacy of which he was daily proving, was the sufficient ground for a confident expectation of victory. “Jesus is risen from the dead: every¬ thing He calls us to is possible.”
These Moslem millions throughout China may and do present an impossible problem to those who seek their evangelisation. But the Master has commanded it. He is living and on the Throne. That is enough for the believer who is one with Him in death and resurrection and in His place of power at the right hand of God.2 While not minimising the difficulties of missionary work in such a centre as this, let us not overestimate them, or lose sight of the victory won, once for all, when “the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the
1 Luke xi. 21, 22; Mark iii. 27; Isaiah xlix. 24, 25.
2 Ephesians i. 18 to ii. io. works of the devil.” Even here in Hochow we are dealing with a conquered foe, and one who knows it. Fundamentally, under all outward seeming, the Cross has won the field, and, though there may be more or less of suffering for the servant in fellowship with the Master, the eternal outcome is assured.
There is no doubt about the will of God with regard to these Mohammedan millions, followers of the false prophet — “God our Saviour, who willeth that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, one Mediator also between God and men, Himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all; the testimony to be borne in its own times.” 1 And those who follow the movement of His providence, eager to be fellow-workers together with God, cannot but believe that His time, His day of grace for this far North-West, for Moslem and Buddhist alike, has indeed come.
As to the part we may each have by faith and prayer — before we leave this East Gate of Hochow will you look down where the houses are less crowded, north of the main street of the suburb? There, by a little stream, is a plot of vacant land waiting for — what do you think? That little plot of land, purchased by Dr. George King of the Borden Memorial Hospital in Lanchow, is a promise and a prophecy. It tells of faith in the doctor’s heart that before long the Lord will enable him to open a dispensary there. Well knowing the bigotry of the people, for he has preached to large audiences of Moslems on these streets, he is prepared to come
1 1 Timothy ii. 3-6.
over from Lanchow and superintend a settled work to be carried on by his trained students. This means a centre of help and healing to which women and children can come, for the situation is retired, and where in a quiet way the Gospel can be lived as well as preached. There is no building yet, and no fellow-medical, man or woman, in the Lanchow hospital, to free him for this work. But the plot of land is waiting, and we have access to the Throne. Shall we not take it upon our hearts, that funds and needed helpers may be given, and that among the Moslem population of the suburb, hills and plain, including the Salars by the Yellow River, many may be prepared to receive more than healing for the body?
When Dr. King came with Mr. Mark Botham 1 on the visit that resulted in the purchase of this land, they had stormy times in their inn on the main street of the suburb, and yet wonderful opportunities for preaching the Gospel. Such work needs courage, and the demand it makes upon physical endurance, mental agility and spiritual power ought to call forth our prayerful sympathy. It was a brave venture to announce a series of public lectures on religious topics, but they were not mistaken in thinking that they would get a hearing. The discussions in the inn, where their room was filled
1 Since this was written, the early and lamented death of Mr. Mark Botham has deprived China of a singularly able worker, possessed of special qualifications for labouring among the Moslems. In view of the urgency of work among the Mohammedans of China, and the scarcity of men qualified for this special ministry, Mr. Botham’s death is a loud call for other volunteers. with eager disputants, became so threatening that the landlord closed his doors, and the evening lectures had to be held on the open street. The visitors had provided themselves with a big acetylene lamp which they managed to suspend in an open place, and there they held their audience of one or two hundred men even when the snow was falling.
For the subjects appealed to their hearers. The first two lectures on Adam and Noah were followed by a medical talk listened to with keenest interest. Then there were lectures on Abraham, Moses and David, and another medical talk before the closing address on the life, death and resurrection of Christ. The Moslem has some knowledge of these Old Testament characters, and reckons them among the prophets; he knows too of the life of the Lord Jesus, who appears in the Koran as the prophet “Ersa.” But that He is the Son of God they utterly deny, saying with vehemence, “Far be it from God to have a Son!” They deny also His death upon the Cross, indeed His death at all, saying that Judas was taken and suffered in His stead. “Verily they crucified Him not” is the teaching of the Koran and the ingrained belief of every thought¬ ful Moslem. Mohammedanism thus makes the most of its position historically — the only great worldreligion which has sprung up since the Christian era — to deny and seek to supersede the teachings of the Gospel. Mohammed was a greater as well as a later prophet than Christ, they say, and the revelations given to him are the last word of God.
And yet, plausible as it all is from the Mohammedan point of view, this Saviourless system does not satisfy their sense of need. It is surely significant, as Dr. Wherry of India points out, that “the history of Moslem theology shows that heterodoxy has nearly always been connected with the desire for a mediator.” This longing for an intercessor, an intermediary — never to be met by a dead prophet who acknowledged himself a sinner — has come to the front again in a remarkable move¬ ment originating in this very province. Its founder, Ma Sheng-ren, was the great leader killed in the earthquake in December 1920. But the sect he established, known as the Djeheriya, has spread far and wide throughout China.
“One of the essential differences between its teachings and that of orthodox Mohammedans,” Mr. Mark Botham writes, “is that its members are deeply impressed by the need for a mediator. It is condemned by Moslems generally, largely on this account. During my visit to Pekin (1921) I visited the mosque which is the centre for the worship of the sect in that district. I was received most cordially and pressed to, come and live in the mosque during my stay in the capital.... The leader in that district said, in the course of conversation, that he considered that this sect was more like Christianity than any other sect of Mohammedanism, because they felt that for a man to be able to go into the Presence of God there must be a man to lead him. I was received most cordially by members of the sect in every place in which I found them.” 1
1 From Mr. Botham’s deeply interesting report of a recent journey of investigation, in course of which he visited all the large Moslem communities in the eastern provinces.
“Then there is an atonement for sin!” exclaimed a Mohammedan leader, listening for the first time to the Gospel — “the words are sweeter than honey!”
What is needed most of all, if this saving consciousness is to be brought home to many others still in the darkness of Islam? Prayer, we would answer assuredly, much prayer for the work of the Holy Spirit, and that to the Moslems of China may be given missionaries who shall be lovers not only of the souls of men but lovers of the Cross. Money for their support will be no difficulty if only the right men and women are forthcoming.
“Our hope is in the Cross,” as a writer in The Moslem World well puts it. “Our fear is lest we should seek to escape it. The Crusaders denied the Cross by taking up the sword. ‘ The sword, even used defensively,’ says Kesley Page, ‘ means the attempt to kill the guilty for the sake of the innocent. The Cross symbolises the willingness of the innocent to die for the guilty.’ The sword produces brutality, the Cross tenderness; the sword destroys human life, the Cross gives life priceless value; the sword deadens conscience, the Cross awakens it; the sword ends in hatred, the Cross in love; he that takes up the sword perishes by it, he that takes up the Cross inherits life eternal.
“In winning Moslem lands for Christ, the call is for men and women who will follow the way of the Cross with the same courage and abandon with which the soldier serves his country. The sword or the Cross; self-assertion or self-denial; might or meekness; carnal weapons or methods of crucifixion — such are the alternatives. The friends of God, the real friends of humanity, who share the humiliation of the Cross, cannot be defeated.
“The print of the nails, the mark of the spear, are still the supreme evidence of Christ’s resurrection power and deity and the test of our discipleship. The call is for men and women who will now offer themselves and their substance for this sacrificial service.”