Recasting Islamic Thought in China: Conceptual Reconfiguration and Interreligious Dialogue in the Han Kitab Tradition

Abstract

This article examines how Chinese Muslim scholars in the Han Kitab tradition reinterpreted Chinese concepts to articulate Islamic thought within the Chinese intellectual world. Drawing on close readings of the writings of Wang Daiyu (c.1584–1660 CE), Liu Zhi (c.1670–1724 CE), Ma Zhu (c.1640–1711 CE), and Ma Dexin (c.1794–1874 CE), it analyzes three sets of concepts: Tian; Taiji and Wuji; and sagehood, the Great Mandate, Xin, and Xing. The analysis shows that Han Kitab scholars did not simply translate Islamic ideas into Chinese terms. Rather, they modified the meanings of established Chinese concepts, repositioned them in relation to other concepts, and assigned them new explanatory roles within an Islamic theological framework. These reinterpretations allowed concepts relating to divine transcendence, cosmological order, human perfection, and moral cultivation to take on new functions within Islamic thought. This article argues that such conceptual reconfiguration offers a useful way of understanding Sino-Islamic intellectual engagement.

1. Introduction

The intellectual encounter between Islam and Confucianism in late imperial China formed a long-standing cross-cultural dialogue. From the Ming and Qing periods onward, Chinese Muslim scholars developed a tradition of Chinese-language writing that explained Islamic teachings through concepts familiar to Confucian readers. Commonly known as the Han Kitab tradition1, these works sought to articulate Islam within the intellectual world of Confucian learning through a Chinese conceptual vocabulary.

The Han Kitab tradition has been widely studied as an important site of intellectual exchange between Islamic and Chinese thought. Scholars have examined how major Han Kitab scholars engaged with Confucian thought, Neo-Confucian philosophy, Sufism, and other Islamic intellectual traditions in developing a Chinese expression of Islam (for example, see Li 2024; X. Wang 2021; Jin 2021). More recently, these writings have also been discussed within the broader tradition of the Sinicization of Islam, particularly in relation to religious adaptation, intercultural exchange, and interreligious dialogue (for example, see Y. Wu 2024; X. Wang 2024; Y. Liu 2025). Together, this scholarship has illuminated how Han Kitab scholars employed Chinese concepts to articulate Islamic teachings within a Confucian intellectual environment (Fu 2023; Sha 2022; Wang and Yang 2016; Frankel 2011). Nevertheless, as Kristian Petersen has pointed out, Sino-Muslim textual practices involved more than a search for equivalence between source and target, encompassing adaptation, domestication, and creative reformulation of words, categories, and discourses (Petersen 2017, p. 13).

This article therefore examines how Chinese concepts were reconfigured within the Han Kitab tradition. Drawing on Mieke Bal’s notion of travelling concepts, this article treats concepts not as fixed entities but as historically situated ideas whose meanings may change as they move across intellectual contexts (Bal 2002). The term “conceptual reconfiguration” is not intended to replace existing discussions of adaptation, reinterpretation, or translation, but to draw attention to the relational and functional dimensions of conceptual change. Building on this perspective, this article focuses on the writings of Wang Daiyu 王岱輿 (c.1584–1660 CE), Liu Zhi 劉智 (c.1670–1724 CE), Ma Zhu 馬注 (c.1640–1711 CE), and Ma Dexin 馬德新 (c.1794–1874 CE), and examines how these scholars reconfigured influential Confucian concepts within an Islamic intellectual tradition. This approach foregrounds a specific dimension of Sino-Islamic intellectual exchange: how Chinese concepts were not only reinterpreted to express Islamic ideas, but also recast in relation to other concepts and assigned new explanatory functions within Islamic thought.

2. Reinterpreting Tian: Divine Transcendence in Sino-Islamic Thought

Tian (天, “Heaven”) presents a particularly clear case of how a Chinese concept was repositioned within Islamic thought. The term carried multiple and changing meanings in Chinese intellectual history. Some of these meanings, however, did not correspond straightforwardly to the Islamic conception of God as the transcendent and sovereign Creator. This raised the question of how Tian could be interpreted within an Islamic account of divine transcendence while remaining intelligible in Chinese intellectual discourse.

In early Confucian texts, Tian could refer not only to the physical heavens but also to a supreme moral authority governing the cosmos and human affairs (Lao 2005, p. 60). As Han Siyi (韓思藝) has pointed out, divination practices in the Shang and Zhou periods sought the will of Tian and Di (帝, “Lord”), indicating that they were understood as active authorities in relation to the human world. He further notes that passages such as “Heaven, for the help of the inferior people, made for them rulers, and made for them instructors 天佑下民，作之君，作之師” and “Great is Di, Beholding this lower world in majesty. He surveyed the four quarters [of the kingdom], Seeking for someone to give settlement to the people 皇矣上帝，臨下有赫. 監觀四方，求民之莫” likewise portray Tian and Di as powers concerned with human order and governance (Han 2024, p. 31). By the Song period, Neo-Confucian thinkers increasingly interpreted Tian through Li (理, “principle”), emphasizing its relation to the metaphysical order underlying the cosmos (Zhu 1986, p. 82). This development further expanded the range of meanings associated with Tian and provided later Chinese Muslim scholars with resources for negotiating its relationship to Islamic monotheism.

Chinese Muslim scholars drew on the different meanings of Tian in earlier Chinese texts to articulate Islamic ideas. As Yang Xiaochun (楊曉春) has shown, Muslim literati from the mid-Ming period had already begun to associate the Tian described in the Confucian classics with the Creator, distinguishing it from the physical heavens and an impersonal cosmic principle (Yang 2012, p. 240). This early reinterpretation was developed more systematically by later Han Kitab scholars, who retained those terms while reconsidering how Tian and Di related to God, creation, and the created world.

Wang Daiyu was among the earliest to develop this interpretive strategy systematically. Wang recognized that the difficulty was not finding a Chinese equivalent for God but determining how the words could be understood without compromising divine transcendence. For this reason, he did not simply assign Tian a fixed Islamic equivalent. Instead, he distinguished among the different meanings and ontological dimensions associated with Tian, including the physical heavens, the moral principle associated with Heaven, and the Creator who governs and creates all things (D. Wang 1999, p. 448). This differentiation allowed Wang to use the concept of Tian while giving it a different role in his account of the relationship between the Creator and creation. Wang illustrates this point through one of his best-known analogies:

Everything, however small, has a master; how much more so the great things of heaven and earth? Heaven and earth are like a mansion in the midst of which things have an orderly arrangement, namely the myriad things. But a mansion surely has a master who has established it. If you know who the master is, then you must know that the mansion is after all a mansion, and the master is after all the master. The mansion can never be called the master. Thus the Lord is Lord by himself, and heaven is heaven by itself 凡所有之微物, 莫不有主, 況天地之巨物乎？天地譬如一座宮室, 其中列設即斯萬物. 但此宮室必有成立之主人. 抑知其主人果誰耶, 須知宮室畢竟是宮室, 主人畢竟是主人, 未有以宮室即謂之主人也. 所以主宰自是主宰, 天自是天

(D. Wang 1999, p. 105).2

The analogy distinguishes the physical heavens from the Creator who created them. For Wang, worshipping Heaven risked precisely this confusion: mistaking the visible heavens for the supreme object of worship. The physical heavens and the moral principle associated with Heaven are part of the created order, whereas ultimate sovereignty belongs only to the Creator.

Liu Zhi and Ma Zhu retained Wang Daiyu’s basic distinction between the created heavens and the transcendent Creator, but they placed greater emphasis on the relationship between Tian and Di. Liu argued that the “Di” mentioned in classical texts corresponded more closely to the Islamic understanding of the sovereign Creator (Z. Liu 1990, p. 92), while Ma Zhu similarly maintained that “Heaven” belongs to the created realm whereas “Di” refers to the One who creates. As Ma Zhu explains, “One is called Tian, and the other is called Di; the Supreme Lord cannot be equated with Heaven. Heaven is the created heaven, and what is created belongs to the realm of form; Di is the Lord who creates, and the one who creates is without sound 一則曰天，一則曰帝，是上帝不可與天同等. 天乃受造之天，受造者屬於有形；帝乃行造之主，行造者本於無聲” (Z. Ma 1988, p. 72). Their discussions shifted the focus from whether Tian could name God to how Tian, Di, and the created world should be conceptually related.

While Wang Daiyu, Liu Zhi, and Ma Zhu emphasized the distinction between Tian and the Creator, Ma Dexin adopted a different strategy by broadening the meaning of Tian so that it could directly express divine sovereignty and refer to the transcendent Creator. This reinterpretation is particularly evident in The Highest Praise in Worshipping Heaven (Zhutian Dazan 祝天大贊), where Tian no longer refers to the visible heavens but functions as a designation for the transcendent Creator. The opening passage proclaims:

Tian is pure and profound; Tian is exalted and majestic; Tian is silent and wondrous; Tian is true and august. Tian has no color or form, no direction or location, no sound or smell, and no beginning or end …… 清哉玄天，尊哉浩天，寂哉妙天，真哉皇天！無色無象天，無方無所天，無聲無臭天，無始無終天……

(Sha 2022, p. 219).

The passage systematically removes the physical attributes normally associated with the heavens: Tian is described as without color or form, without direction or location, without sound or smell, and without beginning or end. Whereas Wang Daiyu distinguished Tian from the transcendent Creator, Ma Dexin presented it as transcending the material world and extended its range of meanings so that it could designate the Creator himself. As Sun Zhenyu (孫振玉) observes, the significance of this engagement with the Confucian category of Tian lay not merely in adopting an established Chinese term, but in identifying within the Chinese intellectual tradition a conceptual basis through which Islamic monotheism could be articulated in a culturally intelligible form (Sun 2005, p. 52).

3. Reinterpreting Taiji and Wuji: Cosmological Order in an Islamic Context

Taiji (太極, “the Supreme Ultimate”) and Wuji (無極, “the Non-Ultimate”)3 provide a different case, since their reinterpretation concerned not divine transcendence directly but the cosmic order and the emergence of the myriad things. Zhou Dunyi’s Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate Explained (Taijitu shuo 太極圖說) associated Taiji with the emergence of Yin and Yang, the Five Phases, and the differentiated world (Chan 1969, p. 463). When Zhu Xi explained “the Non-Ultimate and yet Supreme Ultimate 無極而太極”, he understood Taiji as the supreme principle underlying the cosmos, while Wuji described a characteristic of Taiji: although it is not confined to any particular place or thing, it is present and operative throughout the world of things (Adler 2014, p. 171).

Han Kitab scholars incorporated Taiji and Wuji into an Islamic account of creation, but they did not simply retain Zhu Xi’s understanding of their relationship. In Wang Daiyu’s reinterpretation, Wuji and Taiji become distinct stages in the process of creation, with Wuji preceding Taiji rather than functioning merely as a characteristic of the latter. Wang Daiyu illustrates this reinterpretation by arguing that “The Real Lord brings creation into being through the Non-Ultimate … and unfolds the forms of heaven and earth through the Supreme Ultimate 真主運無極而開眾妙之門…用太極而造天地之形”, and further explains that “the Non-Ultimate is the beginning of the formlessness of the Heaven, the Earth and the ten thousand beings; the Supreme Ultimate is the beginning of the form of the Heaven, the Earth and the ten thousand beings 無極乃天地萬物無形之始，太極乃天地萬物有形之始” (D. Wang 1999, pp. 57, 162). These passages situate Wuji and Taiji within a process initiated by the Real Lord. Wuji marks the beginning of created reality prior to visible differentiation, while Taiji identifies the stage at which the forms of heaven, earth, and the myriad things emerge. Their explanatory roles are thus retained at the cosmological level but subordinated to the creative agency of the Real Lord.

Later Han Kitab scholars likewise worked with these cosmological categories, but assigned them new interpretive functions. Liu Zhi places Taiji within a sequence initiated by the Real Lord. He further writes that “Wuji is the seed from which the tree of Taiji grows 無極是種太極樹”, portraying Wuji as the hidden origin from which Taiji emerges under the creative activity of the Real Lord (Z. Liu 2015, p. 328). Ma Dexin’s treatment of the Pre-Heavenly stage (xiantian先天), the Middle-Heavenly stage (zhongtian 中天), and the Post-Heavenly stage (houtian 後天) in The Great Transformation Ultimately Returns (Dahua Zonggui 大化總歸) provides a further example of how inherited cosmological categories could be incorporated into an account of creation. He writes:

Transformation takes place in the Pre-Heavenly stage, where reality remains undifferentiated, possessing principle but no form; in the Middle-Heavenly stage, where reality becomes distinctly manifest, with principle revealing itself in form; and in the Post-Heavenly stage, where beings emerge through form and return to principle in an orderly state 化出於先天，渾然者，有理而無象；化出於中天，燦然者，即理而顯象；化出於後天，釐然者，由象以復理

(D. Ma 2005, p. 204).

Here, Ma Dexin describes the differentiation and transformation of reality through three stages, situating Hua within a cosmological process ultimately grounded in the creative agency of the Real Lord.

4. Reinterpreting Human Perfection and Moral Cultivation: Sagehood, the Great Mandate, Xin, and Xing

The same process can be seen in Han Kitab treatments of human perfection and moral cultivation, where Chinese concepts of Shengren (聖人, “sage”), Daming (大命, “the Great Mandate”), Xin (心, “heart”) and Xing (性, “nature”) were reinterpreted in relation to Islamic understandings of the Perfect Human, divine determination, human nature, and moral cultivation. Both traditions identified exemplary human beings as models of moral perfection and understood cultivation as a way of realizing human potential (Murata et al. 2009, p. 76).

Although the Islamic ideal of the Perfect Human (al-insān al-kāmil) and the Confucian conception of the sage differed in their theological assumptions, they performed comparable ethical functions. The Perfect Human represented the fullest realization of human potential and the most complete manifestation of divine attributes in the human person (Fu 2023, p. 598), while the Confucian sage represented the highest realization of moral cultivation and exemplary personhood. As Wu Zhen (吳震) notes, Confucian sagehood is closely associated with the embodiment of virtue and the realization of moral personhood, rather than merely intellectual excellence (Z. Wu 2013, p. 17). Sagehood therefore provided Han Kitab scholars with a Chinese conceptual resource for expressing the Islamic ideal of human perfection. Han Kitab authors drew on the well-known saying attributed to Confucius concerning the “great sage of the West 西方有大聖人焉” as evidence that the Islamic prophetic tradition could be understood within the broader tradition of Chinese intellectual history (D. Wang 1999, p. 4). Confucius could therefore be recognized as an exemplary sage who articulated principles of ethical and social life, while Muḥammad was understood as the Ultimate Sage, representing the highest realization of human perfection and, as a prophet, disclosing humanity’s origin, destiny, and relationship with the Creator (Frankel 2011, p. 61; Fu 2023, p. 601).

The relationship between sagehood and human perfection also extends to Daming, which Han Kitab scholars reinterpreted in relation to divine determination. In the Confucian tradition, Ming (命, “mandate”) was associated with Heaven’s decree and with the conditions or destiny assigned to human beings within a morally ordered cosmos (Slingerland 2009, p. 126). Although Han Kitab scholars did not simply equate the Confucian concept of Ming with the Islamic notion of divine determination, they reconfigured its relations with other concepts within their account of the created order. Wang Daiyu’s distinction between Ming and Xing provides an important foundation for this reinterpretation: he associates Ming with the Former Heaven, where beings descend from the primordial source, and Xing with the Latter Heaven, where this primordial potential becomes differentiated into the particular natures of created beings (D. Wang 1999, p. 412). Ma Dexin further illustrates this reinterpretation by placing Daming at the beginning of the process of transformation: “At the beginning of the process of transformation, there is the Great Mandate. Once the Great Mandate becomes manifest, nature and principle become differentiated; once nature and principle are differentiated, primordial vital energy emerges 蓋造化之初大命也. 大命著則性理分. 性理分則元氣出” (Fu 2023, p. 597). The sequence is significant: Daming precedes the differentiation of nature and principle and the emergence of primordial vital energy. In Ma Dexin’s account, therefore, Daming functions as a primordial determination within the process through which the created order becomes differentiated. Fu (2023) further shows that Ma Dexin connected the Great Mandate with the Ultimate Sage and the Sufi concept of the Muhammadan Reality4, treating the Great Mandate as the nature of the Ultimate Sage. In this configuration, Daming forms part of a broader account of the relationship between God, the cosmos, and the perfect human.

The discussion of Daming leads to a related question: how is the human being, as the most excellent of God’s created beings, understood within this divinely ordered cosmos? Liu Zhi addresses this question through his account of the relationship between Xing and Xin. He describes the human person as encompassing all created beings: “The human person encompasses within itself the qualities of all created beings in body, heart, and nature 人之身，統括一切所有之身；人之心，包總一切所有之心；人之性，渾含一切所有之性” (Z. Liu 2015, p. 108). This view situates human nature within a divinely ordered cosmos and emphasizes the human capacity to embody the qualities of created beings. Liu Zhi further explains that although Xing contains the subtlety of principle, it cannot manifest itself on its own and therefore “must rely on the capacities and intelligence of the heart 必得心之才智足以發之” to become manifest. Liu thus concludes that “the heart and nature mutually function for one another 心與性互相為用” (Z. Liu 2015, p. 161). Consequently, this relationship between Xin and Xing was retained but reconfigured within a broader account of divinely grounded human potential: Xing remained associated with principle and human nature, while Xin acquired a more explicit role in bringing that potential into human realization.

Such potential, however, is not realized automatically but through cultivation. As Fu (2023) shows in her discussion of Ma Dexin, sagehood in the Han Kitab tradition was understood not only in terms of moral authority but also as a form of moral perfection achieved through cultivation. For Wang Daiyu, this cultivation involves overcoming selfish desires so that the “true heart” can emerge (D. Wang 1999, p. 149). Cultivation thus becomes the process through which this human potential is realized, connecting the relation between Xin and Xing to the broader Han Kitab ideal of sagehood and human perfection.

5. Conceptual Reconfiguration and Intellectual Communication

The cases discussed above show that conceptual reconfiguration involved more than simply replacing one term with another: inherited concepts could acquire new meanings, enter new conceptual relationships, and assume different explanatory functions. By examining these different cases together, this article shows that conceptual reconfiguration did not follow a single pattern but could take different forms depending on the concepts involved and the intellectual work they performed.

This distinction also helps clarify the relationship between conceptual reconfiguration and translation. As Tony K. Stewart’s discussion of “equivalence” in religious translation suggests, the search for equivalence can be understood as an attempt to make religious ideas intelligible through a language and conceptual world that is not always one’s own (Stewart 2001). Translation involves negotiation across linguistic and cultural boundaries (Bassnett 2014), but the Han Kitab cases suggest that such negotiation could also transform how inherited concepts functioned within the receiving intellectual context (Y. Wu 2024, p. 12; Frankel 2011, p. 61). Conceptual reconfiguration therefore does not stand in opposition to translation; rather, it draws attention to what happens to inherited concepts when they are incorporated into a different intellectual context.

This process of incorporating inherited concepts into a different intellectual context can also be understood as part of a broader process of intellectual communication. Murata, Chittick, and Tu Weiming’s close study of Liu Zhi offers a concrete example of this process. They note that Liu did not simply translate passages from his Arabic and Persian sources, but “recreated their gist in Confucian terms” (Murata et al. 2009, p. 54). Liu’s approach can also be situated within the broader process of intellectual communication described by Benite. Chinese Muslim literati engaged in constant “implicit dialogues” with Chinese elites and developed a form of self-understanding in which Islam was presented as a Dao and Muḥammad as a sage. They understood Islam as both “compatible with and supplementary to Confucian tradition and as both encompassed by and encompassing of that tradition,” thereby locating Chinese Muslim identity within the overlapping intellectual worlds of Islam and China (Benite 2005, p. 232). In this context, conceptual reconfiguration can be understood as one way in which intellectual communication took place. The term is used here to specify this process more precisely, rather than to claim that Han Kitab scholars employed a wholly unprecedented form of intellectual adaptation.

Conceptual reconfiguration, however, also raises a problem concerning intelligibility. If an inherited term acquires new meanings within an Islamic framework, could its use mislead Confucian readers who expected the term to retain its established technical sense? Tu Weiming’s reflections on his close reading of Liu Zhi with Murata and Chittick illustrate how this problem could arise: Liu Zhi’s text initially appeared “lucid” and “clear and simple,” but closer reading revealed complex sentences, words with multiple meanings, and a “fruitful ambiguity” in many seemingly unproblematic phrases (Murata et al. 2009, p. 598).

This suggests that conceptual reconfiguration should not be understood as producing complete conceptual equivalence. Nor does it necessarily imply failed communication. Rather, it creates what might be described as a productive zone of partial intelligibility: readers could recognize established meanings and associations while encountering those concepts in new conceptual relationships and theological contexts. The possibility of misunderstanding was therefore part of this process rather than simply an obstacle to it. In the Han Kitab texts examined here, semantic differences were negotiated through the use of familiar terms alongside explanation, qualification, comparison, and conceptual distinction. The texts therefore reveal a form of intellectual exchange in which understanding depended not on concepts having identical meanings across traditions, but on working through their similarities and differences.

6. Conclusions

This article has examined how Han Kitab scholars reconfigured Chinese concepts to articulate Islamic thought within the Chinese intellectual world. The reinterpretations of Tian, Taiji and Wuji, and sagehood, the Great Mandate, Xin, and Xing show that conceptual change operated not only through shifts in meaning but also through changes in conceptual relationships and explanatory functions. The comparison of Wang Daiyu, Liu Zhi, Ma Zhu, and Ma Dexin further demonstrates that such reconfiguration did not follow a single pattern: inherited concepts could be distinguished from, repositioned in relation to, or extended to express Islamic theological categories. The Han Kitab tradition thus offers a historically grounded example of how conceptual change can occur across intellectual traditions without requiring complete conceptual equivalence.