Monday, January 20, 2014

Brief Communication: Did the Kaifeng Ancestors Arrive During the Yuan Dynasty?

Sino-Judaic scholars have proposed different times and modes of entry for the Kaifeng Ancestors. The former ranges from the Han to the Ming and the latter are the overland Silk Road or the maritime sea route. The major consensus is that they arrived during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) using the overland Silk Road. While I no longer accept the land route (a paper arguing in favor of the sea route is forthcoming), I accept the Song since the original 1489 stone, the first of the three major Jewish inscriptions, lists this as their initial time of entry. However, I have recently come across new data in my studies that makes the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) another attractive option. This paper will serve as a brief introduction to the subject in place of a more detailed study which I plan to do at a later date.

The reason that scholars favor the overland route is because the Kaifeng liturgy is written in Judeo-Persian, Persian transliterated with Hebrew,[1] an offshoot of New Persian which developed on the trade routes of Central Asia during the 8th-century.[2] Another reason is that the Persian is a particular dialect associated with the Central Asian city of Bukhara, which lies along the northern Silk Road route.[3] However, it’s more likely that these documents made it to China after the Song Dynasty since a recent study found that they have linguistic similarities with Judeo-Persian texts from the 14th-century onward.[4]

These documents could have come overland during the following Yuan Dynasty. Liu Yingsheng explains: “The Mongols conquered Central Asia earlier than the Chinese Song (960-1279) Empire, and consequently large numbers of Muslim soldiers, officials, merchants, scholars, and slaves accompanied the Mongol troops when they entered China and most of them finally settled in China.”[5] Frederick Mote adds that these Semu (people of varied categories), the favored class of foreigners brought in to help administrate the country, included Uighurs, Turks, Arabs, Persians, and Europeans.[6] Jews certainly would have been among these people.[7] In addition, Persian was one of the official languages of the Yuan, as well as the lingua franca of diplomats, scientists, and the Hui (回) Muslim ethnicity.[8] Persian-speaking Jews would have flourished in this environment.

Given this information, it’s very possible that the Kaifeng Ancestors came during the Yuan. The Semu were given preferential treatment by the Mongol rulers and shared in the culpability of marginalizing the Chinese people. Zhu Jiang points out that broken Arab and Persian tombstones discovered in the foundations of an early Ming-era wall in Yangzhou show that there was anti-foreign sentiment after the fall of the Yuan.[9] The hatred for foreigners at this time was so extensive that the first Ming emperor issued a 1368 decree against the “killing, pillaging, destruction of buildings, or desecration of graves, of the vanquished.”[10] Therefore, the reason that the 1489 stone sites the Song Dynasty could be because the Jews wanted to predate their entry in order to deflect the anger of their Chinese neighbors. This might explain why the proceeding 1512 and 1663 stones date their entry further back in time to the Han and Zhou Dynasties, respectively. In essence, the predating was a protective maneuver; it was their way of claiming that they were just as Chinese (read: loyal to the Chinese empire) as their neighbors.

This might also explain certain discrepancies in the aforementioned stones. For instance, the 1489 inscription casts the Jews as being fully Sinicized with Chinese surnames upon their arrival during the Song. Past researchers have noted that the Jews most likely took surnames sometime during the Yuan-Ming period.[11] This could be an example of "telescopic history," in which the Kaifeng Jews mixed events from their past (taking surnames during the Yuan) and present (engraving the stone during the Ming) to create a sort of folk history (having Chinese surnames in the Song). Also, the same stone refers to Kaifeng as Bianliang (汴梁), which was the name of the city during the Yuan, not the Song.[12]

There may have been a Yuan-era inscription that predates the 1489 stone. This is because a law enacted by the Mongols dictated that all houses of worship had to erect a stone describing their religion. This stone could have been destroyed by the Chinese in the fray at the end of the Yuan dynasty. On the contrary, it could have been destroyed by the Kaifeng Jews to hide their association with the Mongols. Yin Gang believes that the latter scenario is the most likely. He writes:

The Han people resumed their regime with the establishment of the Ming 明 Dynasty. In case of their being brought to account by the Han people, both the Jewish and the Muslim community destroyed their biographical documents during the Yuan Dynasty, which is why we could not find any historical account written by either community. This was especially true for the Kaifeng Jews […] Among the documents destroyed, there must have been a brief history of each foreign community and the basic doctrine of their religious beliefs engraved on stone tablets, since the Yuan rulers asked them to do so and the stone tablets had to be placed at the entrance of all synagogues and mosques.[13]
The purposeful destruction of material would explain why there is a conspicuous lack of information on the community during the Yuan Dynasty. This deserves more focused study in the near future.

Notes

[1] Donald Leslie, The Survival of the Chinese Jews: The Jewish Community of Kaifeng (Tʻoung pao, 10. Leiden: Brill, 1972), 118-119
[2] Bo Utas, “Semitic in Iranian: Written, Read and Spoken Language,” in Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, ed. Éva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaksson, and Carina Jahani (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005), 72.
[3] Elkan N. Adler, Jews in Many Lands (London, 1905), 221.
[4] Fook-Kong Wong and Dalia Yasharpour, The Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews of China (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 59.
[5] Liu Yingsheng, “A Lingua Franca along the Silk Road: Persian Languages in China between the 14th and the 16th Centuries,” In Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 87.
[6] Frederick Wade Mote, Imperial China, 900-1800 (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University press, 1999), 490.
[7] George Hourani explains that the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate Dynasty of Baghdad called for “Muslim unity” between Persians and Arabs by requiring Iranian converts to speak Arabic. This caused 9th-century Arab records about Middle Eastern merchants traveling to the east to mention “Persians” less and “Arabs” more (George Fadlo Hourani and John Carswell, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 65). He explains, “Arabic-speaking Moslems of Iranian origin would naturally be classed as [Dashi 大食], Arabs” (Ibid, 62). The term Dashi may have also been used to designate speakers of Persian since it is originally a transliteration of the Persian word “Tāzīk” or “Tāžīk,” a term that distinguished Iranians from Turks (Ye Yiliang, “Introductory Essay: Outline of the Political Relations between Iran and China,” in Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 5.). Therefore, Jews speaking languages associated with Muslims may have led to the two being conflated by the Chinese. Yin Gang suggests that some of the Semu who graduated the Yuan imperial exams with the prestigious rank of Jinshi (进士) may have been Jews since they have surnames similar to those of the Kaifeng Jews (Yin Gang, “Between Disintegration and Expansion: A Comparative Retrospection of Kaifeng Jewish and Muslim Communities,” in Peter Kupfer, Youtai: Presence and Perception of Jews and Judaism in China, ed. Peter Kupfer (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008), 192).
[8] Liu, “A Lingua Franca along the Silk Road,” 87-92.
[9] Zhu Jiang, “Jewish Traces in Yangzhou,” in Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars, ed. Sidney Shapiro (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988), 146-147.
[10] Ibid, 146.
[11] Leslie, The Survival of the Chinese Jews, 27.
[12] William Charles White, Chinese Jews: A Complication of Matters Relating to the Jews of K’ai-Feng Fu, 2nd ed (New York: Paragon Book Reprint, 1966), vol. II, 21 n. 14.
[13] Yin, “Between Disintegration and Expansion,” 193.

Bibliography

Adler, Elkan N. Jews in Many Lands (London, 1905).

Hourani, George Fadlo, and John Carswell. Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Mote, Frederick Wade. Imperial China, 900-1800. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University press, 1999.

Leslie, Donald. The Survival of the Chinese Jews: The Jewish Community of Kaifeng. T’oung pao, 10. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

Liu, Yingsheng. “A Lingua Franca along the Silk Road: Persian Languages in China between the 14th and the 16th Centuries.” In Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz, 87-95. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010.

Utas, Bo. “Semitic in Iranian: Written, Read and Spoken Language.” In Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, ed. Éva Ágnes Csató, Bo Isaksson, and Carina Jahani, 65-78. London: Routledge Curzon, 2005.

White, William Charles. Chinese Jews: A Complication of Matters Relating to the Jews of K’ai-Feng Fu, 2nd ed. New York: Paragon Book Reprint, 1966.

Wong, Fook-Kong, and Dalia Yasharpour. The Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews of China. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Ye, Yiliang. “Introductory Essay: Outline of the Political Relations between Iran and China.” In Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz, 3-6. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010.

Yin, Gang. “Between Disintegration and Expansion: A Comparative Retrospection of Kaifeng Jewish and Muslim Communities.” In Youtai: Presence and Perception of Jews and Judaism in China, ed. Peter Kupfer, 185-200. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.

Zhu, Jiang. “Jewish Traces in Yangzhou.” In Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars, ed. Sidney Shapiro, 143-158. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

A Jewish Ruler in Xinjiang

I was contacted earlier this year by a Princeton graduate concerning my past research on the Kaifeng Jews. I'm always on the lookout for new material, so I welcomed the news that he had located a reference to Jews in Xinjiang province, China that had been overlooked by researchers like Donald Leslie and Chen Yuan. This new information was located in a report on the 1900-1901 exploration of Xinjiang (then known as Eastern Turkestan) by the famous archaeologist Aurel Stein (1862-1943). [1] It describes a 12th-century Jew named Turk Terkhān, the ruler of the desert town of Kenhān. This entry presents my opinion on the historical validity of the material in relation to the Jews of China.

In mid-march of 1901, Stein set out to locate a town named in various historical travel logs as Hanmo (捍麽) (Song Yun, 6th. c.), Pimo (媲摩) (Xuanzang, 7th c.), and Pein (Marco Polo, 13th c.). [2] After crossing an expanse of desert and swamp by camel and horse, he came across two ancient deserted towns, Uzun-Tati (“the distant tati [dwelling]”) and Ulūgh-Ziārat (“ancient shrine”), which he believed to be contenders for the target of his search. Positioned about 3 miles apart, these two towns were located in the exact direction and number of miles from Yotkan, the capital of the ancient Khotan empire, as given in the travel account of the monk Xuanzang (玄奘, 602-664). [3] Stein cites evidence that both locations were occupied as late as the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). [4] For example, the Tadhkira (biography) of Maḥmūd Karam Kābulī, a work containing information about the 12th-century, mentions Ulūgh-Ziārat by name. It is this work that references the Jewish ruler. Stein writes:
“This text…describes in some detail the conquest by the Muhammadan champions of the territory of ‘Kenhān’, situated between the Keriya river and Khotan. Its ruler, the infidel ‘Turk Terkhān’, is spoken of as a Jew and as a dependent of the Nūdūn Khān, the ‘Tersa’ or Christian, who held Khotan with his Kirghiz Kalmak or Kara-Khitai. [5] After defeating Turk Terkhān the Muhammadan host is said to have taken and pillaged the rich town of Ulūgh-Ziārat, which was close to his capital Kenhān. The latter itself vanished through magic, while the Muslim host next occupied Chīra, and victoriously advanced upon Khotan. Whatever interpretation we may care to put upon any historical reminiscences that may possibly have mingled with this legend, it is quite clear on topographical grounds that by ‘the province of Kenhān’ must be meant the oases stretching from Kerya to Chīra, and by ‘the town of Ulūgh-Ziārat’ the site of Ulūgh-Ziārat. The ‘town of Kenhān’, Turk Terkhān’s capital, which is said to have vanished, may, at the time not exactly known to us when the legend took the shape recorded in the Tadhkira, have been looked for among the sands of Uzun-Tati.” [6]
Despite Ulūgh-Ziārat being a historical city, I am not inclined to accept the account provided by the Tadhkira. I have not been able to track down any more information on Turk Terkhān or Nūdūn Khān. I find it hard to believe that a Jew and a Christian ruled over land (Terkhān and Khān are both ranks) in a predominantly Muslim area neighboring the eastern caliphate. [7] In fact, there are elements of the story that make me think it was a legend created to glorify Islam. For starters, both men are referred to by derogatory terms. The Terkhān is called an “infidel” and the Khān is called a “tersa.” The Persian word tersa was a universal term applied to “conquered idolaters” (any non-Muslim living under their rule).[8] Second, the Muslim forces are portrayed as sweeping through and easily conquering both men and their nomad armies. [9]. Thus, the Jew and Christian are painted as weak infidels, while the Muslims are painted as conquering victors.

Click the image to open in full size.

A map of the Silk Road routes leading into China. Khotan, a major
oasis city not far from Ulūgh-Ziārat, is indicated by a yellow star.

A good parallel is the legend told to the Jesuit Matteo Ricci by the Chinese Jew Ai Tian (艾田) in 1605. Ricci recorded in his journal that the Jew told him “they [the community] had preserved the tradition that many Moors, Christians and Jews had come with the King Tamerlane, when he conquered Persia and also China 800 years ago.” [10] Eight hundred years prior would have put Tamerlane’s (1336-1405) arrival during the middle of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The only problem is that he lived during the early Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and died just 200 years prior to Ai and Ricci’s meeting. Additionally, he never conquered China at all. Tamerlane originally became upset when Ming Emperor Hongwu (洪武, 1328-1398) sent him a letter describing him as a vassal in 1397. He didn’t start amassing forces for an offensive against China until 1404, during the rule of the Yongle Emperor (永樂], 1360-1424). Fortunately, Tamerlane died of an illness in 1405 in the Central Asian town of Otrar before ever reaching China. [11] He originally intended on converting all of China to Islam, [12] so the legend of him conquering the land may have been spawned by wishful thinking Muslims living in the Middle Kingdom.

In conclusion, the story regarding Turk Terkhān cannot be accepted as a historical account of a Jew living in Xinjiang. No source outside of the Tadhkira mentions the events, which makes it difficult to verify. It’s very possible that Turk Terkhān is a fictional straw man—or at the very least the shadow of a demonized historical ruler—created to glorify Islam. He and the Christian Nūdūn Khān are painted as weak infidels, while the Muslims are painted as conquering victors. Such stories may have been common because the 17th-century Jew Ai Tian shared a legend about the Muslim ruler Tamerlane conquering China. This is obviously wrong considering that Tamerlane died before his armies reached China. It was most likely the product of wishful thinking Muslims, like those who created the story featured in the Tadhkira.

I do not doubt, however, that Jews have lived and passed through Xinjiang for centuries. They are known to have been active in the area by at least the 8th-century. For example, during the same expedition, Stein uncovered a Judeo-Persian business letter in Dandān-Uiliq near Khotan.[13] The letter was written during the Tang dynasty by a Jew upset with a business partner in Persia because he was stuck with selling an inferior flock of sheep. [14] It is important to note that it was written on paper, which was only available in China at this time. [15] The Kaifeng Jews are thought to have settled in China during 12th-century. The fact that they were Persian merchants probably means they had to have traveled through Xinjiang in order to get to the imperial capital of Kaifeng. Also, Jews may have been among the “people with colored eyes” (色目人) imported to China by the Mongols during the proceeding Yuan dynasty. [16] Those living in the north no doubt had to travel through Xinjiang.

Notes

[1] Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907). The entire 700 + page report can be downloaded for free from Google Books.
[2] Ibid, 452 and 455-457. The Chinese characters for Song Yun and Xuanzang are 宋雲 and 玄奘, respectively. Both monks traveled to India with the expressed purpose of retrieving Buddhist sutras.
[3] Ibid, 462.
[4] Ibid, 461 and 463.
[5] The Kirghiz Kalmak or Kara-Khitai are nomadic tribes from Central Asia and Mongolia known for their fighting ability.
[6] Ibid, 463.
[7] These ranks were common among Mongolian and Turkish people (Henry H. Howorth, History of the Mongols, From the 9th to the 19h Century (New York: Burt Franklin, 1966), 31). Terkhān was once a rank in the Persianate, but eventually became a name by the time of Baber (1483-1530) (Robert Marriott Caldecott, The Life of Baber, Emperor of Hindostan (London: J. Darling; [etc.], 1844), 17).
[8] Palmira Johnson Brummett, The 'book' of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250-1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 42.
[9] See note #5.
[10] Donald Leslie, The Survival of the Chinese Jews: The Jewish Community of Kaifeng (Tʻoung pao, 10. Leiden: Brill, 1972), 9 and 32. The bracketed words are mine.
[11] Denis Crispin Twitchett, John K. Fairbank, and Frederick W. Mote, The Cambridge History of China. Vol.7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 259.
[12] Ibid.
[13] David S. Margoliouth, “An Early Judaeo-Persian Document from Khotan in the Stein Collection, with other early Persian Documents,” in Studies of the Chinese Jews: Selections from Journals East and West, ed. Hyman Kublin (New YorK: Paragon Book Reprint Corp, 1971), 25.
[14] A full translation of the letter can be found in Bo Utas, “The Jewish-Persian fragment from Dandan-Uiliq,” Orientalia Suecana, Uppsala, 17 (1968): 123-136.
[15] Xu Xin, The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Pub. House, 2003), 153.
[16] Zhu Jiang, "Jewish Traces in Yangzhou," in Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars, ed. Sidney Shapiro (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988), 146.

Bibliography

Brummett, Palmira Johnson. The 'book' of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250-1700. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

Caldecott, Robert Marriott. The Life of Baber, Emperor of Hindostan. London: J. Darling; [etc.], 1844.

Howorth, Henry H. History of the Mongols, From the 9th to the 19h Century. New York: Burt Franklin, 1966.

Leslie, Donald. The Survival of the Chinese Jews: The Jewish Community of Kaifeng. Tʻoung pao, 10. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

Margoliouth, David S. “An Early Judaeo-Persian Document from Khotan in the Stein Collection, with other early Persian Documents.” in Studies of the Chinese Jews: Selections from Journals East and West, ed. Hyman Kublin, 23-54. New YorK: Paragon Book Prent Corp, 1971.

Stein, Aurel. Ancient Khotan, Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

Twitchett, Denis Crispin, John K. Fairbank, and Frederick W. Mote. The Cambridge History of China. Vol.7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Utas, Bo. “The Jewish-Persian fragment from Dandan-Uiliq.” Orientalia Suecana, Uppsala, 17 (1968): 123-136.

Xu, Xin. The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion. Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Pub. House, 2003.

Zhu, Jiang. "Jewish Traces in Yangzhou." in Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars, ed. Sidney Shapiro, 143-158. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Archive #4: The 1704 Letter of Pere Gozani

The Jesuit Jean-Paul Gozani visited the Kaifeng Jewish community in the early 18th century. He reported what he saw and heard in a letter to his superior. The letter serves as an interesting example of the west's contemporary negative view of foreign culture and religion.


(I had to use my scanning wand, so the images are a little skewed.)




The symbol of the Society of Jesus.


Scans

* http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/9707/ptdc0125.jpg

* http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/7958/ptdc0126x.jpg

* http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7973/ptdc0127.jpg

* http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/1346/ptdc0128.jpg

* http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/2122/ptdc0129x.jpg

* http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3047/ptdc0130.jpg

* http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/1552/ptdc0131r.jpg

* http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/2493/ptdc0132.jpg

Monday, May 28, 2012

Archive #3: The 1663 Stone Inscription

Here are the Chinese characters, English translation, and accompanying notes for both the front and back of the 1663 stone inscription. They come from Chinese Jews: A Complication of Matters Relating to the Jews of K'ai-Feng Fu (2nd ed., 1966) by Bishop William Charles White. This is meant for purely educational purposes. If anyone would like higher resolution versions of the characters, please contact me.

Again, I had to use my scanning wand to do these, so some may appear slightly warped.

FRONT


Chinese Characters

* http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/4946/ptdc0102.jpg
* http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/3688/ptdc0103o.jpg
* http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/5485/ptdc0104.jpg
* http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/8507/ptdc0105.jpg
* http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/6177/ptdc0106.jpg
* http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/1082/ptdc0107.jpg

English Translation

* http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/8740/ptdc0081.jpg
* http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/498/ptdc0082p.jpg
* http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/6061/ptdc0083b.jpg
* http://img816.imageshack.us/img816/3688/ptdc0084.jpg
* http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5805/ptdc0085.jpg
* http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/1747/ptdc0086.jpg
* http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/707/ptdc0087iq.jpg
* http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4171/ptdc0088.jpg
* http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7116/ptdc0089.jpg
* http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/2991/ptdc0090.jpg
* http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/7373/ptdc0091.jpg
* http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/8231/ptdc0092j.jpg

Notes

* http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/2697/ptdc0093.jpg
* http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/9904/ptdc0094.jpg
* http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/4858/ptdc0095.jpg
* http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/566/ptdc0096d.jpg
* http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/9640/ptdc0097.jpg
* http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/6803/ptdc0098.jpg

----------------------------------------------

BACK

(No picture, sorry)

Chinese Characters

* http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/84/ptdc0115.jpg
* http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/1041/ptdc0116.jpg

English Translation

* http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7107/ptdc0108.jpg
* http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/4289/ptdc0109v.jpg
* http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8941/ptdc0110.jpg
* http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/8642/ptdc0111.jpg

Notes

* http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/1381/ptdc0112.jpg
* http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8192/ptdc0113.jpg
* http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/6739/ptdc0114.jpg

Archive #2: The 1512 Stone Inscription

Here are the Chinese characters, English translation, and accompanying notes for the 1512 stone inscription. They come from Chinese Jews: A Complication of Matters Relating to the Jews of K'ai-Feng Fu (2nd ed., 1966) by Bishop William Charles White. This is meant for purely educational purposes. If anyone would like higher resolution versions of the characters, please contact me.

I have to apologize for how some of the scans came out warped. I had to use my scanning wand because my printer scanner is on the fritz. They are not too bad, though.


Chinese characters

Archive #1: The 1489 Stone Inscription

Here are the Chinese characters, English translation, and accompanying notes for the 1489 stone inscription. They come from Chinese Jews: A Complication of Matters Relating to the Jews of K'ai-Feng Fu (2nd ed., 1966) by Bishop William Charles White. This is meant for purely educational purposes. If anyone would like higher resolution versions of the characters, please contact me.


Chinese characters

* http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/234/cp1xp.jpg
* http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/3295/cp2x.jpg
* http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/4342/cp3vq.jpg
* http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/3508/cp4i.jpg
* http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/4237/cp5g.jpg

English Translation

* http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3407/ptdc0080.jpg
* http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/2502/82925409.jpg
* http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9091/30447495.jpg
* http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9558/54735057.jpg
* http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/6594/29006579.jpg
* http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9348/99718115.jpg
* http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4376/85380510.jpg
* http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/4011/63785325.jpg
* http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/4937/45344985.jpg
* http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/1575/58042012.jpg

Notes

* http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/5581/pn1za.jpg
* http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/6383/pn2h.jpg
* http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/378/pn3jn.jpg
* http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/2134/pn4t.jpg
* http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8321/pn5t.jpg
* http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5712/pn6h.jpg
* http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5756/pn7x.jpg
* http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6900/pn8i.jpg
* http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/4986/pn9yu.jpg
* http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/7048/pn10i.jpg

Thursday, May 24, 2012

My Correspondence

I corresponded with a scholar who specializes in the Kaifeng Jews back in 2010. What follows is a selection from one of the letters I sent them. It explains my own thoughts on the community's early life in China:
[Recipient's name]

[...]

I am sure there has to be more mentions of Jews in China in other records. Perhaps these allusions have been confused with Muslims or other religious groups. S.D. Goitein said there has never been any Geniza letters found that point to India Traders having direct contact with China. Roxani Eleni Margariti believes this might be because China was so far removed from the farthest reaches that Cairo Geniza letters traveled from (mainly India). It’s possible a letter will turn up someday, but it is by no means a certainty. Such a letter wouldn’t necessarily be connected to the Kaifeng community anyway.

At one time I spent a great deal of effort trying to connect the Jews to the Mediterranean India Trade. It just seemed like a natural fit because it involved 11th – 13th Jewish merchants active in India that adhered to Maimonides’ code and the Yemen ritual. But beyond these similarities, I couldn’t find anything conclusive. I later came to appreciate their Persian origins and learned the Mediterranean and Persian Jews were active in two different areas of India. The Persian Jews were prominent in the Punjab, while their Mediterranean brothers were prominent along the Malabar Coast and in the south. Another difference was that the Persian Jews generally came by land, the Mediterranean Jews by Sea. According to Goitein, the Persian India Trade was actually beyond the scope of the Geniza. Despite these differences, the activity of those on the Malabar Coast still stands as a very good example for how the Kaifeng Jews might have lived prior to and after settling in China.

There are actually a large number of Geniza documents written in Judeo-Persian. I believe most of these were written by Persian Jews whose ancestors had moved to the Mediterranean during the 9th century at the request of their Karaite leaders. New efforts are being made to translate these documents. Five volumes are scheduled to be published in 2012 by Dr. Shaul Shacked. I currently have access to Cairo Geniza documents via the online Friedberg Geniza Project, but none of the Judeo-Persian documents have transcripts yet. To my knowledge, no one has ever compared these documents with the Kaifeng Liturgy. Such a study might turn up some valuable information.

I too am interested in how the Jews accommodated themselves to the Chinese environment. While writing this letter, I consulted some psychological / anthropological papers on “Ethnic enclaves.” These enclaves are cultural centers peopled by various ethno-religious groups living in foreign countries. This need to be around similar people in unfamiliar settings is known in psychology as “situated identity” and “contextual identity.” This is the basis for such famous enclaves as Little China, Little Italy, Greektown, etc. If you think about it, the Kaifeng Jews were an ethnic enclave themselves. One paper I am currently reading states:
"Segregation is natural as a group enters the United States. In the beginning, people's limited market resources and ethnically bound cultural and social capital are mutually reinforcing; they work in tandem to sustain ethnic neighborhoods [...] immigrants entered American cities, in which working-class people had to live near their places of employment and had little contact with people outside their neighborhood."
This information could easily be applied to ethnic groups in other countries and other times. For instance, the 14th century sojourner Ibn Battuta described the Muslim quarters of China as being cities within cities, closed off from the Chinese, with their own food, and entertainment. These areas were so self sufficient that one did not need to leave. The Muslim inhabitants simply continued to live their lives like they had done in their birth country despite being in China. The communities often had a representative that dealt exclusively with the Chinese. (A “representative of merchants” is a common and very prestigious position held by various people mentioned throughout the Geniza documents.) This is basically how I believe the early Kaifeng Jews lived. Their enclave was formed by Jewish merchants that coalesced in the city center of Kaifeng. This might have been officially sanctioned since Arabs, Persians, and Koreans had their own areas designated for them by the government. This would naturally verify the stone inscription that states the Jews were welcomed to stay. Since the Jews were merchants that probably did most of their business near their enclave, they naturally would not have come into contact with the neighboring Chinese very much. I would think only a few Jews actually spoke Chinese (not all of them needed to anyway); therefore, a representative was probably used to initiate business dealings. This representative was more than likely an Arab merchant as various Song histories attest to their presence in the Chinese bureaucracy at that time. The community probably consisted solely of men at first. The Geniza mentions that many merchants were holy men in their own right, so they wouldn't have needed to find outside help in this department. Many probably began to marry the Chinese early on because of the low numbers of Jewish women. Although it was a taboo, merchants on the Malabar Coast would sometimes marry their Hindu slave girls and convert them to Judaism. This included the most famous India Trader of them all, Abraham ben Yiju, who lived in India during the mid-12th century. Records from the Geniza show that men active so far afield of home for such long periods of time often divorced their wives. They did this so the wife could find a new family to support her by marrying another man. So, many of the Jews were probably bachelors upon their arrival in the Middle Kingdom. They might have even been polygamous like Ibn Battuta, who took a new wife or concubine in every country he visited.

The aforementioned paper also states:
"People with more financial resources and mainstream jobs avoid ethnic zones, and these areas are left behind by immigrants with more experience and by the second generation in search of the 'Promised Land.'"
I think the last part of the sentence is a great illustration of how later generations of Jews found it necessary to assimilate more of the Chinese culture in order to better their social positions. More and more of them certainly began to learn the language, which would have enabled them to intermingle with the local populace and take on new professions.

[The next two paragraphs are in response to the recipient who thought the Jews were primarily cotton merchants]

The 1489 inscription simply states the Jews “brought tribute of western cloth to the Song (court).” This is rather ambiguous. A person could read the passage any number of ways and provide support to that effect. For instance, the cloth could be taken as flax because it was popular in the west. According to the 9th century Afro-Arab scholar Al-Jahiz, "All men know that Khorasan is the land of cotton, Egypt the land of flax." One might argue that Flax was known in China as well and couldn’t be the cloth alluded to. However, both Flax and cotton were widely known during the Ming when the 1489 inscription was first commissioned. So my question is: why didn’t they just name the specific cloth? I will agree with past researchers that cotton is the most plausible due to it being less popular than Flax and Silk during the Song, but I think this is as far as we can speculate. We can’t confidently state the Jews were merchants who dealt exclusively in cotton without further evidence. One thing we can be certain of, though, is that the material had already been processed and was no longer in raw form. This would have taken up much less room than huge bails of raw cotton.

History shows Jewish merchants active in the East often dealt in more than one product. The India Traders on the Malabar Coast exported everything from fragrant wood to brass furniture. The Radanites dabbled in “musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products of the Eastern countries.” The Judeo-Persian letter from Dandan-Uliq in Xingjiang province, China points to the Jewish merchant dealing in sheep, cloth, and possibly even slaves. Specializing in only one product would be somewhat risky since that particular item may only be in demand at certain times of the year or may fall out of favor altogether. Having several items would give a merchant more flexibility to meet his buyer’s changing demands and return a better profit in the end. So it is more likely cotton textiles was only one of many products the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews specialized in.

Robert M. Hartwell’s unpublished book Tribute Missions to Song China 960 -1126 (1983) lists envoys from countries ranging from Africa to Korea and everything in between. Most of the recorded tributes seem to be of a political nature, foreign kings and princes paying homage to the Song. Ralph Kauz states merchants often presented themselves as political envoys in order to gain favor with the court during the early Ming. I wouldn’t doubt if this was a common practice performed in prior dynasties. The available records mention “local products” being among the bulk of the tributes, apart from money and horses and the occasional 300 pound block of Jade or a "dancing elephant." Some of these certainly could have been cotton textiles.

The Jews might not have actually met the Emperor upon their arrival. You will recall the vagueness of the stone inscription: “bought tribute … to the Song (court).” The Emperor’s call for them to stay in China is not mentioned until the second line. This could mean the Jews’ tribute was forwarded onto the Emperor who later sent out a decree. Envoys mentioned in Hartwell’s book were routed away from the capital if they had taken a forbidden route through enemy territory to arrive in China (usually a northerly route) or didn’t have proper credentials. Sometimes even annual tributes from neighboring kingdoms would only be allowed to venture to the capital every other year. The areas they were rerouted too were far away from the capital, meaning an imperial decree would have to be sent out to inform them of the Emperors acceptance or decline of a tribute. So not everyone got to personally meet the emperor. I think it is plausible that the Jews were trading in Song China long before they sent the tribute to the court. Now, the inscription says 70 families arrived, but, as I’m sure you know, other researchers believe that it is a scribal mistake for 17. A small contingent of merchants would be more likely to fly under the imperial radar than a huge one. (Hartman mentions one envoy so big that 50 were split off and allowed to go onto the capital, while the rest were routed to a different location.) But the number would steadily increase over time and a place would have to be designated for them. Perhaps the tribute is why their enclave was designated for them. All of this is, of course, conjecture on my part.

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To date, I haven't read any research papers that try to describe how the Kaifeng Jews might have lived during the early years of their settlement. Though brief, I think my letter does a good job of showing what their life could have been like. I would definitely like to look into the psychological aspects of "Ethnic Enclaves" more, but that will have to wait until later.