Islamic China: An Asian History, the Persian Language, and Literati

 

Rian Thum's book Islamic China: An Asian History offers well researched and nuanced appraises of the history of Islam in China - especially regarding the creation of books, and the reading of books, as well as educational systems.  Much of what he writes regarding the Persian language probably very well held for the Kaifeng Jewish Community:

For Chinese-speaking Muslims before the modernist educational reforms of the twentieth century, the most common initial experience of learning to read for comprehension was in Persian, not Chinese or even Arabic. Pp 56-57

The Kaifeng Community has no religious texts in Chinese, and only some texts have very short Chinese figures.  It does not appear that the language of religious instruction was Chinese.  This has been a criticism of the Kaifeng Community: without any religious books in Chinese, when their knowledge of Hebrew eroded, there was no religious literature in their native tongue to fall back upon. But there might have been a good reason for this: the language of learning and comprehension of Judaism was not Chinese, but Persian.

Women were educated in Persian in Chinese Muslim communities, a firm indication that this was the native tongue of Chinese Muslims:

The nature of specialized women’s education further emphasizes the role of Persian as a foundational medium of basic education. In many parts of China, women’s education followed an abbreviated version of the curriculum outlined by Zhao and Pang, consisting of five texts that came to be known as “the women’s classics.” All five of these texts were Persian texts (authored by men), and all seem to be texts mentioned by Zhao. 56-57

For this culture, and most pre-modern Jewish cultures, women were not expected to learn "male" language like Hebrew, but could and should be instructed about religion and its duties in their native tongues.  As Persian was the native language of the Chinese Muslims (all of them, some sub-set?) it was most likely the language of hearth and home in the Kaifeng Jewish Community.

The Judeo-Persian of the Community has been denigrated because of the supposedly stilted nature of some of the JP colophons in the Square Scripture books.  But there is good evidence the JP was the fluent native language of the community until very late in their history. Take this page from HUC 931, a Passover Haggadah, pg 57:

This is a JP translation of a Hebrew poem by Saadia Gaon (882-942 CE)  called Atta Ga’alta. This book appears to have considerable water damage.  Did it survive the 1642 flood, and was then darkened where required?  We can see the darkening quite clearly on the word "Ga'alta":

Nearly all Haggadoth contain instructions and/or translations in the native language(s) of a community.  Why darkened water damaged letters in this Kaifeng manuscript for a language no one understood?  

Rian Thum also writes about Muslims who availed themselves of a Confucian educations:

The many dozens of Muslims who achieved the highest rank in the imperial examination system throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties demonstrate that a substantial number of Muslims received their education outside of the mosque system, in the private Confucian schools, where they would have learned to read and write first in classical Chinese. This was the case not just in the coastal provinces but in areas with large Muslim populations, including Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Gansu.

Despite "the steady flow of some Muslims through the Confucian education system, Muslims who could read Chinese beyond “primer literacy” probably remained a rarity" pg. 37.  In this time when there was not universal Chinese education.  Only wealthy Muslims could hire tutors for their sons in Classic Chinese and Confucian classics.  But Persian language education open to the whole community.   

For some Muslims, both Confucian and Islamic education was possible:

In exceptional cases, individuals pursued education in both systems. It was this rarest educational path that produced the most respected authors of Chinese-language Islamic texts: Liu Zhi, Wang Daiyu, and Ma Zhu. 

Some of these men learned Chinese Confucianism first, while others began as scholars of Islam and came to Confucianism later:

In the case of Wang Daiyu, Islamic education came first, followed by the study of Confucian and Buddhist classics in adulthood. Ma Zhu, by contrast, studied in a Confucian school in his youth, before traveling throughout China in search of Perso-Arabic learning later in life. 

It would seem that many of the Confucian Jewish scholars in the Kaifeng Community would have had a similar route to their educational trajectory, although we only know that Chao Yingcheng was familiar with Hebrew (and Judaism) and Confucian Classics.  But this duality must have existed for other Kaifeng Jews.  For a very few, they were fully conversant in Confucianism and Kaifeng Judaism.