Rian Thum

For 250 years, the Turkic Muslims of Altishahr—the vast desert region to the northwest of Tibet—have led an uneasy existence under Chinese rule. Today they call themselves Uyghurs, and they have cultivated a sense of history and identity that challenges Beijing's official national narrative. Rian Thum argues that the roots of this history run deeper than recent conflicts, to a...

A deeply learned reassessment of the history of Chinese Muslims, who since the fourteenth century have been subject to a constant programme of minoritisation. For more than a millennium, Islam has been a Chinese religion, and native-born Chinese Muslims have played important roles in their homeland — as butchers, merchants, and farmers; diplomats, scholar-officials, and royal astronomers. Yet the Muslims...