Tibetan Muslims
Khache
The 14th Dalai Lama with elderly Tibetan Muslims. The Dalai Lama is wearing gold and red Buddhist robes, while the Muslims are dressed in traditional Tibetan casual wear. A Muslim man sports a white taqiyah cap, while the Muslim women wear white headscarves.
The 14th Dalai Lama with elderly Tibetan Muslims in 2012
Regions with significant populations
 China (Tibet AR)5,000[1]
 India (Kashmir, Ladakh)1,500+[2]
Languages
Tibetan, Mandarin, Kashmiri
Religion
Islam
Related ethnic groups
Tibetan Buddhists, Baltis
Tibetan Muslims
Tibetan name
Tibetanཁ་ཆེ་
Chinese name
Chinese卡契
Literal meaningKhache (phonetic)
Alternative Chinese name
Chinese藏回
Literal meaningTibetan Hui
Second alternative Chinese name
Chinese古格人
Literal meaningGuge people

Tibetan Muslims, known in Tibet as the Khache (Tibetan: ཁ་ཆེ་, lit. 'Kashmiris'), are Tibetans who adhere to Islam.[2][3] Many are descendants of Kashmiris, Ladakhis, and Nepalis who arrived in Tibet in the 14th to 17th centuries.[4] There are approximately 5,000 Tibetan Muslims living in China[1] and over 1,500 living in India.[2]

The government of the People's Republic of China does not recognize the Tibetan Muslims as a distinct ethnic group; they are grouped with Tibetan adherents of Buddhism and Bon. In contrast, the Chinese-speaking Hui Muslims are distinguished from the Han Chinese majority.

History

Lhasa Great Mosque

Early history

The first contacts between Tibet and the Islamic world began around the mid-eighth century when it grew out of a combination of trade via the Silk Road and the military presence of Muslim forces in the Fergana Valley. Despite the vague knowledge the Islamic world had about Tibet, there were a few early Islamic works that mention Tibet. One such source is from a work authored by Abu Sa'id Gardezi titled Zayn al-Akhbar. In it, the work mentions the environment, fantastical origin of the Tibetans (through the Himyarites), the divinity of the king, major resources (like musk) and a description of the trade routes to and from Tibet. Another source, Hudud al-'Alam (The Regions of the World) written by an unknown author in 982 or 983 in Afghanistan, contains mainly geography, politics and brief descriptions of Tibetan regions, cities, towns and other localities. This source has the first direct mention of the presence of Muslims in Tibet by stating that Lhasa had one mosque and a small Muslim population.[5]

During the reign of Sadnalegs (799–815), there was a protracted war against Arab powers to the West. It appears that Tibetans captured a number of Arab troops and pressed them into service on the eastern frontier in 801. Tibetans were active as far west as Samarkand and Kabul. Arab forces began to gain the upper hand, and the Tibetan governor of Kabul submitted to the Arabs and became a Muslim about 812 or 815.[6]

Fourteenth century to present

Extensive trade with Kashmir, Ladakh, and Baltistan also brought Muslims to Tibet especially after the adoption or growing presence of Islam in these regions starting from the fourteenth century. The ongoing growth of Muslims continued as an effect of the Tibetan-Ladakhi treaty of 1684 in which the Tibetan government allowed trade missions from Ladakh to enter Lhasa every three years. Many Kashmiri and Ladakhi Muslims joined these missions with some settling in Tibet.[7]

During the reign of the Dalai Lama Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617–1682), a permanent Muslim community settled down in Tibet. They were permitted to elect their own council of representatives, settle their group's legal disputes with Islamic law, and some land was donated to them for the construction of a mosque close to Lhasa.[8] The community soon adopted aspects of Tibetan culture like dress, diet, and the Tibetan language.[9]

An influx of Kashmiri Muslims in Nepal (originally having trade contacts with their kin in Tibet) fled to Tibet starting from 1769 due to the invasion of the Kathmandu Valley by Prithvi Narayan Shah. As early as the seventeenth century, Ningxia and other northwestern Hui (Chinese Muslims) began to settle in the eastern regions of Tibet (like in Amdo). They intermarried with the local Tibetans and continued to have extensive trade contacts with other Muslims inside China.[7]

Another recent wave of new Muslim settlers began after the Dogra conquest of Tibet in 1841. Many Kashmiri, Balti and Ladakhi Muslim troops (who were taken as prisoners when fighting against the Dogra army) stayed behind to settle in Tibet. A few Hindu Dogras also settled in Tibet and subsequently converted to Islam.[7][9]

Outside of the Lhasa area, smaller Muslim communities and mosques exist in Shigatse, Tsetang, and Chengguan.[4][10]

After the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1950, the Tibetan Muslims faced brutal persecution just like their Buddhist brethren. Since then, Chinese Muslims (along with the Han and others) have settled in Tibet.[7] The Chinese government classified the Tibetan Muslims as Hui. However, the Tibetan Muslims are often called Zang Hui (Tibetan Hui) as they speak Tibetan and have a material culture almost identical to their Buddhist counterparts. The Tibetan Hui in Lhasa (unlike other Tibetan Muslims living elsewhere) consider themselves to be very different from the Chinese Muslims and sometimes marry with other Tibetans (including Buddhists) instead of their fellow Muslims from China.[11]

Question of citizenship

In 1959, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru concluded that the Barkor Khache were Indian citizens.[12] The first letter written by the Barkor Khache community in Lhasa was to Tibetan Muslims in Kalimpong in 1959:[12]

It is vitally important for us to let you know that the Chinese Government, after the recent trouble in Lhasa, has threateningly asked us about our ancestry. In reply we declared ourselves with cogent evidence as Kashmiris and subjects of India. The Chinese Government is trying its best to subjugate us and make us Chinese Nationals.

The Chinese government attempted to coerce the Barkor Khache into accepting Chinese citizenship and giving up their claims to Indian citizenship.[13] They were initially prevented by China from emigrating to India.[14] The Chinese authorities harassed them, beat them, subjected them to arbitrarily high taxes and told them to attend "indoctrination meetings.[15] On 2 September 1960, Chinese leaders announced that the Barkor Khache would be allowed to leave.[16] The Barkor Khache began leaving later that month to India, via the Kingdom of Sikkim.[17] The Wapaling Khaches also demanded that they be allowed to emigrate to India, but the Chinese authorities refused.[18]

After the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the state government of Jammu and Kashmir granted permanent resident/state subject status to Tibetan Muslim refugees. Voting rights for the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly were also granted by the government.[19][20]

Converts in Qinghai

Tibetan Muslim family in Amdo, early 20th century

Islam was spread by the Salar people to the formerly Buddhist Kargan Tibetans in Lamo-shan-ken.[21][22] Some Tibetans in Qinghai who converted to Islam are now considered Hui people.[23][24]

Near the Tibetan village of Skya Rgya in Qinghai, Muslims live around the Yellow river in the town of Dong sna 20 kilometers away and they are registered by the Chinese government as Hui. The elderly "Hui" in this village speak imperfect Chinese but speak perfect Tibetan and trade frequently with the Tibetans, saying they were originally Tibetans. One of them, a man born in 1931 said "We have the same blood; we have the same ancestors. We used to marry each other, shared the same customs and observed the same traditional principles. It was Ma Bufang who converted us to Islam."[25]

Tibetans and the Salars

After the Salars moved to Xunhua, they converted Tibetan women to Islam and the Tibetan women were taken as wives by Salar men. A Salar wedding ritual where grains and milk were scattered on a horse by the bride was influenced by Tibetans.[26]

Tibetan women were the original wives of the first Salars to arrive in the region as recorded in Salar oral history. The Tibetans agreed to let their women marry Salar men after putting up several demands to accommodate cultural and religious differences. Hui and Salar intermarry due to cultural similarities and following Islam. Older Salars married Tibetan women but younger Salars prefer marrying other Salars. Han and Salar mostly do not intermarry with each other. Salars however use Han surnames. Salar patrilineal clans are much more limited than Han patrilineal clans in how much they deal with culture, society or religion.[27][28] Salars almost exclusively took non-Salar women as wives like Tibetan women while never giving Salar women to non-Salar men in marriage except for Hui men who were allowed to marry Salar women. As a result Salars are heavily mixed with other ethnicities.[29]

Salars in Qinghai live on both banks of the Yellow river, south and north, the northern ones are called Hualong or Bayan Salars while the southern ones are called Xunhua Salars. The region north of the Yellow river is a mix of discontinuous Salar and Tibetan villages while the region south of the yellow river is solidly Salar with no gaps in between, since Hui and Salars pushed the Tibetans on the south region out earlier. Tibetan women who converted to Islam were taken as wives on both banks of the river by Salar men. Tibetans witness Salar life passages in Kewa, a Salar village and Tibetan butter tea is consumed by Salars there as well. Other Tibetan cultural influences like Salar houses having four corners with a white stone on them became part of Salar culture as long as they were not prohibited by Islam. Hui people started assimilating and intermarrying with Salars in Xunhua after migrating there from Hezhou in Gansu due to the Chinese Ming dynasty ruling the Xunhua Salars after 1370 and Hezhou officials governed Xunhua. Many Salars with the Ma surname appear to be of Hui descent since many Salars now have the Ma surname while in the beginning the majority of Salars had the Han surname. Some example of Hezhou Hui who became Salars are the Chenjia (Chen family) and Majia (Ma family) villages in Altiuli where the Chen and Ma families are Salars who admit their Hui ancestry. Marriage ceremonies, funerals, birth rites and prayer were shared by both Salar and Hui as they intermarried and shared the same religion since more and more Hui moved into the Salar areas on both banks of the Yellow river. Many Hui women married Salar men and eventually it became far more popular for Hui and Salar to intermarry due to both being Muslims than to non-Muslim Han, Mongols and Tibetans. The Salar language and culture however was highly impacted in the 14th–16th centuries in their original ethnogenesis by marriage with Mongol and Tibetan non-Muslims with many loanwords and grammatical influence by Mongol and Tibetan in their language. Salars were multilingual in Salar and Mongol and then in Chinese and Tibetan as they trade extensively in the Ming, Qing and Republic of China periods on the yellow river in Ningxia and Lanzhou in Gansu.[30]

Salars and Tibetans both use the term maternal uncle (ajiu in Salar and Chinese, azhang in Tibetan) to refer to each other, referring to the fact that Salars are descendants of Tibetan women marrying Salar men. After using these terms they often repeat the historical account how Tibetan women were married by 2,000 Salar men who were the first Salars to migrate to Qinghai. These terms illustrate that Salars were viewed separately from the Hui by Tibetans. According to legend, the marriages between Tibetan women and Salar men came after a compromise between demands by a Tibetan chief and the Salar migrants. The Salar say Wimdo valley was ruled by a Tibetan and he demanded the Salars follow 4 rules in order to marry Tibetan women. He asked them to install on their houses's four corners Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags, to pray with Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels with the Buddhist mantras and to bow before statues of Buddha. The Salars refused those demands saying they did not recite mantras or bow to statues since they believed in only one creator god and were Muslims. They compromised on the flags in houses by putting stones on their houses' corners instead of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags. Some Tibetans do not differentiate between Salar and Hui due to their Islamic religion. Salars were bilingual in Salar and Tibetan due to intermarriage with Tibetan women and trading. It is far less likely for a Tibetan to speak Salar.[31] Tibetan women in Xiahe also married Muslim men who came there as traders before the 1930s.[32]

In eastern Qinghai and Gansu there were cases of Tibetan women who stayed in their Buddhist Lamaist religion while marrying Chinese Muslim men and they would have different sons who would be Buddhist and Muslims, the Buddhist sons became Lamas while the other sons were Muslims. Hui and Tibetans married Salars.[33]

The later Qing dynasty and Republic of China Salar General Han Youwen was born to a Tibetan woman named Ziliha (孜力哈) and a Salar father named Aema (阿額瑪).[34][35][36]

Tibetan and non-Tibetan Muslim men sometimes marry Ladakhi Tibetan Buddhist women in Ladakh.[37][38][39][40][41][42][43]

See also

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 "Tibet". United States Department of State.
  2. 1 2 3 Zargar, Safwat (31 July 2019). "The Tibetan Muslims of Kashmir". The Diplomat. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  3. ↑ "The Tibetan Muslims who have made Kashmir their home". BBC News. 1 December 2017.
  4. 1 2 Cabezon, Jose Ignacio (February 1998). "Islam on the Roof of the World". Aramco World. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  5. ↑ Schaeffer, Kurtis; Kapstein, Matthew; Tuttle, Gray (2013). Sources of Tibetan Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 24–29. ISBN 978-0-231-13599-3.
  6. ↑ Beckwith, Christopher I. The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia. A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages, 1987, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02469-3, p. 14, 48, 50.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Berzin, Alexander. "History of the Muslims of Tibet". studybuddhism.com. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  8. ↑ Schaik van, Sam (2011). Tibet: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 128. ISBN 9780300194104.
  9. 1 2 Sheikh, Abdul Ghani (1991). "Tibetan Muslims". The Tibet Journal. 16 (4): 86–89. JSTOR 43300418.
  10. ↑ Ga, Zangjia (2003). Tibetan Religions. China Intercontinental Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-7-5085-0232-8.
  11. ↑ Gladney, Dru (1996). Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People's Republic (2 ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 33, 34, 36. ISBN 0-674-59497-5.
  12. 1 2 Atwill 2018, p. 103-104.
  13. ↑ Atwill 2018, p. 109.
  14. ↑ Atwill 2018, p. 112.
  15. ↑ Atwill 2018, p. 115.
  16. ↑ Atwill 2018, p. 116.
  17. ↑ Atwill 2018, p. 118.
  18. ↑ Atwill 2018, p. 120.
  19. ↑ "Full text of document on govt.'s rationale behind removal of special status to J&K". The Hindu. 6 August 2019. Retrieved 10 November 2020. Ironically, the Muslim refugees from Xinjiang and Tibet, who had migrated to Kashmir following the Chinese occupation of their countries in 1949 and 1959, respectively, have been granted "state subject" status, along with voting rights in the Assembly by the J&K government.
  20. ↑ Singh Chauhan, Advocate, Dinesh. "Article 35-A Biggest Fraud on Constitution of India". legalserviceindia.com. Legal Service India. Retrieved 10 November 2020. The Muslim refugees from Xinjiang and Tibet, who had migrated to Kashmir following the Chinese occupation of their countries in 1949 and 1959, respectively, have been granted state subject status, along with voting rights in the Assembly by the J&K Government.
  21. ↑ The Geographical Journal. Royal Geographical Society. 1894. pp. 362–.
  22. ↑ The Geographical Journal. Royal Geographical Society. 1894. pp. 362–.
  23. ↑ 樊, 前锋 (18 June 2008). "青海，那些说藏语的回族乡亲". 中国民俗网.
  24. ↑ "青海，那些讲藏话的回回". 宁夏新闻网. 19 June 2008.
  25. ↑ Blo brtan rdo rje; Stuart, Charles Kevin (2008). Life and Marriage in Skya Rgya, a Tibetan Village. YBK Publishers, Inc. pp. 26, 27. ISBN 978-0980050844. A conch is blown as the men20 recite Buddhist prayers. ... Afterwards, every member of the affected family may bathe, women may plait their hair, ...
  26. ↑ Dwyer, Arienne M. (2007). Salar: A Study in Inner Asian Language Contact Processes, Part 1 (illustrated ed.). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 17. ISBN 978-3447040914.
  27. ↑ Yang, Shengmin; Wu, Xiujie (2018). "12 Theoretical Paradigm or Methodological Heuristic? Reflections on Kulturkreislehre with Reference to China". In Holt, Emily (ed.). Water and Power in Past Societies. SUNY Series, The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series (illustrated ed.). SUNY Press. p. 291. ISBN 978-1438468754. The Salar did and do not fully exclude intermarriage with other ethnic groups. ... reached that allowed Salar men to marry Tibetan women (Ma 2011, 63).
  28. ↑ Yang, Shengmin; Wu, Xiujie (2018). "12 Theoretical Paradigm or Methodologic Heuristic? Reflections on Kulturkreislehre with Reference to China". In Arnason, Johann P.; Hann, Chris (eds.). Anthropology and Civilizational Analysis: Eurasian Explorations. SUNY series, Pangaea II: Global/Local Studies (illustrated ed.). SUNY Press. p. 291. ISBN 978-1438469393. The Salar did and do not fully exclude intermarriage with other ethnic groups. ... reached that allowed Salar men to marry Tibetan women (Ma 2011, 63).
  29. ↑ Central Asiatic Journal, Volumes 43–44. O. Harrassowitz. 1999. p. 212. towards outsiders, the Salar language has been retained. Additionally, the ethnic group has been continuously absorbing a great amount of new blood from other nationalities. In history, with the exception of Hui, there is no case of a Salar's daughter marrying a non-Salar. On the contrary , many non – Salar females married into Salar households . As folk acounts and historical records recount , shortly after Salar ancestors reached Xunhua , they had relationships with neighbouring Tibetans through marriage .
  30. ↑ Dwyer, Arienne M. (2007). Salar: A Study in Inner Asian Language Contact Processes, Part 1. Turcologica. Vol. 37 (illustrated ed.). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-3447040914. Tibetans south of the Yellow river were displaced much earlier by Salar and ... intermarried extensively with local Tibetan women , under the condition that ...
  31. ↑ Simon, Camille (2015). "Chapter 4 Linguistic Evidence of Salar-Tibetan Contacts in Amdo". In M Hille, Marie-Paule; Horlemann, Bianca; Nietupski, Paul K. (eds.). Muslims in Amdo Tibetan Society: Multidisciplinary Approaches. Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture. Marie-Paule Hille, Bianca Horlemann, Paul K. Nietupski, Chang Chung-Fu, Andrew M. Fischer, Max Oidtmann, Ma Wei, Alexandre Papas, Camille Simon, Benno R. Weiner, Yang Hongwei. Lexington Books. p. 90, 91, 264, 267, 146. ISBN 978-0739175309. ... 146, 151n36; between Muslim tradesmen and local women, 149n15; oral history of the first matrimonial alliances between Salar men and Tibetan women, ...
  32. ↑ Nietupski, Paul K. (2015). "Chapter 6 Islam and Labrang Monastery A Muslim community in a Tibetan Buddhist Estate". In M Hille, Marie-Paule; Horlemann, Bianca; Nietupski, Paul K. (eds.). Muslims in Amdo Tibetan Society: Multidisciplinary Approaches. Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture. Marie-Paule Hille, Bianca Horlemann, Paul K. Nietupski, Chang Chung-Fu, Andrew M. Fischer, Max Oidtmann, Ma Wei, Alexandre Papas, Camille Simon, Benno R. Weiner, Yang Hongwei. Lexington Books. p. 90, 91, 264, 267, 146. ISBN 978-0739175309.
  33. ↑ The Tibet Journal, Volume 20. Library of Tibetan Works & Archives. 1995. p. 101. Central Asian Sufi Masters who gave to the founder of the Chinese Qādiriyya his early training.25 Gladney wrote in his book Chinese Muslims that Afāq Khvāja preached to the northeastern Tibetans but he does not tell us what are his sources. ... The cities of northwestern China visited by the khvāja are Xining (in Qinghai), Hezhou (the old name for Linxia, the Chinese Mecca) in Gansu and Xunhua near the Gansu-Qinghai border where the Salar Turks live amidst a predominantly Tibetan Buddhist population. Gansu is a natural corridor linking China with Eastern Turkestan and Central Asia It is a ... passageway through which the silk road slipped between the Tibetan plateau to the west and the Mongolian grasslands to the north. In addition to the Chinese and the Tibetans , Gansu was also home to different people like the Salar Turks and the Dongxiang or Mongol Muslims, both preached to by Afāq Khvāja. ... (actually the city of Kuna according to Nizamüddin Hüsäyin.26 Although the Salars intermarried with the Tibetans, Chinese and Hui, they have maintained their customs until now. From the Mission d'Ollone who explored this area at the beginning of the century , we learn that some Chinese Muslims of this area married Tibetan women who had kept their religion , i . e . Lamaism , and that their sons were either Muslim or Buddhist. We are told for example that in one of these families, there was one son who was a Muslim and the other who became a Lama. Between the monastery of Lha-brang and the city of Hezhou (Linxia, it is also indicated that there were Muslims living in most of the Chinese and Tibetan...
  34. ↑ 秉默, ed. (16 October 2008). 韩有文传奇 然 也. 中国国民党革命委员会中央委员会. 民革中央. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016.
  35. ↑ 朱, 国琳 (3 March 2011). 马呈祥在新疆. 民族日报. pp. 4, 5.
  36. ↑ 韩, 芝华 (16 October 2009). "怀念我的父亲──韩有文". 中国国民党革命委员会新疆维吾尔自治区委员会. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017.
  37. ↑ Manish, Sai; Anzar, Khalid (16 September 2017). "Why Buddhist women are marrying Muslim men in Ladakh". Business Standard. New Delhi, Leh.
  38. ↑ Raj, Suhasini; Gettleman, Jeffrey (12 October 2017). "On the Run for Love: Couple Bridges a Buddhist-Muslim Divide". The New York Times. Ladakh Region, India.
  39. ↑ Saha, Abhishek Saha (11 September 2017). "Buddhist woman's wedding with Muslim sparks tension in Ladakh". Hindustan Times. Srinagar.
  40. ↑ Khandelwal, Tara (11 September 2017). "Ladakh Tense Over Buddhist Woman's Marriage With Muslim Man". shethepeople.
  41. ↑ Varagur, Krithika (3 April 2018). "Communal Tensions Rattle an Indian Himalayan Region". Voice of America. Leh, India.
  42. ↑ Bonta, Bruce (17 March 2011). "Buddhist and Muslim Families in Ladakh [Journal Article Review]". UNC Greensboro. UNC Greensboro.
  43. ↑ Iqbal, Naveed (15 September 2017). "An inter-religion marriage triggers communal divide in Leh, and exodus". The Indian Express. Leh.

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