Editor’s Note: We thank Professor Zan Tao for giving us the permission to translate this article into English and to publish it on www.ChinaUSFriendship.com. The Chinese version was published by the Grand View Magazine, Vol. 5.

III. Civilization: Central Asia under the East-West Civilization Order

Under the South-North confrontation/co-existence, the Western Regions issue was still mainly a westward geo-strategy for the Central Plains dynasties. But increasingly there was also a tendency toward a clash of civilizations. From the viewpoint of the Chinese empires, they had encountered two major civilizations that came from the West, which carried with them the characteristics of expansionism of imperial politics: the Islamic civilization and the modern European civilization. Therefore, the so-called clash of civilizations before the modern times was the contact of the secular Chinese civilization with the Islamic civilization that has faith in one God.

1.      Islamization and Turkistanization of the Western Regions (Central Asia)

In the sense of civilization history, the East-West order of the "Western Regions-Central Plains" can be divided into two major phases and generally can be separated by the year 751. The one thousand years before 751 was the progressive period of the Chinese civilization; during several centuries of political division in the middle of this period ethnic integration also occurred. Numerous ethnic groups assimilated into the Chinese civilization and the periods of the Han and Tang Dynasties were its two ends. After 751, the Chinese forces retreated to the east of the Congling (the Pamirs), whereas the Islamic civilization crossed over the Congling and gradually covered most of the Western Regions.

The year 751 has symbolic than substantive meaning; it has more significance in civilization history than in political history. During the one thousand years before 751, Chinese civilization faced almost no worthy civilization-political rival in the Western Regions. People in the Western Regions understood the strength and prosperity of the dynasties in the Central Plains. They all admired Chinese civilization. In the process of being conquered by Islam, the people in the Western Regions longed for being rescued by the dynasties in the Central Plains. When the Arabs were conquering Persia, the Persian king had repeatedly sought help from the Tang Dynasty. Between 705 and 720, the Arabs began to ravage all of Central Asia and many Central Asia people sought help from the Tang Court. A letter to Emperor Xuanzhong of the Tang Dynasty stated: "Since that year, the Seljuks made annual intrusions and the country was made restless. I beg your mercy to save us from the suffering." Such letters expressed earnest words. At that time, although the military strength of the Tang Dynasty had not yet declined, it was facing unprecedented challenges. Tibetans, Western Turks and Seljuks all became powerful at the same time; in particular, the Tubo (Tibetan regime in ancient China) military threat was in sight. Hence, the Tang military could not give practical assistance to its vassal states in Central Asia.

"Islam came to China starting from the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Yuan Dynasty." Islam was introduced into Xinjiang during the Karahan Dynasty in the late 10th century and early 11th century, and gradually expanded eastward. Many Muslim businessmen travelled to and settled in Changan in the Tang Dynasty. The Outline History of Gansu, Ningxia, and Qinghai (《甘寧青史略》) has this record: "Until the end of the Tang Dynasty, there were Muslims in Gan, Liang and Ling cities." The Yuan Dynasty was an important period for the development of Islamization in the Western Regions. After the Mongols conquered the countries in the Western Regions, many Muslims submitted to Mongolia. Due to the military expedition of Mongolia, the land transportation to Central Asia was unimpeded. Among the people of all ethnicities who were conquered and spoke the Iranian language or Turkic language, many were sent to the Central Plains to open up wastelands and grow grain for food. Many Muslim military men and artisans came to the East as gunners, engineers and experts in astronomy; a small number of people also became government officials in the Central Plains. These Central Asian ethnic groups who believed in Islam (at that time they were known as "Hui") settled down in China and lived throughout the country. Many of them married Chinese women or intermarried with women of other ethnicities to live and breed, hence the population flourished. In Traditions of the Western Regions of the History of Ming Dynasty (《明史.西域傳》), this record is found: "In the Yuan Dynasty, the Hui were everywhere; at this time, most lived in Gansu."

After the Mongols took over the Central Plains, they used the help of the Semu (mainly the Muslims) who had a higher level of civilization to govern the Han Chinese and the Southerners (the ethnic groups that were predominantly the Han people and lived inside the Southern Song territory). The Semu position ranked second only to the Mongols and was above the Han Chinese and the Southerners. The Islamic culture was higher than the Mongolian culture, so more and more Mongols were assimilated into the Islamic culture. Until the Ming Dynasty, a new Muslim ethnicity was thus formed in China. The Hui people in the Ming Dynasty strictly distinguished them from the other Muslim ethnic groups. They settled in their own areas and initiated economic development. They generally used the Chinese language and writing, absorbed the Han culture, enriched their own culture, and formed their customs. Even though the Ming Dynasty was founded by the Hans and stressed the differences between the Chinese people and the barbarians, the nation-building depended much on the Muslims. Many of the founding generals were Muslims. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty Islam received popular veneration.

Till the Qing Dynasty, the Manchurians drew political power from the Mongolian and Tibetan Buddhism, and they also self-proclaimed to be the successors of Chinese orthodoxy. Under these circumstances, the status of Islam as the religion of the Hui and the Uighur could not be compared with the status of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Even in the laxer early Qing Dynasty, Islam was also regarded as a family tradition and a local custom "left by old generations,” a faith that was of "no worth" and only for those who were "despised." However, the Qing government never banned Islam; in particular, the early Qing emperors still had more respect for Islam. After the mid-Qianlong period, this tolerance turned into brutal suppression.  But the reasons for this change were complex; one important factor was the dispute between the new and old religious schools within Islam, the other was the long-term accumulation of contradictions and their outbreaks between the Hui and the Han people.  All in turn were exploited by the feudal rulers.

Central Asia is located in the heart of the four greatest ancient civilizations of the world. Prior to Islamization, Buddhism had the greatest impact in ancient Central Asia. According to Vasily Vladimirovich Bartold’s (1863-1930) viewpoint, Central Asia completed its Islamization in the 13th century, "The history of Central Eurasia is the history of barbarians." The barbarians were destined to be conquered by the more advanced culture. After the Islamization of the Turks, they were even more pious than the Arabs. Now, all the Turkic- and Iranian-language-speaking ethnic groups in the five Central Asian countries and the Dungan people are Muslims, and most are of the Sunni sect, while some of the Tajiks are of the Shiite sect.

The Turkistanization of Central Asia is a major historical event; it also has meaning in world history. Nomads from the North must pass through Central Asia to reach the South. Here was naturally the land where different ethnic groups got together and became integrated. From the 6th to the 13th century was the period of Central Asia’s Turkistanization. The arrival and domination of the Mongols was the key to achieve Turkistanization, because most nomadic tribes that followed the Mongols and came to the region were Turks. Turkistanization mainly referred to the assimilation of the Turkic language. According to modern linguistic classification, Turkic is a language group of the Altaic; that language family also contains many different dialects. The modern Turkish is one of the major Turkic dialects. Other Turkic dialects include Kirghiz, Urdu, Turkmen, Azerbaijani, Uighur and a few dozens of other dialects. The similarities of these languages reduced the barriers for exchanges between different Turkic-speaking ethnic groups. In Central Asia, only the Tajiks have escaped the process of Turkistanization. They have become the only modern ethnic group among the major ethnic groups in Central Asia, which speaks an Indo-European language.

Turkistanization was the process whereby the nomadic Turks militarily conquered the indigenous peoples from Central Asia to Asia Minor and assimilated them both in language and customs. This process accelerated after its confluence with Islamization, because Islamization facilitated ethnic intermarriages and mixing between the Turks and other ethnic groups. We cannot determine how many "Turks" there were in the course of history. But historians generally believe that this was not the main process by which the Turkish majority assimilated other ethnic minorities. Instead, the main process was assimilation of all the ethnic groups by the Turks under their military power and rule. The Turkic-speaking ethnic groups had a major impact in the military and political history of the world. The relevant great dynasties/empires were the Iran-centric Seljuk Dynasty (1037-1194); the Mamluk Dynasty (1250-1517) established in Egypt where the Mamluks initially worked as mercenary army and later entered the core of the Arab Empire; the Turkistanized Mongol Empire created by Timur (1370-1507) and the Indian Mughal Empire (1526-1857) founded by Timur’s later generations; the Iranian Safavid Empire (1501-1736); and the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) in Asia Minor.

The result of Turkistanization influenced a large area from Central Asia to the Middle East, which connected together different Turkic-speaking ethnic groups. The existence of this region has become the basis for the rise of modern pan-Turkism. Pan-Turkism was relevant to the rise of the modern era and Turcology in Europe. Orientalists have suggested that the Turks formed a very old ethnic group. They scattered in vast areas and created in different historical periods countries that led the world and enjoyed advanced civilization. This idea became the raw material of modern nationalism, and on this basis, the pan-Turkism re-“discovered", "created" and "fabricated" the so-called ethnic-Turkic history, epic, tradition and folklore. Using similar languages, religions and realities as basis, they tried to reconstruct an impulse to form the so-called "nationalistic" identity that combined the Muslim identity and other identities. Pan-Turkism was also the major challenge derived from the local identity, which the Soviet Union had to face in Central Asia in modern history.

II. Meeting of the Islamic and Chinese Civilizations

The expansion and spread of the Islamic civilization in the Western Regions made two great civilizations that had different characteristics to meet: secular Confucianism and religious Islam. For the dynasties in the Central Plains, the first big and sacred religious civilization/politics encountered was not Christianity from the modern countries in the West, but Islam from the Middle East.

The Islamization of Central Asia has great significance in world history. "The Arabs were the first nation that invaded Central Asia from the West after Alexander." Before the arrival of Islam, Central Asia was the end and the limit of imperial expansion of the Eastern and Western empires. No matter whether it was Alexander’s Empire or the Han and Tang Empires, they all reached their final destinations of using military force in Central Asia. Whether it was the creation of cities or the establishment of protectorates, neither the Eastern nor the Western empires really completely conquered Central Asia in terms of culture/civilization. Only the Islamic civilization from the Middle East had more thoroughly conquered the whole Western Regions; no other civilization in the following thousand-some years was able to replace the Islamic civilization. Islam has been internalized in the bone marrow and blood stream of the civilization of the Western Regions. Why could the Islamic force win in Central Asia?

First, from the productivity point of view, the Arabs, founders of the Islamic Empire, made large-scale use of camels. "Camels had replaced carriages in the region between Morocco and Syrdarya as the cheapest and most efficient means of transport. That is, in this region, the foundation of the Islamic Empire was able to be established with the fastest speed in the most complete way and stayed permanently." Until the Middle Ages, camels had not been the major means of transportation to the east of the Pamirs. They were so, however, to the west of the Pamirs. When the aforementioned Han General Li Guangli (李廣利) made his distant expedition to the Balkans, the main transport task was achieved by ten million heads of cattle. During the Tang Dynasty, camels were not the main means of transport through the desert. The success of Islam in Central Asia could be explained in part by the large-scale use of camels. That is to say, in the Western Regions, Islamic camels beat Gansu carriages, for which fact the later Zuo Zongtang had a deep understanding.

Second, the most important aspect is the development path of civilization. Why did these cultures that represented the great ancient civilizations of Greece, Persia and the Han and Tang Dynasties retreat from the stage of history in the Western Regions in the face of the Islamic culture? On the contrary, the Arab Empire that represented the Islamic culture, which ruled for just two or three centuries, was able to impose an overall Islamization of Central Asia. Some scholars have pointed out: "The high-quality Islamic culture based on a dynamic and advanced economy was superior to the political culture of Central Asia, which was not independent and lacked self-consciousness. The Islamic culture achieved also a partial victory over the contemporary Greek, Persian and Chinese cultures. The latter were relatively conservative on dynamic and advanced economic integration, even though they were long-lived and ancient civilizations; Greece, Persia, the Chinese Han and Tang Dynasties and other civilized ancient nations accomplished a general spread and radiation of their own civilizations. But they did not consciously use large-scale means to actively promote their long-standing cultural traditions as opposed to the Islamic culture. For China the lesson was very serious. One of the key reasons was this: Chinese dynasties attached importance to their national policies at the frontiers and established benevolent administrative systems that were adapted to the demands of the local ethnic groups. However they failed in administrative and cultural management that could effectively enhance and provide good exposure to the competitiveness of Confucian civilization. The second reason was that the Chinese administration in Central Asia was not included explicitly in the national structure of the ancient Chinese territory. "

The afore-mentioned scholars have successfully proposed two-dimensional explanations in economic and cultural strategies for the expansion of Islamic civilization, but did not reach the “inner-core" factors of civilization. The emphasis on the cultural strategy only pointed out that the retreat of the Han, the Tang and other civilizations in facing the Islamic civilization was a policy failure. They actually only saw the surface of the problem.

The Confucian culture of the Han and the Tang Dynasties was a secular civilization relying on a human-environment relationship in the specific farming-sedentary community. The world concept and idea of harmony in the Confucian civilization demonstrated universality. However, due to its dependence on the specific environment, the Confucian world view could only develop its needed imagination in the physical space of the Central Plains in China. It was difficult to implement its doctrinal universality away from these areas. So in the real politics, it is "less universal," and has specificity. On the other hand, Islam is a monotheistic faith homologous to Judaism and Christianity. It does not rely on a specific spatial order of this world, but takes the ultra-secular one true God (Allah) for the call and the purport of faith. The absolute meaning of the civilization of universalism is greater than Confucianism. Of course, what has to be emphasized is that this has nothing to do with the merits of civilization. From the perspective of revealed religion, Islam is also the most developed monotheistic faith that has the simplest form /logic. It has reached culmination within a religion’s own logic. Besides, regardless of the essence of the complexity of Islamic civilization, the fundamental difference between the Confucian civilization and the Islamic civilization is that one of them is secular and the other is a monotheistic faith. The difference between these two civilizations on the social impact and transformation is essentially the difference between worldliness and faith, respectively.

Confucian civilization is a form of civilization produced by the sedentary/farming community from the Yellow River Basin in the Central Plains. Feng Youlan (Fung Yu-Lan, 馮友蘭) commented on the economic foundation of China's Confucian civilization and said that China was a continental country; the Chinese people’s livelihood depended on agriculture; agriculture could only depend on land and land was not mobile; this also applied to the landlords; due to economic reasons, a few generations of a family had to live together, so the Chinese family system was developed...Most Confucian doctrines have demonstrated that such a system was reasonable or that they were the theoretical description of this social system.  The five Confucian filial-piety relationships were reflections of this social-economic system. For the same reason, ancestor worship was also developed. Economic conditions laid the foundation of the Confucian civilization, and the Confucian doctrines showed its ethical significance. Since Confucian civilization relied on people-environment relationships in the farming-sedentary community within a specific geographical space, it will have great vitality as long as this economic-geographical basis exists; only after breaking the economic foundation of the Confucian civilization can its existing form be changed. The way of life of the nomads was basically mobile, which was exactly opposite to the Confucian permanent settlement. The nomadic empires that conquered the Central Plains finally accepted the Confucian civilization through permanent settlement.

The three revealed religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all have their roots in the nomads of the Middle East deserts. The desert and steppe environments are very similar. Namely, above the head is the sky, and it is surrounded by widely-open barren land with almost no barrier; in the lonely silence, people’s minds are prone to listen to God and to communicate with God. Islam is the pinnacle of the development of monotheism; it has a simple form and is against idolatry. It expanded in a conquering "jihad" form by nomads that had a vibrant and lower level culture. The combination of "jihad" and the looting tradition of the nomads made Islam more easily accepted by the nomads. In the vast area of Central Asia, the spread of Islam occurred through the channels of the Sufi mysticism. Sufism did not emphasize direct communication with God. It was more suitable for the steppe nomads who were wanton and unrestrained and had a low cultural level. The Islamic civilization of monotheistic faith is fundamentally a universal doctrine; it does not have ethnic or color bias. Although the Islamic empires also traded slaves, the slaves became the brothers of religion if they accepted the Islamic faith, and could then no longer be treated as slaves. For many Turks who joined the Arab armies as "military slaves," this was particularly attractive.

Before Islam conquered the Western Regions, the prevalent religion there was Buddhism. The replacement of Buddhism by Islam occurred through a very cruel and long-term political and military struggle. Islam was lenient towards those who "had Bibles" (i.e. Jews and Christians who had Bibles) by being tolerant of the existence of their religious communities. The condition was that they had to pay a certain amount of tax, whereas Buddhism was regarded as idolatry and must be totally eradicated. Therefore, the replacement of Buddhism by Islam in the Western Regions cannot simply be described as Islam being more attractive than Buddhism by simply relying on the outcome of history. All were nomads, the Mongols in the west accepted Islam, and those in the north accepted Lamaism.

In history, the nomads who conquered the Central Plains eventually were all sinicized, whereas the Arabs as a backward ethnic group were not assimilated by the advanced civilizations (such as Persia) that they had conquered. This situation can partly explain the civilization superiority of the revealed religions. The nomadic Arabs, as the creators and disseminators of Islam, did not have a high cultural level. But what made them different from many other nomads was that they possessed a revealed religion that had not only the civilization superiority of the monotheistic universalism, but also the military superiority of the nomadic civilization in traditional society. The nomadic empires that conquered the Central Plains had only the nomadic fighting force, but were not like the Arabs who had the spiritual weapon of the universal doctrine of religion. Therefore, after they conquered the Central Plains, the nomads gradually adopted the culture of the conquered, because they themselves did not have superiority/self-confidence in their culture/civilization. On the contrary, the nomadic Arabs conquered the advanced Persian civilization, and on this basis conquered the civilization of the Western Regions.

Through the above comparison it is clear that in order for China to understand the Western Regions, the Chinese must recognize the fact that the Western Regions were dominated by different civilizations in history and the result of their competitions with each other. To understand the Islamic conquest of the Western Regions, we should not only pay attention to the economic, political and military strategies, but also the "core" factors of civilization. In addition, we should realize that when the secular Confucian civilization with special doctrines was in competition with the universalistic, holy civilization of the revealed religion to win over the mobile nomads, it did not have an advantage.

Islam is the key to the understanding of the one thousand year history of the Western Regions. After the Islamization of the Western Regions, the traditional East-West order has added a crucial element to civilization. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the history and characteristics of this civilization. The significance of Islam in Central Asia was to enable the people there to establish a sense of self-consciousness. However, this awareness was different from that of the modern nation-state. The former was abstract and was based on the belief in and conversion to a supernatural God to obtain a cultural and spiritual nobility, self-confidence and pride; it was not converted to a specific person-environment relationship. The latter is just the opposite: it particularly emphasizes the establishment of a political entity based on a person-environment relationship (ethnicity/people- territory) and forms a positive self-identity on this basis. This is an important historical perspective in understanding Central Asia. So far, the narrow "Central Plains view of history" has not seriously dealt with and managed this issue. It is also the barrier of the contemporary Chinese in their common-sense understanding of the people of Central Asia.

In terms of embryology, we can cite several real historical events to explain the Islamization of the Western Regions. However, after the long history, Islamic civilization has already become a kind of localized civilization in the region. For an in-depth understanding of the Central Asian issue, it is necessary to combine the Islamic civilization and the self-identity of the local people. The ignorance and arrogance of the Central Plains-Chinese civilization towards the Islamic civilization (and all the other beliefs in the world), and even its ignorance and demonization of other ways of life such as the nomadic lifestyle, have constituted our nation's intellectual barriers. They have even become an historic shortcoming of the secular Chinese civilization. The error that resulted from the wrong knowledge and policy not only does not address the problems the Chinese civilization faces, but creates more problems.

During the reign of Emperor Xuanzhong of the Tang Dynasty, Arab envoys came to offer tributes. When they saw the emperor, they "stood and refused to ‘kowtow’." This almost caused a diplomatic crisis. It inevitably reminds us of the scene when the British envoy George Macartney refused to kneel in front of Emperor Qianlong in modern times. In the Ming Dynasty, Islamization of the Western Regions was basically completed after its development in the Yuan Dynasty. At this time, people in the Western Regions already won the qualification to look down upon the Central Plains empires, namely, they had converted to a monotheistic faith in God and generated a tremendous sense of nobility. When the Ming Dynasty was focusing on Mongolia to the north of the Great Wall, the Central Asian people did not seriously pay attention to the Ming Dynasty. "Until the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, many people in Central Asia regarded China as a distant empire, a market that depended to a certain degree on the commodities in Central Asia, which had a huge number of pagans who someday would eventually become Muslims.  The Central Asian people thought that, although the Chinese culture was very developed, it was inferior to the Central Asian culture, and they found that Chinese people knew nothing about the world. "

From the perspective of the Eastern maritime order, the tributary system was based on (in the cultural-political sense) China as the suzerain state. But this framework cannot be completely taken for granted and used in the understanding of the relations between China and the Western Regions. In fact, from the 10th to the 13th century, the Chinese officials abandoned the traditional tributary system and began to pursue a realistic and effective foreign policy by accepting the neighbors as sharing equal status. However, the realistic assessment of a number of powerful neighbors did not prevent these officials from reducing the foreigners to "barbarians." "The principle of reciprocity in the diplomatic relations with these countries was only a forced concession, and this concession was reluctantly given because of the military weakness of the Song Dynasty." China's official records and private letters were full of hatred such as referring to foreigners as low-class people, "barbarians," "despicable people," or directly as "beasts." It has been pointed out that the Ming and Qing relations with Central Asia were actually of a reciprocal and equal relationship. In fact, they were only a continuation of the Song tradition; however, the Central Asian people even looked down upon the people in the Central Plains. This should be closely related to the Islamization of the Western Regions. Nevertheless, the Chinese empire still maintained "a myth of China being the world's suzerain." The Ming Dynasty set up a "Hui Hui Pavilion" which was an organization responsible for receiving guests from parts of the Western Regions. But the Hui Hui Pavilion belonged to the Ethnic House (the Bureau of Interpreters). Namely, although in practice the Ming Dynasty emperor acknowledged the equal status of Muslims in Central Asia, domestically he still called them the "barbarians." For example, Emperor Yongle said in a letter to the descendants of Timur: "The Western Regions are the Islam territories; there are many great people and good people, but none surpasses the Sudan people."  For the classical empire, it was necessary to express self-pride over other civilizations in the self-professed narrative statement. And theoretically speaking, this pride over other civilizations and the study on them were not necessarily contradictory. The former was expressed in the narrative structure while the latter was useful in the actual policy.  The two were not mutually contradictory. Whether in reality the empires were always willing to get down studying other civilizations was another issue. But at least our classical empires have thought about these matters. Unfortunately, people today have forgotten the wisdom of the ancients.

Furthermore, today we also face another problem. The concept of classical empires has been abandoned by our people today such that we often lose self-confidence and self-pride in facing the Christian civilization. This is the profound crisis of self-reliance on civilization; and the old narrative structure of thinking about the Central Plains still resides deep in our bones from another perspective such that we always have a kind of blind arrogance and ignorance in facing the Islamic civilization. Concerning the issue of the Western Regions, it is necessary to revisit the wisdom of Chinese ancients and then explore the mysteries of the classical empires. This effort is as important as striving to understand the concept of building a modern state.