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For more than four centuries, Chinese Muslims have maintained a distinctive system of religious learning known as jingtang jiaoyu, or Islamic Scripture Hall Education.
Developed within the mosques of China during the sixteenth century, this educational tradition trained generations of imams, scholars, and teachers at a time when Chinese Muslim communities were becoming increasingly separated from the major centers of Islamic learning.
Through its curriculum, teaching methods, and networks of teachers and students, Islamic Scripture Hall Education played a central role in preserving Islamic knowledge and religious identity among the Hui Muslims of China. Remarkably, it continues to function in many Chinese mosques today.
Arabic served as the lingua franca of the diverse Muslim population registered as Hui, and it was the language through which religious knowledge was transmitted. What united this population was not a common origin but a common faith. The Hui are defined by Islam, and without Islam there would be no Hui.
The situation changed dramatically during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Seeking to assimilate the Hui, Mongols, and other minorities into the dominant Han culture, the Ming government introduced a range of Sinicization policies. The use of foreign languages, foreign dress, foreign surnames, and later, marriage within the same ethnic group were prohibited. Among these measures, the foreign language ban had particularly far-reaching consequences for Hui Muslim.
Combined with restrictions on foreign contacts and maritime trade, these policies gradually weakened the connections between Chinese Muslims and the broader Islamic world. Over time, Arabic and Persian ceased to be widely spoken among the Hui Muslims, who increasingly adopted Chinese as their primary language.
This linguistic shift created a serious challenge. While Islamic books remained available in some communities, fewer people possessed the knowledge required to understand them. Later Muslim scholars described a period in which qualified religious teachers became increasingly rare and the transmission of Islamic learning grew more difficult. In some regions, weakened religious education contributed to the gradual assimilation of Muslim communities into the surrounding society.
It was in this context that Islamic Scripture Hall Education emerged as an innovative response to the preservation of Islamic knowledge.
According to this source, Hu Dengzhou devoted himself to the study of Islamic texts from an early age. Dissatisfied with the limited educational resources available in his region, he sought opportunities to deepen his learning. Traditional accounts relate that he encountered a learned Muslim visitor from the Arab world and acquired access to texts and knowledge that were not widely available in China at the time.
After returning to Shaanxi, Shaykh Hu opened a school in his home, where he taught Islamic knowledge to Hui students while supporting their education largely from his own resources. His reputation soon attracted students from various provinces, and a growing circle of disciples carried his teachings to other regions.
What began as a local initiative soon developed into a broader educational movement. Mosque-based learning centres appeared across different parts of China, laying the foundations for a structured system of Islamic education that would endure for centuries.
The first was elementary education for children and ordinary members of the community. At this level, students learned the Arabic alphabet, memorised selected chapters of the Qur'an, and studied basic teachings related to faith, ritual purification, prayer, fasting, marriage, and funeral practices. For most Hui Muslims, this provided the religious knowledge necessary for daily life.
The second level was designed for students preparing for religious leadership. These advanced students, known as hailifan (derived from the Arabic khalīfa), undertook a lengthy and demanding course of study that often lasted a decade or more.
The advanced curriculum eventually became known as the "Fourteen Books" (shisi ben jing). Drawing upon Arabic and Persian classical texts, it included Arabic grammar, morphology, rhetoric, logic, theology, jurisprudence, Qur'anic exegesis, hadith studies, and Sufi literature. The curriculum reflected the broad intellectual traditions of the Muslim world.
Upon completing their studies, students participated in a formal graduation ceremony often referred to as a "robing" ceremony. They were then recognized as ahong, the Chinese term for an imam or religious scholar, derived from the Persian word ākhūnd.
Instruction was given in jingtang yu, "Islamic scripture hall language", a form of spoken Chinese rich in Arabic and Persian religious terms. Teachers read the Arabic text, analyzed each word and grammatical form, and rendered its meaning in this idiom. Written Chinese was not taught within Islamic Scripture Hall Education. To help students take notes in class, teachers developed Xiaojing, a system for writing spoken Chinese in Arabic script.
Because a mosque often had only one teacher, students frequently travelled long distances to study with respected scholars in different regions. As a result, extensive networks of learning emerged across China. Teachers and students moved between provinces, linking Muslim communities from north-western China to the eastern and southern regions of the country.
The Genealogy of the Transmission of Scriptural Learning provides valuable insight into the sacrifices associated with this educational culture. Students often travelled far from home under difficult conditions, copied books by hand because printed texts were scarce or expensive, and devoted years to study with limited material resources. The pursuit of knowledge was widely regarded as both a religious obligation and a communal responsibility.
Prominent teachers maintained high academic standards. One well-known scholar of the early Qing period, She Qiling, required extensive repetition and memorisation before and after lessons. Students were expected not only to recite texts accurately but also to demonstrate a thorough understanding of their meanings. Such methods reflected the conviction that mastery of religious knowledge required discipline, perseverance, and close engagement with authoritative texts.
Community support extended beyond financial assistance. Many Muslim villages viewed the education of future imams and scholars as a collective responsibility. Local communities provided accommodation, meals, and study environments that enabled students to devote themselves fully to learning.
The Shaanxi tradition was known for its intensive study of a smaller group of texts, emphasising depth of understanding. The Shandong tradition became known for its broader curriculum and stronger incorporation of Persian works. The Yunnan tradition rose to prominence somewhat later and played an important role in extending Islamic learning to south-western China.
These regional centres produced teachers who established new educational networks throughout the country. Their influence extended beyond the classroom, contributing to the religious and social life of local Muslim communities.
The Jingxue Xichuan Pu also records scholars who carried Islamic Scripture Hall Education into communities where Islamic practice had weakened. One example is Ma Rongwu, who, upon learning that Muslims in several villages near Tongzhou in Shaanxi were drifting away from their faith, settled there with his students and began teaching the local children. Within six years, the Pu reports, around a thousand households in seven villages had returned to Islamic practice. This episode illustrates that Islamic Scripture Hall Education served not only to train scholars but also to revitalize and sustain Muslim community life.
The system also helped produce the scholars responsible for the Han Kitab, the celebrated body of Islamic literature written in classical Chinese during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Major figures such as Wang Daiyu, Ma Zhu, and Liu Zhi emerged from intellectual environments shaped by Islamic Scripture Hall Education. Their writings explained Islamic theology, law, ethics, and spirituality through concepts familiar to Chinese readers, creating one of the most distinctive scholarly traditions in the Muslim world.
During the twentieth century, Muslim reformers introduced new educational institutions that incorporated modern subjects such as Chinese language, history, geography, and science alongside religious studies. Institutions such as the Chengda Normal School represented an important stage in the modernisation of Islamic education in China. Yet these reforms did not replace the earlier tradition entirely. Rather, they built upon foundations established by centuries of Islamic Scripture Hall Education.
Today Islamic Scripture Hall Education continues to train religious students in mosques in many parts of China, but its scale has diminished considerably. Restrictive government policies on religious education account for part of this decline. Equally important has been the emergence of new forms of Islamic education. These include the state-sponsored China Islamic Institute in Beijing, and a number of provincial Islamic institutes. In addition, many Hui students now pursue Islamic studies abroad, in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Malaysia. The Islamic scripture hall, once the only path to religious scholarship among the Hui, is now one of several.
Islamic Scripture Hall Education arose when the Hui had lost the languages of their religious tradition and their religious knowledge was in steep decline. Without state support, and drawing only on the resources of their own communities, Hui scholars built a system that trained religious leaders for more than four centuries. It sustained Islamic learning across China and laid the foundations for later Chinese Islamic scholarship and education. It reflects both the struggle and the wisdom of the Hui Muslims in preserving their faith in a country where Muslims have always been a minority.
Dr Mai Jianjun is an Assistant Professor in Department of Fundamental and Inter-Disciplinary Studies, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia
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