Theoretical Gnosis and Doctrinal Sufism and Their Significance Today

China

A word must also be said about China. Until the 11th/17th century Chinese Muslims who dealt with intellectual matters did so on the basis of Arabic and Persian texts. It was only in the 11th/17th century that they began to use classical Chinese and to seek to express Islamic metaphysics and philosophy in the language of Neo-Confucianism. Henceforth, there developed a significant body of Islamic thought in Chinese that is being systematically studied only now. It is interesting to note that two of the classical Islamic works to be rendered the earliest into Chinese are firstly the Lawā’ih of Jāmī, which is a masterly summary of ‘irfān in Persian, translated by Liu Chih (d. circa 1670) as Chen-chao-wei (“Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm”); and secondly the Ashi‘‘at al-lama‘āt also by Jāmī and again, as already mentioned, dealing with ‘irfān, translated by P’o Na-chih (d. after 1697) as Chao-yüan pi-chüeh (“The Mysterious Secret of the Original Display”).35 Also the first Chinese Muslim thinker to expound Islamic teachings in Chinese, that is, Wang Tai-yü (d. 1657 or 1658), who wrote his Real Commentary on the True Teaching in 1642 to be followed by several other works, was steeped in the same ‘irfānī tradition. The School of theoretical gnosis was therefore destined to play a major role in the encounter on the highest level between the Chinese and the Islamic intellectual traditions during the past few centuries.