Huí

The Huí, called Huihui in Chinese records, are Chinese-speaking Muslims descended from Arab and Iranian merchants of the Silk Road and maritime trade, some arriving as early as the eighth century, when three thousand Arab mercenaries helped the Tang against the An Lushan rebellion. Settling in Guangzhou, Quanzhou and northwest market towns, they married local women, adopted Chinese speech and customs and kept Islam, building qingzhensi mosques.

Their numbers grew under the Yuan: Central Asian Muslim soldiers, artisans and officials, classed as semu, ranked below the Mongols and planted communities in Gansu, Ningxia and Yunnan; by 1337 these stretched from the Hexi Corridor to Jiangnan. Ming Huí troops served in the conquest of Yunnan and settled there as garrison farmers.

Under the Qing, Sufi orders took root in the northwest, and rivalry between Jahriyya and the older Gedimu fueled the Jahriyya revolt of the 1780s, the first great Huí uprising in the imperial northwest.