This book tells the story of history as imagined by Hui Muslims in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China. Chen argues that this was an especially productive period for historical thought, bookended by the establishment of a robust Sino-Islamic knowledge base by Liu Zhi on one end and Republican China on the other end. Histories from this period unify a vast temporal and spatial expanse: from genesis to antiquity to the modern era, from Arabia to Central Asia to China. Hui historians string together places and times into a coherent, continuous narrative for the community.
