Atelier Eurasie centrale EPHE – Wang Jianxin : « Hagiographic Records among Chinese Muslims: A Preliminary Survey on Sermon Poems »

 

 

La prochaine séance de l’Atelier Eurasie centrale de l’École pratique des hautes études se tiendra le mardi 10 mai 2022 de 11h00 à 13h00 au Bâtiment recherche Nord du Campus Condorcet, 14 cours des Humanités, 93300 Aubervilliers, en salle 5.067. RDV à 10h50 dans le hall du bâtiment. Les personnes extérieures au campus arrivant plus tard sont invitées à demander un badge électronique à la réception. Cette séance particulière, organisée en duplex avec l’Université de Lanzhou (Gansu) sera également accessible en ligne via le lien : https://meet.goto.com/905411837 (code d'accès, en cas de besoin : 905-411-837).

 

Hello,

The next session of the Central Eurasia Workshop of the Practical School of Advanced Studies of Paris will take place on Tuesday 10 May 2022 from 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM GMT+1 in Room 5.067 of the ‘North’ Research Building at Campus Condorcet, 14 Cours des Humanités in Aubervilliers (metro Front Populaire). Meeting point at 10.50 AM in the hall of the building. People from outside the campus arriving later are invited to ask for an electronic badge at the reception. This particular session, organised in a duplex with the University of Lanzhou (Gansu) will also be accessible online via the link: https://meet.goto.com/905411837 (access code, in case of need: 905-411-837).

 

Présentation du jour :

Lecture of the day:

WANG Jianxin (University of Lanzhou):

Muslim Hagiographic Experiences in the Former Soviet Realm:

13) Hagiographic Records among Chinese Muslims:

A Preliminary Survey on Sermon Poems

 

There are ten Muslim nationalities in China, which can be divided into two linguistic groups: a Turkic (Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrghyz, Uzbek, Tatar, Salar and Tajik — originally a Pamiri language speaking group) and a Chinese one (Hui, Dongxiang and Bao’an — the latter two originally Mongolian-speaking). Turkic-speaking Muslims generally use the Arabic alphabet in their literate practice, and their Chinese-speaking counterparts the Kanji ideograms. Although varying geographic locations and historical experiences have contributed a lot to the diversity of religious traditions, all share the two writing systems for recording religious experiences. (Besides, Turkic and Pamiri-speaking Muslims use a modernised Arabic alphabet.) Therefore, the study of Muslim religious scriptures in China must cover both systems.

Part of it consists of an analysis of the sources and styles of versified sermons by religious scholars in the ‘Three Sects’ (sanda jiaopai) and in the ‘Four Sufi Orders’ (sida menhuan) in both linguistic groups. The author’s work in recent years has consisted of collecting among Chinese speaking communities some 1,700 sermons in verse, of a wide variety of genres, ancient and modern, for a total of more than 400,000 words. This presentation will focus on those with a hagiographic content and highlight their resources for human and social-science approaches to Sinophone Islam. We will see, in particular, that these versified sermons provide us with rich information on the theological sources of Islamic teaching among Chinese-speaking Muslims, but also on the distinct ways Muslim scholars adopted to accommodate to daily realities in a (post-)socialist country.

 

Looking forward to seeing you on this occasion,

Au plaisir de vous retrouver à cette occasion,

 

Stéphane Dudoignon & Kristina Kovalskaya