page_title: Islam in China
section_title: Tang dynasty
hierarchical_section_title: Islam in China / History / Tang dynasty
caption_attribution_description: English: Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, China. 中文: 中国广州怀圣寺。
context_page_description: Islam has been practiced in China for about 1,300 years. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing between 0.45% to 2.85% of the total population according to the local government. Other independent sources claim between 60–80 million Muslims in China. Though Hui Muslims are the most numerous group, the greatest concentration of Muslims is in Xinjiang, with a significant Uyghur population. Lesser but significant populations reside in the regions of Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai. Of China's 55 officially recognized minority peoples, ten groups are predominantly Sunni Muslim.
context_section_description: According to Chinese Muslims' traditional accounts, Islam was first introduced to China in 616–18 AD by the Sahaba (companions) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad: Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas, Sayid, Wahab ibn Abu Kabcha and another Sahaba. It is noted in other accounts that Wahab Abu Kabcha reached Canton by sea in 629 CE. The introduction of Islam mainly happened through two routes: From the southeast following an established path to Canton and from the northwest through the Silk Road. Sa`ad ibn Abi Waqqas, along with three Sahabas, namely Suhayla Abuarja, Uwais al-Qarani and Hassan ibn Thabit, returned to China from Arabia in 637 by the Yunan-Manipur-Chittagong route, then reached Arabia by sea. Some sources date the introduction of Islam in China to 650 AD, the third sojourn of Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas, when he was sent as an official envoy to Emperor Gaozong during Caliph Uthman's reign. Emperor Gaozong, the Tang emperor who is said to  have received the envoy then ordered the construction of the Memorial mosque in Canton, the first mosque in the country, in memory of Muhammad. While modern secular historians tend to say that there is no evidence for Waqqās himself ever coming to China, they do believe that Muslim diplomats and merchants came to Tang China within a few decades from the beginning of the Muslim Era.
  The early Tang dynasty had a cosmopolitan culture, with intensive contacts with Central Asia and significant communities of (originally non-Muslim) Central and Western Asian merchants resident in Chinese cities, which helped the introduction of Islam. The first major Muslim settlements in China consisted of Arab and Persian merchants, with comparatively well-established, even if somewhat segregated, mercantile Muslim communities existing in the port cities of Guangzhou, Quanzhou and Hangzhou on China's southeastern seaboard, as well as in the interior centers such as Chang'an, Kaifeng and Yangzhou during the Tang and especially Song eras. It is recorded in 758, Arab and Persian pirates who probably had their base in a port on the island of Hainan, sacked Guangzhou, causing some of the trade to divert to Northern Vietnam and the Chaozhou area, near the Fujian border. In the year 760 in Yangzhou, rebels killed foreigners, mostly Arab and Persian merchants targeted for their wealth, in the Yangzhou massacre. Similarly, around 879, rebels killed around 120,000–200,000 mostly Arab and Persian foreigners in Guanzhou in the Guangzhou massacre. It is believed that the profile of Muslims as traders led to the government ignoring Muslims in the 845 Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, even though it virtually extinguished Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity in China.
  In the year 751, the Abbasid empire defeated the Tang Dynasty at the Battle of Talas, marking the end of Tang westward expansion and resulted in Muslim control of Transoxiana for the next 400 years.
caption: The Huaisheng Mosque's construction is attributed to the Prophet Muhammad's second cousin, Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas.
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