Download or read book China's Early Mosques written by Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-07 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a monotheistic, foreign religion needs a space in which to worship in China, a civilisation with a building tradition that has been largely unchanged for several millennia? The story of this extraordinary convergence begins in the 7th century and continues under the Chinese rule of Song and Ming, and the non-Chinese rule of the Mongols and Manchus, each with a different political and religious agenda. The author shows that mosques, and ultimately Islam, have survived in China because the Chinese architectural system, though often unchanging, is adaptable: it can accommodate the religious requirements of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Islam.