Muhammad Ma Jian

Ma Jian (Arabic name Muhammad Makin) (b. 1906–d. 1978) was an accomplished translator, scholar, professor, and an important figure in Chinese Islamic modernism. Ma Jian wrote in Arabic about Chinese Islam and authored works in Chinese about Islam and Arab civilization. He translated several critical works on Islamic theory and history from Arabic to Chinese. He also translated the Confucian Analects and the Chinese Constitution into Arabic. For many ordinary Chinese Muslims, Ma Jian’s name is most familiar because he translated the Qurʾan into Chinese. In 1946, he founded the Arabic program at Peking University. For the next thirty years, he trained China’s top specialists in Arabic language, literature, and civilization. Ma Jian compiled Arabic-Chinese dictionaries and textbooks for college students who studied Arabic. Not particularly ambitious in politics, Ma Jian assumed various semiofficial positions in the post-1949 communist state, including as a member of the People’s Political Consultation Conference, the People’s Congress, and as a member of the standing committee for the Islamic Association. He also assisted in the Chinese diplomatic effort in the Middle East both before and after 1949, both as a representative of Chinese Muslims and as an interpreter for China’s top leaders. Since his passing in 1978, numerous Chinese-language biographies and memoirs have been written by Ma Jian’s students, colleagues, relatives, and other associates. They praise him for his humanity, his diligence, his commitment to translating the Qurʾan, and his role as a cultural interpreter. These works provide rich historical material for studying Ma Jian and Chinese Islamic modernism. Other scholarly works in Chinese language also analyze Ma Jian’s efforts to harmonize Islamic and Chinese cultures. A number of English-language articles on Ma Jian and his fellow Chinese Azharites have been published in the last decade. They help shed light on the issues of Sino-Muslim identity, pan-Islamic exchanges, and the relationship between Muslims and the state. In addition, an increasingly large number of works have been published on the Sino-Muslim modernist movement. They provide useful and necessary context for understanding the vision and work of Ma Jian and of his contemporary Sino-Muslim modernists.