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Tibetan Muslims, also known as the Kachee (; ; also spelled Kache), form a small minority in
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...
. Despite being
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
, they are officially recognized as
Tibetans The Tibetan people (; ) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6.7 million. In addition to the majority living in Tibet Autonomous Region of China, significant numbers of Tibetans liv ...
by the government of the People's Republic of China, unlike the Hui Muslims, who are separately recognized. The Tibetan word ''Kachee'' literally means
Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...
and
Kashmir Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...
was known as ''Kachee Yul'' (Yul means Country). The Muslim community in Tibet is very diverse, with Muslims being of Kashmiri, Tibetan, Nepalese, Ladakhi, and Indian ancestry.


History


Early history

The first contacts between Tibet and the Islamic world began around the mid-eighth century when it grew out of a combination of trade via the
Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and rel ...
and the military presence of Muslim forces in the Fergana Valley. Despite the vague knowledge the Islamic world had about Tibet, there were a few early Islamic works that mention Tibet. One such source is from a work authored by
Abu Sa'id Gardezi Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd-al-Ḥayy ibn Żaḥḥāk b. Maḥmūd Gardīzī ( fa, ابوسعید عبدالحی بن ضحاک بن محمود گردیزی), better known as Gardizi (), was an 11th-century Persian historian and official, who is notable for ...
titled ''Zayn al-Akhbar''. In it, the work mentions the environment, fantastical origin of the Tibetans (through the Himyarites), the divinity of the king, major resources (like musk) and a description of the trade routes to and from Tibet. Another source, ''Hudud al-'Alam'' (The Regions of the World) written by an unknown author in 982 or 983 in
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...
, contains mainly geography, politics and brief descriptions of Tibetan regions, cities, towns and other localities. This source has the first direct mention of the presence of Muslims in Tibet by stating that
Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa ...
had one mosque and a small Muslim population. During the reign of Sadnalegs (799-815), there was a protracted war against Arab powers to the West. It appears that Tibetans captured a number of Arab troops and pressed them into service on the eastern frontier in 801. Tibetans were active as far west as
Samarkand fa, سمرقند , native_name_lang = , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from the top:Registan square, Shah-i-Zinda necropolis, Bibi-Khanym Mosque, view inside Shah-i-Zinda, ...
and
Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into #Districts, 22 municipal dist ...
. Arab forces began to gain the upper hand, and the Tibetan governor of Kabul submitted to the Arabs and became a Muslim about 812 or 815.


Fourteenth century to present

Extensive trade with
Kashmir Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompas ...
,
Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory which constitutes a part of the larger Kashmir region and has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since 1947. (subscription required) Quote: "Jammu a ...
, and
Baltistan Baltistan ( ur, ; bft, སྦལ་ཏི་སྟཱན, script=Tibt), also known as Baltiyul or Little Tibet ( bft, སྦལ་ཏི་ཡུལ་།, script=Tibt), is a mountainous region in the Pakistani-administered territory of Gil ...
also brought Muslims to Tibet especially after the adoption or growing presence of Islam in these regions starting from the fourteenth century. The ongoing growth of Muslims continued as an effect of the Tibetan-Ladakhi treaty of 1684 in which the Tibetan government allowed trade missions from Ladakh to enter Lhasa every three years. Many Kashmiri and Ladakhi Muslims joined these missions with some settling in Tibet. During the reign of the Dalai Lama
Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (; ; 1617–1682) was the 5th Dalai Lama and the first Dalai Lama to wield effective temporal and spiritual power over all Tibet. He is often referred to simply as the Great Fifth, being a key religious and temporal leader ...
(1617–1682), a permanent Muslim community settled down in Tibet. They were permitted to elect their own council of representatives, settle their group's legal disputes with Islamic law, and some land was donated to them for the construction of a mosque close to
Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa ...
. The community soon adopted aspects of Tibetan culture like dress, diet, and the
Tibetan language Tibetan language may refer to: * Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard * Lhasa Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dialect * Any of the other Tibetic languages See also * Old Tibetan, the languag ...
. An influx of Kashmiri Muslims in Nepal (originally having trade contacts with their kin in Tibet) fled to Tibet starting from 1769 due to the invasion of the
Kathmandu Valley The Kathmandu Valley ( ne, काठमाडौं उपत्यका; also known as the Nepal Valley or Nepa Valley ( ne, नेपाः उपत्यका, Nepal Bhasa: 𑐣𑐾𑐥𑐵𑑅 𑐐𑐵𑑅, नेपाः गाः)), ...
by
Prithvi Narayan Shah Maharajadhiraj Prithvi Narayan Shah (1723–1775) ( ne, श्री ५ बडामहाराजाधिराज पृथ्वीनारायण शाह देव) was the last ruler of the Gorkha Kingdom and first monarch of the ...
. As early as the seventeenth century,
Ningxia Ningxia (,; , ; alternately romanized as Ninghsia), officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NHAR), is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1 ...
and other northwestern Hui (Chinese Muslims) began to settle in the eastern regions of Tibet (like in
Amdo Amdo ( �am˥˥.to˥˥ ) is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being U-Tsang in the west and Kham in the east. Ngari (including former Guge kingdom) in the north-west was incorporated into Ü-Tsang. Amdo is also the bi ...
). They intermarried with the local Tibetans and continued to have to extensive trade contacts with other Muslims inside China. Another recent wave of new Muslim settlers began after the
Dogra The Dogras or Dogra people, are an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group in India and Pakistan consisting of the Dogri language speakers. They live predominantly in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, and in adjoining areas of Punjab, Himac ...
conquest of Tibet in 1841. Many Kashmiri, Balti and Ladakhi Muslim troops (who were taken as prisoners when fighting against the Dogra army) stayed behind to settle in Tibet. A few Hindu Dogras also settled in Tibet and subsequently converted to Islam. Outside of the Lhasa area, smaller Muslim communities and mosques exists in
Shigatse Shigatse, officially known as Xigazê (; Nepali: ''सिगात्से''), is a prefecture-level city of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Its area of jurisdiction, with an area of , corresponds to the histo ...
,
Tsetang Tsetang () or Zedang (), is the fourth largest city in Tibet and is located in the Yarlung Valley, southeast of Lhasa in Nedong District of the Shannan Prefecture in the Tibet region of China. It is the capital of Shannan Prefecture (which ...
, and Chengguan. After the Chinese conquest of Tibet in 1950, the Tibetan Muslims faced brutal persecution just like their Buddhist brethren. Since then, Chinese Muslims (along with the Han and others) have settled in Tibet. The Chinese government classified the Tibetan Muslims as Hui. However, the Tibetan Muslims are often called Zang Hui (Tibetan Hui) as they speak Tibetan and have a material culture almost identical to their Buddhist counterparts. The Tibetan Hui in
Lhasa Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa ...
(unlike other Tibetan Muslims living elsewhere) consider themselves to be very different from the Chinese Muslims and sometimes marry with other Tibetans (including Buddhists) instead of their fellow Muslims from China.


Question of citizenship

In 1959, Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian Anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat— * * * * and author who was a central figure in India du ...
had come to the conclusion that the Barkor Khache were Indian citizens. The first letter written by the Barkor Khache community in Lhasa was to Tibetan Muslims in
Kalimpong Kalimpong (Hindi: कलिम्पोंग) is a town and the headquarters of an eponymous district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is located at an average elevation of . The town is the headquarters of the Kalimpong district. The r ...
in 1959: The Chinese government attempted to coerce the Barkor Khache into accepting Chinese citizenship and giving up their claims to Indian citizenship. They were initially prevented by China from emigrating to India. The Chinese authorities harassed them, beat them, subjected them to arbitrarily high taxes and told them to attend "indoctrination meetings. On September 2, 1960, Chinese leaders announced that the Barkor Khache would be allowed to leave. The Barkor Khache began leaving later that month to India, via the
Kingdom of Sikkim The Kingdom of Sikkim (Classical Tibetan and sip, འབྲས་ལྗོངས།, ''Drenjong''), officially Dremoshong (Classical Tibetan and sip, འབྲས་མོ་གཤོངས།) until the 1800s, was a hereditary monar ...
. The Wapaling Khaches also demanded that they be allowed to emigrate to India, but the Chinese authorities refused. After the
1959 Tibetan uprising The 1959 Tibetan uprising (also known by other names) began on 10 March 1959, when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the effective control of the People's Republic of China since the Seventeen Point Agre ...
, the state government of
Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to: * Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent * Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory * Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...
granted permanent resident/state subject status to Tibetan Muslim refugees. Voting rights for the
Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly The Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly also known as the Jammu and Kashmir Vidhan Sabha is the legislature of Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The Legislative Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir was dissolved by the Governor on 21 No ...
were also granted by the government.


Converts in Qinghai

Islam was spread by the
Salar people The Salar people ( zh, c=撒拉族, p=Sālāzú) are a Turkic ethnic minority of China who largely speak the Salar language, an Oghuz language. The Salar people numbered 130,607 people in the last census of 2010. The Salars live mostly in ...
to the formerly Buddhist Kargan Tibetans in Lamo-shan-ken. Some Tibetans in Qinghai who converted to Islam are now considered
Hui people The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the ...
. Near the Tibetan village of Skya Rgya in Qinghai, Muslims live around the Yellow river in the town of Dong sna 20 kilometers away and they are registered by the Chinese government as Hui. The elderly "Hui" in this village speak imperfect Chinese but speak perfect Tibetan and trade frequently with the Tibetans, saying they were originally Tibetans. One of them, a man born in 1931 said "We have the same blood; we have the same ancestors. We used to marry each other, shared the same customs and observed the same traditional principles. It was Ma Bufang who converted us to Islam."


Tibetans and the Salars

After the Salars moved to Xunhua, they converted Tibetan women to Islam and the Tibetan women were taken as wives by Salar men. A Salar wedding ritual where grains and milk were scattered on a horse by the bride was influenced by Tibetans. Tibetan women were the original wives of the first Salars to arrive in the region as recorded in Salar oral history. The Tibetans agreed to let their women marry Salar men after putting up several demands to accommodate cultural and religious differences. Hui and Salar intermarry due to cultural similarities and following Islam. Older Salars married Tibetan women but younger Salars prefer marrying other Salars. Han and Salar mostly do not intermarry with each other. Salars however use Han surnames. Salar patrilineal clans are much more limited than Han patrilineal clans in how much they deal with culture, society or religion. Salars almost exclusively took non-Salar women as wives like Tibetan women while never giving Salar women to non-Salar men in marriage except for Hui men who were allowed to marry Salar women. As a result Salars are heavily mixed with other ethnicities. Salars in Qinghai live on both banks of the Yellow river, south and north, the northern ones are called Hualong or Bayan Salars while the southern ones are called Xunhua Salars. The region north of the Yellow river is a mix of discontinuous Salar and Tibetan villages while the region south of the yellow river is solidly Salar with no gaps in between, since Hui and Salars pushed the Tibetans on the south region out earlier. Tibetan women who converted to Islam were taken as wives on both banks of the river by Salar men. Tibetans witness Salar life passages in Kewa, a Salar village and Tibetan butter tea is consumed by Salars there as well. Other Tibetan cultural influences like Salar houses having four corners with a white stone on them became part of Salar culture as long as they were not prohibited by Islam. Hui people started assimilating and intermarrying with Salars in Xunhua after migrating there from Hezhou in Gansu due to the Chinese Ming dynasty ruling the Xunhua Salars after 1370 and Hezhou officials governed Xunhua. Many Salars with the Ma surname appear to be of Hui descent since many Salars now have the Ma surname while in the beginning the majority of Salars had the Han surname. Some example of Hezhou Hui who became Salars are the Chenjia (Chen family) and Majia (Ma family) villages in Altiuli where the Chen and Ma families are Salars who admit their Hui ancestry. Marriage ceremonies, funerals, birth rites and prayer were shared by both Salar and Hui as they intermarried and shared the same religion since more and more Hui moved into the Salar areas on both banks of the Yellow river. Many Hui women married Salar men and eventually it became far more popular for Hui and Salar to intermarry due to both being Muslims than to non-Muslim Han, Mongols and Tibetans. The Salar language and culture however was highly impacted in the 14th-16th centuries in their original ethnogenesis by marriage with Mongol and Tibetan non-Muslims with many loanwords and grammatical influence by Mongol and Tibetan in their language. Salars were multilingual in Salar and Mongol and then in Chinese and Tibetan as they trade extensively in the Ming, Qing and Republic of China periods on the yellow river in Ningxia and Lanzhou in Gansu. Salars and Tibetans both use the term maternal uncle ( in Salar and Chinese, in Tibetan) to refer to each other, referring to the fact that Salars are descendants of Tibetan women marrying Salar men. After using these terms they often repeat the historical account how Tibetan women were married by 2,000 Salar men who were the first Salars to migrate to Qinghai. These terms illustrate that Salars were viewed separately from the Hui by Tibetans. According to legend, the marriages between Tibetan women and Salar men came after a compromise between demands by a Tibetan chief and the Salar migrants. The Salar say Wimdo valley was ruled by a Tibetan and he demanded the Salars follow 4 rules in order to marry Tibetan women. He asked them to install on their houses's four corners Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags, to pray with Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels with the Buddhist mantras and to bow before statues of Buddha. The Salars refused those demands saying they did not recite mantras or bow to statues since they believed in only one creator god and were Muslims. They compromised on the flags in houses by putting stones on their houses' corners instead of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags. Some Tibetans do not differentiate between Salar and Hui due to their Islamic religion. Salars were bilingual in Salar and Tibetan due to intermarriage with Tibetan women and trading. It is far less likely for a Tibetan to speak Salar. Tibetan women in Xiahe also married Muslim men who came there as traders before the 1930s. In eastern Qinghai and Gansu there were cases of Tibetan women who stayed in their Buddhist Lamaist religion while marrying Chinese Muslim men and they would have different sons who would be Buddhist and Muslims, the Buddhist sons became Lamas while the other sons were Muslims. Hui and Tibetans married Salars. The later Qing dynasty and Republic of China Salar General Han Youwen was born to a Tibetan woman named Ziliha () and a Salar father named Aema (). Tibetan and non-Tibetan Muslim men sometimes marry Ladakhi Tibetan Buddhist women in
Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory which constitutes a part of the larger Kashmir region and has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since 1947. (subscription required) Quote: "Jammu a ...
.


Balti people

The Balti people of
Baltistan Baltistan ( ur, ; bft, སྦལ་ཏི་སྟཱན, script=Tibt), also known as Baltiyul or Little Tibet ( bft, སྦལ་ཏི་ཡུལ་།, script=Tibt), is a mountainous region in the Pakistani-administered territory of Gil ...
in
Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
and
Kargil Kargil ( lbj, ) is a city and a joint capital of the union territory of Ladakh, India. It is also the headquarters of the Kargil district. It is the second-largest city in Ladakh after Leh. Kargil is located to the east of Srinagar in J ...
in
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
are descendants of Tibetan Buddhists who converted to the Noorbakshia sect of Islam. With the passage of time a large number converted to
Shia Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, mos ...
, and a few converted to
Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a dis ...
Islam. Balti people are ethnically Muslims of Tibetan ancestry. Their
Balti language Balti ( Nastaʿlīq script: , Tibetan script: སྦལ་ཏི།, ) is a Tibetic language natively spoken by the ethnic Balti people in the Baltistan region of Gilgit−Baltistan, Pakistan, Nubra Valley of the Leh district and in the K ...
is highly archaic and conservative and closer to
Classical Tibetan Classical Tibetan refers to the language of any text written in Tibetic after the Old Tibetan period. Though it extends from the 12th century until the modern day, it particularly refers to the language of early canonical texts translated from o ...
than other
Tibetan languages The Tibetic languages form a well-defined group of languages descended from Old Tibetan (7th to 9th centuries).Tournadre, Nicolas. 2014. "The Tibetic languages and their classification." In ''Trans-Himalayan linguistics, historical and descripti ...
. The Balti are speakers of a conservative Tibetan dialect in northern Pakistan, Baltistant. Most other Tibetan dialects lost Classical Tibetan consonant clusters that are preserved in Balti. However DNA testing revealed that while Tibetan mtDNA makes up the majority of the Balti's female ancestry, the Balti paternal ancestry has foreign Near Eastern Y haplogroups of non-Tibetan origin.


See also

*
Islam in China Islam has been practiced in China since the 7th century CE.. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing 1.6-2 percent of the total population (21,667,000- 28,210,795) according to various estimates. Though Hui Muslims are the most num ...
*
Uyghurs The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central Asia, Cent ...
*
Hui people The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the ...
*
Dungan people Dungan, Xiao'erjing: ; zh, s=东干族, t=東干族, p=Dōnggān zú, w=Tung1kan1-tsu2, , Xiao'erjing: ; russian: Дунгане, ''Dungane''; ky, Дуңгандар, ''Duñgandar'', دۇنغاندار; kk, Дүңгендер, ''Düñgende ...
*
Salar people The Salar people ( zh, c=撒拉族, p=Sālāzú) are a Turkic ethnic minority of China who largely speak the Salar language, an Oghuz language. The Salar people numbered 130,607 people in the last census of 2010. The Salars live mostly in ...
* Balti people *
Nepalese Muslims Nepalese Muslims ( ne, नेपाली मुसलमान; ''Nepali Musalman'') are Nepalis who follow Islam. Their ancestors arrived in Nepal from different parts of South Asia, Central Asia and Tibet during different epochs, and have ...
* Sectarian tensions among Muslims in China


References


Citations


Sources

* Akasoy, Anna; Burnett, Charles; Yoeli-Tlalim, Ronit. (2016). Islam and Tibet: interactions along the musk routes. Routledge, 2016. . * Atwill, David G. "Boundaries of Belonging: Sino-Indian Relations and the 1960 Tibetan Muslim Incident." ''The Journal of Asian Studies'' 75, no. 03 (August 2016): 595–620, . * * Sheikh, Abdul Ghani. (1991). "Tibetan Muslims." ''The Tibet Journal''. Vol. XVI, No. 4. Winter, 1991, pp. 86–89. * Siddiqui, Ataullah. (1991). "Muslims of Tibet." ''The Tibet Journal''. Vol. XVI, No. 4. Winter, 1991, pp. 71–85.


External links


Tibetan Muslims


* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20050317150126/http://www.fonsvitae.com/tibetvideo.html Islam in Tibet 'The Ornaments of Llasa' Video – Fons Vitae books* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20050310053759/http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/%7Edanlee/photo-albums/tb-photos/ Gallery of Tibet (Includes picture of a Minaret)
Mosque in Lhasa



Exploring Ethnicities: A Sociological Profile Of Tibetan Muslim Community In Kashmir Valley – Analysis

A minority within a minority: Nepal's Tibetan Muslims mark Ramadan
{{Tibet topics Tibetan people Muslim communities of China Ethnic groups in China Religion in Tibet Indian diaspora by country Ethnic groups in Tibet