For centuries, Muslim scholars in China wrote mystical texts that blended Sufi spirituality with Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist ideas. Most of this literature remains untranslated and largely unknown outside specialist circles, leaving a significant gap in the field of comparative mysticism. Dr. Michael Lackner, Professor and Director of CAS-E (the Centre for Advanced Studies in Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective) and Dr. Tommaso Previato at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen in Germany, run a project to bridge that gap.
Two Streams, One Tradition
The project brings together two streams of Sino-Muslim spiritual life. The first is the Han kitāb: Sufi-inspired texts written by Chinese Muslim authors in a neo-Confucian register, dating from
the Ming-Qing period (1368–1911). The second is the menhuan
The team examines how these authors adapted esoteric ideas across such diverse languages (Perso-Arabic and Chinese) and cultural frameworks. The research focuses on how Islamic scholarship borrowed non-literally from Daoism and Buddhism, how mystical beliefs were adapted to local contexts, and how chains of spiritual transmission connected northwest and southern China to the broader Muslim world.
Where Traditions Converge
By integrating these two categories, the project builds a model that accounts for the practitioner’s relationship with the divine, transmission from a spiritual master, and participation in collective rituals in a site far from typically conceived centers of Islam. Scholarly articles and an international workshop are the expected outputs. Lackner and Previato’s work could reveal that the boundaries between esoteric traditions are more porous than scholars have assumed — and that China’s Muslim mystics have been demonstrating this for centuries.