Panthay
Panthay (; lit. "little flowers") is a term used to refer to the predominantly Muslim
Hui people of
China. They are among the largest groups of
Burmese Chinese, and predominantly reside in the northern regions of Myanmar (formerly known as Upper Burma), particularly in the
Mandalay-
Taunggyi area.
Scattered across the mountainous hill tracts which separate southwestern China from northern Southeast Asia, at the furthest limits of the
Silk Road and other
Central Asian trade routes which carried Islam to China, the
Chinese Muslims of
Yunnan Province have, for centuries, excelled as long-distance traders, miners and soldiers. Chinese-speaking, and of predominantly
Han Chinese ethnic origin, this little-known but economically and demographically significant group of
Sunni Muslims of the
Hanafi madhhab forms a predominantly endogamous, closely inter-related minority group in four countries â€"
China,
Burma,
Thailand and
Laos â€" and today represents an outpost both of Islamic and of ("Overland") Chinese culture in northern Southeast Asia.
Commercial and cultural contacts between the Yun-Kwei Plateau and the
Irrawaddy and lower
Salween Valleys probably predate significant migration by Han Chinese of Burman populations into either area; certainly it is likely that by the time of the
Later Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.) itinerant traders and Buddhist pilgrims traversed this marginal region of the Sino-Indian cultural frontier on a regular if infrequent basis. By early Tang times, Chinese control over western Yunnan was established for the first time with the submission of the population of the Erh-Hai region, near Ra-li, in 672 A.D., and the extension of the Imperial Mandate to the region of the present-day Yunnan-Burma frontier some twenty-two later, in 694. This Han Chinese dominance was to be short-lived, however; thus, within forty-five years â€" about 738 A.D. â€" the T'ai-dominated Kingdom of
Nanzhao had emerged as the dominant power of the Yunnan-Burma frontier region, a position which both it and its successor, the Kingdom of Dali, were to hold until the Mongol conquest of the region five centuries later.
Despite the political independence of the Nanzhao Kingdom, Chinese cultural influence continued to penetrate and influence the Yunnan-Burma frontier region throughout the
Tang and
Sung dynastiess. Moreover, it is possible that during the mid-Tang period â€" in about
801 A.D. â€" surrendered Muslim soldiers, described in the Chinese Annals as Hei-I Ta-shih or "Black-Robed Muslims" (a term generally applied with reference to the
Abbasids) were first settle in Yunnan.
Whilst this early settlement remains in some doubt, however, it is at least certain that Muslims of Central Asian origin played a major role in the Yuan (
Mongol) conquest and subsequent rule of south-west China, as a result of which a distinct Muslim community was established in Yunnan by the late 13th century A.D. Foremost amongst these soldier-administrators was
Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a court official and general of Turkic origin who participated in the Mongol invasion of
Sichuan and
Yunnan in c.
1252, and who became Yuan Governor of the latter province in 1274-79. Shams al-Din â€" who is widely believed by the Muslims of Yunnan to have introduced Islam to the region â€" is represented as a wise and benevolent ruler, who successfully "pacified and comforted" the people of Yunnan, and who is credited with building Confucian temples, as well as mosques and schools. On his death he was succeeded by his eldest son, Nasir al-Din (the "Nescradin" of Marco Polo), who governed Yunnan between 1279 and 1284.
Whilst
Arab and
South Asian Muslims, pioneers of the maritime expansion of Islam in the
Bay of Bengal, must have visited the coasts of Arakan and the
Gulf of Martaban from at least the reign of
Anawrahta (1044-77 A.D.), founder of the Burmese
Kingdom of Pagan, it is only from the time of Shams al-Din â€" and, more particularly, of his son, Nasir al-Din â€" that we may be sure of the advent of overland" Islam, travelling via the trade and invasion routes of Inner Asia, to the eastern frontiers of Burma. Thus â€" in an indication of the future specialisation of Yunnanese Muslims in the military and commercial fields â€" during his father's governorship of Yunnan, Nasir al-Din was first appointed Commissioner of Roads for the province and then, in 1277-78, appointed to command the first Mongol invasion of Burma. Leading to the overthrow of the Pagan Dynasty. Subsequently, during Nasir al-Din's Governorship, his younger brother Husayn (the third son of Sayyid al-Ajall Shams al-Din) was appointed Transport Commissioner for the province. As a result of the pre-eminence of Shams al-Din and his family during this period, a significant number of Muslim soldiers of Central Asian origin were transferred to the Dali region of western Yunnan â€" an area still largely unpopulated by Han Chinese settlers â€" and the descendants of these garrison troops, who participated in a number of Mongol invasions of Burmese territory during the Yuan period, from the nucleus of the present-day Chinese Muslim population both in Yunnan and Burma.
Over the next five hundred years this nascent Yunnanese Muslim community established itself in a position of economic and demographic strength in southern and western Yunnan â€" though there are few indications of significant settlement in Burmese territory before
Qing times and acquired a distinctive ethnic identity through intermarriage with the local population, a process paralleled in areas of Muslim settlement elsewhere in China. Thus, following the demise of the 'Abbasids in 1258 A.D. and the related rise of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in China, the term Ta-shih (as applied loosely both to foreign Muslims and to those settled within China) disappeared from the Chinese Annals and was gradually replaced by a new term, Hui or Hui-hui giving rise in turn to the modern Chinese term Hui-min, the recognised contemporary designation for China's Chinese speaking Muslim minority.
Muslim Settlement of Yunnan
Within Yunnan, the Hui Muslim population seems to have flourished and expanded throughout the
Yuan and
Ming periods (c. 1280 â€" 1644). Certainly when
Marco Polo visited Yunnan in the early Yuan period he noted the presence of 'Saracens" amongst the population, whilst the Persian historian Rashid al-Din (died 1318 A.D.) recorded in his Jami' ut-Tawarikh that 'the great city of Yachi' in Yunnan was exclusively inhabited by Muslims. Rashid al-Din may have been referring to the region around Dali in western Yunnan, which was to emerge as the earliest centre of Hui Muslim settlement in the province, though other areas of significant Muslim settlement were subsequently established in north-western Yunnan around Chao-t'ung by the Emperor Jen-tsung in about 1313 as well as â€" much later on, during the Qing Dynasty â€" in and around
Qianshui in southeastern Yunnan.
Of these areas of Muslim settlement within Yunnan, it is the oldest and most westerly â€" that centred in and around
Dali â€" which was most significant in the gradual migration of Chinese Muslims to Burma. As has already been indicated, China's Hui population has a considerable (and well-deserved) reputation for excelling at long-distance commerce, a traditional calling well-suited to the rigours and rewards of the overland caravan trade between Yunnan and Southeast Asia.
Moreover â€" in the case of Muslim Chinese â€" to the purely material drive of trade must be added the spiritual motivation (and
ibadat requirement) of performing the Hajj pilgrimage; thus, as early as A.D. 1350 the Chinese traveller
Wang Dayuan was to record the existence of an overland road between Yunnan and Arabia by which way the latter might be reached in a year, indeed, for prospective Yunnanese pilgrims this difficult overland rout via Burma was to remain the preferred route for performing the Hajj until the establishment of regular steamship services between China and the Hijaz during the mid-19th century.
Whilst it is thus apparent that long-distance caravans traversed the Yunnan-Burma frontier on a regular basis during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and that by early Qing times the trade carried thereby 'appears to have been of considerable important, significant settlement of Chinese Muslims in Burma (excluding, perhaps, the important frontier entrepots of Bhamo and Kengtung) does not seem to have commenced until the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion in 1873, from which date the history Burma's "Panthay", or Yunnanese Muslim population may be said to begin.
Briefly, during the first decades of the 19th century, population pressures on the Hui Muslim and other minority peoples of Yunnan increased substantially as a result of Han Chinese migration to the province, Resentment against this development, coupled with mounting hostility towards corrupt and incompetent Qing rule, led in 1855-56 to the outbreak of rebellion amongst Muslim miners in the Chien-shui region. Within two years, however, the centre of rebellion had spread to the west of the province under the leadership of Wenxiu. For the next fifteen years, until the Qing reconquest and his own death in 1873, Dali remained the capital of Pingnan Guo (the "Country of the peaceful South"), where Tu erected a forbidden city, wore Ming dynasty dress in repudiation of Qing authority, and is reported by some sources to have adopted the Muslim name Sultan Sulayman.
The Yunnan Muslim Rebellion
Although the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion seriously disrupted the overland trade with Southeast Asia,
Du Wenxiu â€" a trader himself and the descendant of a merchant family â€" relied as far as possible on caravan links with
Burma to supply his followers with weaponry and clothing. The same mountain trials â€" more particularly the "Ambassadors' Route" via Bhamo â€" proved useful in sending a diplomatic mission seeking support for the rebel cause to
Rangoon,
London and
Istanbul. Finally, following the eventual collapse of Pingnan Guo and the death of Tu Wenxiu, the caravan routes to Burma proved invaluable in providing an escape route for Muslim Chinese (whether rebels or not) who sought to escape subsequent Qing reprisals. Numbers of these refugees joined the gangs of bandits who roamed the
Shan state (most notably in Namkham), prompting
King Mindon of Burma, in 1873-74, to proscribe them; other settled peacefully within Burma, some joining earlier Chinese Muslim settlers at
Bhamo,
Kengtung,
Mogok and, perhaps,
Amarapura and
Mandalay; other founding new villages, most notably at
Panglong in the trans-Salween
Wa States.
In so far as can be ascertained, the application of the term "Panthay" to Yunnanese Muslims (and, subsequently, to Burmese Muslims of Yunnanese origin) dates from about this time; certainly it was widely employed by British travellers and diplomats in the region from about 1875, and seems to have arisen as a corruption of the Burmese word
pa-the meaning simply "Muslim". A considerable body of literature exists surrounding the etymology of this term, but the definitive notice (which remains, as yet, unpublished). Indicated that it was introduced by Sladen at the time of his 1868 expedition to Teng-yueh, and that it represents an anglicised and shortened version of the Burmese tarup pase, or "Chinese Muslim". In fact, the term "Panthay" was never employed by the Yunnanese Muslims (whether of China or of Burma) who prefer simply to call themselves Hui-min or Hui-hui; nor did it, apparently, enjoy widespread usage amongst the Burmans, Shan,
Karen or other Burmese peoples. Be that as it may, however â€" and the designation is virtually unused within Burma today- the term "Panthay" achieved widespread usage during the period of British rule, and remains the name by which Burma's Chinese Muslim community has generally been distinguished in English language sources to the present day.
For a period of perhaps ten to fifteen years following the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion, the province's Hui minority was widely discriminated against by the victorious Qing, especially in the western frontier districts contiguous with Burma. During these years the refugee Hui settled across the frontier within Burma gradually established themselves in their traditional callings â€" as merchants, caravaneers, miners, restaurateurs and (for those who chose or were forced to live beyond the law) as smugglers and mercenaries.
It was during this period that the Wa States settlement of Panglong came into its own as the "capital" of the up-country Panthay. Founded in about
1875, immediately following the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion, Panglong is located in Son Mu, one of the northern trans-Salween Wa States, an area of considerable remoteness long contested between Britain and China, and populated by the fiercely independent (and sometime head-hunting) Wa Tribes. Scott visited Panglong in the 1890s, and noted both its inaccessibility and defensive potential. Writing in 1900, he commented at some length on the Panthay settlement:
In addition to the main settlement of Panglong, two other smaller Panthay villages, Panyao and Pachang, were established about 12 miles distant to the south and east respectively, 'which had about eighty houses'. The dominant group in the villages were the Panthay, chiefly Hui migrants from Dali,
Baoshan,
Shanning,
Menghua and elsewhere in southern and western Yunnan. Scott comments that these Chinese Muslims were 'all merchants, mule-owners and men of substance'; indeed, considering this wealth Scott concluded that it was only the military prowess and superior armaments of the Panthay which kept their annual tribute to the ruler of Son Mu fixed at the low figure of 100 rupees per annum. The same source continues:
By the time Scott visited Panglong â€" at least 15 years after the collapse of the Yunnan Muslim Rebellion â€" the original Panthay settlements had grown to include numbers of Shan and other hill peoples. The Panthay were, generally speaking, affluent enough to employ these more recent settlers as mule-drivers and 'to do the drudgery generally'. In large measure this affluence must have been due the lifting of the Qing proscription on Hui settlement in Yunnan (c.
1888-
1890), as a result of which the Panglong "Panthays" were able to re-establish trading contacts with their fellows remaining settled within Yunnan. As a result of this development a number of the original refugees returned to China, merely maintaining agents at Panglong; certainly Scott noted that as many of the Panthay caravan traded into China as throughout the Shan States from Panglong.
Early 20th century
Over the next thirty or so years the Panthays of Panglong continues to prosper, though by the early
1920s a feud had begun to develop between them and the Was of neighbouring Pankawn. In 1926 this erupted into the local "Wa Panthay War", in which the latter were victorious and as a result of which Panglong threw off its vassalage to Pangkawn and reinforced its dominance over the trade routes of the region31. In addition to legitimate trading, by this time the Panthays, of Panglong were securely established as 'the aristocrats of the opium business' in the region now commonly designated the
Golden Triangle, leaving the Petty and risky business of peddlings this highly profitable commodity locally to Shan and Han Chinese dealers, and instead running large, well-armed caravans in long-distance convoys far into Siam, Laos, Tonking and Yunnan. When Harvey visited Panglong in 1931 he found that Panthay numbers had risen to 5,000 ('including local recruits'), that they were financed by
Singaporean Chinese, had 130 mauser rifles with 1,500 mules, and exported opium by the hundredweight into French, Siamese and British territory, each muleload escorted by two riflemen.
Meanwhile, despite the relative importance of Panglong and the profits to be made from the long-distance caravan, other Panthays moved further into Burma, initially as miners anxious to exploit the ruby mines of Mogok; the Badwin silver mines of Namtu in the Northern Shan State, the jade mines of Mogaung in Kachin State. Numbers of Panthay restaurateurs and innkeepers, merchants and traders settled in the urban centres of upland Burma â€" chiefly at Lashio, Kengtung, Bhamo and Taunggyi â€" to service the needs of theses miners, passing caravaneers and the local inhabitants, whilst other settlements largely devoted to trade with the indigenous Shan and Karen populations sprang up along the
Salween River. Finally, other Panthay elements moved to the major urban centres of the Burmese lowlands, most notably to Mandalay and Rangoon, where they flourished as merchants and representatives of their up â€" country fellows, as well as middle-men between Panglong and the other "Overland Chinese" settlements of Upper Burma and the "Overseas Chinese" community of the lowland port-cities. Bassein and
Moulmein must also have attracted some Panthay settlement, the latter port being a terminus of the overland caravan trade from Yunnan in its own right, via the northern Thai trade route through
Kengtung,
Chiang Mai and
Mae Sariang.
During the greater part of the period of
British rule in Burma these Panthay settlers flourished, specialising in all levels of commerce from the international
gem (and
opium) markets to shop â€" and inn-keeping, mule-breeding and peddling or hawking â€" indeed Yunnanese peddlars (who may or may not have been Muslim) even penetrated into the unadministered and inaccessible hill tracts of "The Triangle" between Mali Hka and Nmai Hka, to the north of Myitkyina]]. Chiefly, however, beyond the urban centres of the Burmese lowlands, the Panthays continued their involvement in the caravan trade with Yunnan, transporting silk, opium, tea, metal goods and foodstuffs (eggs, fruit, nut and even the renowned Yunnanese hams (doubtless for consumption by their Han fellow countrymen) from China to Burma, and carrying back European manufactured goods, broadcloths, specialised foodstuffs (edible birds nests, sea slugs) and above all raw cotton, to Yunnan.
Because of the essentially itinerant nature of this caravan traffic and the semi-licit or illegal nature of some aspects of the trans-frontier trade, it has always been difficult to provide accurate statistics for the distribution and numbers of "Panthay" Chinese settled in Burma, Indeed, rejection of the term "Panthay" by the Chinese Muslims, relatively easy confusion between Hui and Han Chinese by uninformed or overworked census officials, and an inherent suspicion of government bureaucracy (which may seek to control movement or to levy taxes) has made accurate census-taking amongst the Panthay of Burma all but impossible. Thus, in 1931 Harvey estimated the population of Panglong (which was predominantly Panthay) at 5,000 persons. Yet official estimates put the Panthay population of Burma at 2,202 for 1911 (1,427 males and 775 females), whilst by the 1921 Census of India this had declined to 1,517 (1,076 males and 441 females), and by 1931 to 1,106 (685 males and 421 females).
World War II and independence
A Census for
1941 was never taken, being interrupted by
World War II and the Japanese invasion; indeed, it was as a result of the Japanese invasion the main Panthay settlement at Panglong was destroyed, and many Panthay fled to Yunnan, or crossed the largely unpoliced jungle frontiers into Thailand and Laos to escape Japanese persecution. The traditional dominance of Panthay in the trade of the Burma-Yunnan frontier region was also set back by the construction of the
Burma Road between
Lashio and
Kunming in 1937-38, and by the exodus of thousands of Yunnanese refugees and
Kuomintang troops following the seizure of power by the
Chinese Communists in
1949. As a result of these developments, which brought a flood of predominantly Han, and not Hui, "Overland Chinese" to the Burmese Shan States, many Panthay seem to have chosen to migrate to northern Thailand, where their communities continue to flourish.
No comprehensive census of the remaining Panthay population within Burma has been taken since
1931, and restrictions on travel for foreigners, combined with the inherent weakness of central government control over those outlying areas of the Shan and Kachin Hills where many Panthays live, makes any attempt to calculate Burma's present (
1986) Panthay population almost impossible (though an exaggerated estimate of 100,000 Panthays resident within Burma appeared in the Burmese daily
Hanthawaddi in
1960. Certainly readily identifiable Panthay communities continue to exist in several areas which are open to foreign travel (Rangoon, Mandalay, Taunggyi), as well as, by report, in Kengtung, Bhamo, Mogok, Lashio and at Tanyan, near Lashio. Wherever they have settled in sufficient numbers, the Panthays have established their own mosques and madrasas (for example the Panthay Balee at Mandalay Short Lane, Rangoon, at Mandalay and in
Myitkyina). Some of these mosques are in "pseudo-Moghul" style, clearly having been influenced by Indian Muslim tastes and styles, whilst others (notably at Mandalay) have Chinese architectural features. As with the Hui in China, the Burmese Panthay are exclusively
Hanafi; few are conversant with more than the most elementary phrases of
Arabic, and quite often when a Panthay imam is not available to care for the spiritual welfare of a community, a South Asian or Zerbadi Muslim is engaged instead.
*
Burmese Chinese*
Islam in China*
Hui Chinese*
Panthay Rebellion
