Stephen G. Haw the SEMU RENT5 § a in the YUAN EMPIRE
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Stephen G. Haw THE SEMU RENT5 § A IN THE YUAN EMPIRE* ABSTRACT Most non-Mongols and non-Chinese in the Yuan Empire were categorized as Semu reno Comparatively little work has been done on identifying exactly who they were, where they came from, how many of them there were, and what roles they fulfilled. In the absence of precise data, a number of misconceptions have crept into common circulation. It seems often to be assumed that they were predominantly Muslims, and that many of them were Persians. These assumptions are seriously questioned here. The largest single group of Semu ren was probably the Turks, of various kinds, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Many Semu ren held military posts. They formed a very important part of the Imperial Guard. By no means all were from Western and Central Asia: a significant number of them, such as the Tanguts and Tibetans, originated from areas within the East Asian Mongol Qanate. Terminology of relevance to the Semu ren is examined, including the term Huihui @] @], concluding that it has often been incorrectly understood in the past. It originally meant 'Uighur', and only gradually came to mean 'Muslim'. It is pointed out that, before Huihui was used in the sense of 'Muslim', there was no commonly-used term in Chinese which had that meaning. One very important means of cultural transmission during the Mongol/Yuan period was the physical movement of substantial * This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the conference 'Mobility and Transformations: New Directions in the Study of the Mongol Empire' Ooint Research Conference of the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Israel Science Foundation), Jemsalem, June 29-July 4, 2014. MINGQING YANJIUXVIII (2013-14) ISSN 1724-8574 © Universiti degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale" Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:38:52AM via free access Stephen G. Haw numbers of people from one part of the Great Mongol Empire to another. In the empire of the Great Qan in East Asia (which consisted basically of China and Mongolia, but also included Korea and Tibet), migrants from outside, including Central and Western Asians, were known by the general appellation of Semu reno Although the Semu ren have been the subject of study for some considerable time, there is still a lack of clarity regarding exacdy who they were. Where did they come from? How many of them were there? These and other related questions have never been fully and satisfactorily answered. Terminology A major problem with understanding who the Semu ren were is that of terminology. The term semu itself has very often been misunderstood. As recendy as 1999, Michael Dillon stated: In Yuan official documents, all of the migrants from Central Asia to China were classified as one of the peoples known as semu, a term which is often translated as 'coloured eyes' or 'blue eyes' to indicate that these were westerners whose eyes were not uniformly dark like those of the Chinese, but the Chinese characters for semu can also be translated as 'special status'.l It is really quite extraordinary that such a statement should have been made so recendy, for, as long ago as 1927, Paul Pelliot made clear that semu had nothing to do with 'coloured eyes'. Nor is there any connotation of 'special status'. Pelliot explained Semu ren as "[gens] classes dans les categories". 2 In the past, I have often used the translation 'Classified Peoples', which is more or less a rendition into English of Pelliot's French. Now, I would say that a much more accurate translation is 'people of various categories', or, more simply, 'people of various kinds'. Pelliot also noted that the term Zhu se ~~, meaning "de toutes categories", was "a la base de l'expression" semu. In fact, these two expressions, Zhu se and semu, are two contracted forms of the same longer expression. It is well known, to anyone with any knowledge of 1 Dillon 1999: 21. 2 Pelliot 1927: 266n; see also Brose 2007: 2n. 40 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:38:52AM via free access The Semu ren in the Yuan Empire the Chinese language, that Chinese have a strong aversion to terms which consist of more than two or three characters. A good modern example is Wucha1!Jiqi Wenhua Da Geming 7C£~~~,&Jt{-t:A£f!:iP, the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution". In English, this is usually shortened to 'Cultural Revolution'. The Chinese contraction is much shorter - just two characters, Wenge Jt£f!:. A contemporary example is the common use of Xing sheng ff ~~ as a short form of Xing Zhongshusheng ff q:t if ~', Branch Secretariat. 3 Zhu se and semu both originate from the expression Zhu semu - 'all the various kinds'. A failure to realise this has often led scholars studying the Semu ren astray.4 For example, although Funada Yoshiyuki dearly associates the term S emu ren with the longer Zhu semu ren, 5 he apparently failed to realise the existence of the second contracted form, Zhu se reno Thus, he points out that the term Semu ren is of comparatively infrequent occurrence in the History 0/ the Yuan Dynasty (Yuan shi jG 1:'. ),6 but overlooks the use of Zhu se reno Between them, these two terms are in fact of frequent occurrence - well over 100 times in the whole of the History o/the Yuan Dynasty. Funada also suggests that the term Semu ren did not come into use until the 1270s, although he himself notes that Chinggis Qan, at the instigation of Guo Baoyu $~.'-:::&, promulgated a law which distinguished between Mongols and Semu ren, on the one hand, and Han ren ¥lA, on the other. 7 This, of course, must have occurred before 1227. Another early usage, of the full expression Zhu semu, occurs at the time of Mongke's reign, when there is a reference to Zhu semu guan ~ 13 I§ 1'r, "all the Semu officials". 8 An early occurrence of Zhu se ren is in the biography of Xue Talahai ~**iJ~, 3 Farquhar 1990: 367. 4 The term Zhu se ren was used during the Jin ~ dynasty to mean peoples other than the Jurchens; see Yan Xingpan 2012: 62-63. 5 Funada 2010: 2. 6 Funada 2010: 8-9. 7 Funada 2010: 9, 12; YS 149: 3521. 8 YS 3: 46. 41 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:38:52AM via free access Stephen G. Haw who submitted to Chinggis Qan in 1214, and was awarded a tide which included this term.9 An expression of common occurrence in the Yuan shi is Zhu se ren Jiang ~ ~ A III.. Jiang means 'craftsman' or 'artisan'. This term undoubtedly refers to the various Semu craftsmen, including considerable numbers from Central Asia and further west, who were removed to East Asia to work for the Mongols. Again, the term has previously been misunderstood. Farquhar translated it "Artisans of Several Classes" or "All Classes of Artisans",10 thus obscuring the association with Semu reno It is clear that these translations are incorrect, because they ignore the character ren, which is left untranslated. The expression means "artisans [who are] Zhu se ren", that is, "artisans of the people of various kinds". Pelliot's discussion ofXunmalin ~Jff**, "une ville musulmane dans la Chine du nord", makes clear that the "artisans des diverses categories" who were setded in the town were from Samarqand, Bukhara, and neighbouring places. II By no means all of these foreign artisans were Muslims, however. The Yuan shi records that the Directorate-General (Zongguanju ~~i'Rt) of the Semu artisans controlled eleven subordinate offices. The first of these was responsible for producing Buddhist images -painted, modelled from clay, and carved from wood. The others dealt with lost-wax bronze casting; general bronze foundry; gold- and silver-work; steel-working; polishing and working precious stones, such as agate and jade; stonemasonry; woodwork; and lacquer work. The remaining two were a warehouse department, dealing with storage of materials and worked objects, and an office for handling disputes involving artisans under the authority of the Directorate-General. Judging by the grade and number of their officials, the two offices handling the production of Buddhist images and lost-wax bronze casting were more important than any of the other offices. The highest officials of the Directorate General held the upper third grade of the Yuan bureaucracy, while those of these two offices were of the lower fifth grade. The heads of the other offices were of lower seventh, lower eighth, and (in the case 9 YS 151: 3563. 10 Farquhar 1990: 143, 201, 332. 11 Pelliot 1927: 263-279, particularly p. 266. 42 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 03:38:52AM via free access The Semu ren in the Yuan Empire of the warehouse only) upper ninth grade. There were four ranking officials heading each of the first two offices, but only one or two in all the rest. 12 It seems likely that the artisans responsible for making Buddhist images may have been from the Buddhist state of Xi Xia iZ!i ~, and possibly also from Tibet. Three thousand households of artisans from Transoxania were setded at Xunmalin.13 It is therefore likely that there were tens of thousands of foreign artisans and their families in the entire Yuan Empire.14 In view of the common usage of Zhu semu ren and related terms in the Yuan shi, it may seem surprising that, as Funada has pointed out, no equivalent term has yet been identified in any other language. IS On reflection, however, there may be very good reasons for this.