Panthays
Panthays are a Chinese Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar. They are one of the oldest groups of Muslims in Burma. The exact proportion of the Chinese Muslim group in the local Chinese population remains unknown due to a lack of data. However, they are concentrated particularly in the northern part of Myanmar, closer to Yunnan, China, from where the Panthays historically originated. They particularly reside in the towns of Tangyan, Maymyo, Mogok, and Taunggyi in Mandalay and Shan State.
Etymology
The name Panthay is a Burmese word, which is said to be identical with the Shan word Pang hse. It was the name by which the Burmese refer to Chinese Muslims who came with caravans to Burma from the Chinese province of Yunnan. The name was not used or known in Yunnan itself. The predominant Muslim ethnic group living in Yunnan are the Hui and identify as Hui or Huihui, but never as Panthay. Notably, the Panthay Rebellion in Yunnan during the mid 19th century is called in Chinese as either the Du Wenxiu Rebellion or the Pingnan Kingdom.Several theories are suggested as to its derivation, but none is strong enough to refute the others. The Burmese of Old Burma called their own indigenous Muslims Pathi, a word deriving from Persian. It was applied to all Muslims other than the Chinese Muslims. The term "Panthay" being used for Yunnanese Muslims dates from about this time; it was widely used by British travelers and diplomats in the region from about 1875.
One other theory is that Panthay is shortened version of the Burmese phrase "Tarup Pase", meaning Chinese Muslim. This was then anglicised by Sladen in his 1868 expedition to Dengyue, Yunnan. The term Panthay achieved widespread usage during the period of British rule, and remains the name by which Myanmar's Chinese Muslim community has generally been distinguished in English language sources to this day.
Culture
During the Panthay Rebellion, Sultan Suleiman was eager to establish close and friendly relations neighboring states. He took the opportunity to have a Chinese Muslim mosque installed at the Burmese King's capital. He sent Colonel Mah Too-tu, one of his senior military officers, as his special envoy and agent to Mandalay with the important mission. The mosque took about two years to finish and was opened in 1868 as the second mosque to be built in the royal capital. Today, 134 years later, the Panthay Mosque is still standing as the second oldest mosque in Mandalay.No comprehensive census of the remaining Panthay population within Burma has been taken since 1931 as the 1941 census was cancelled. Restrictions on travel for foreigners, combined with the weak central government control over outlying areas of the Shan and Kachin Hills where many Panthays live, made attempts to calculate the Panthay population almost impossible in 1980. An estimate of 100,000 Panthays resident within Burma appeared in the Burmese daily Hanthawaddi in 1960..
Readily identifiable Panthay communities continue to exist in several areas like Yangon, Mandalay, Taunggyi. Ny report, the Panthays have communities in Kengtung, Bhamo, Mogok, Lashio, Pyin-Oo-Lwin and at Tanyan, near Lashio. Wherever they have settled in sufficient numbers, the Panthays have established their own mosques and madrasas. Some of these mosques are in "pseudo-Moghul" style, clearly having been influenced by Indian Muslim tastes and styles, whilst others have Chinese architectural features.
As with the Hui in China, the Burmese Panthay are exclusively Muslims adhering to the Hanafi school of thought. 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 and Zerbadi Muslim is engaged instead. The Zerbadi are descendent community of intermarriages between foreign Muslim males and Burmese females.
Panthay caravaners
In the pre-colonial times the Panthays emerged as excellent long-distance caravaneers of southern China and northern Southeast Asia. They virtually dominated whole caravan trade of Yunnan by the time the first pioneers of French and British imperialism arrived in Yunnan. By the mid 19th century the caravans of Yunnanese traders ranged over an area extending from the eastern frontiers of Tibet, through Assam, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Tongkin, to the southern Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi. The Chinese Muslim domination of the Yunnan caravan network continued well into the 20th century.The Chinese Muslims of Yunnan were noted for their mercantile prowess. Within Yunnan, the Muslim population excelled as merchants and soldiers, the two qualities, which made them ideally suited to the rigors of overland trade in the rugged, mountainous regions, and to deserve the rewards therefrom. They might have been helped in this by their religion of Islam from its inception had flourished as a Religion of Trade. The religious requirement to perform Hajj pilgrimage had also helped them to establish an overland road between Yunnan and Arabia as early as the first half of the 14th century.
The merchandise brought from Yunnan by the Panthay caravaneers included silk, tea, metal utensils, iron in the rough, felts, finished articles of clothing, walnuts, opium, wax, preserved fruits and foods, and dried meat of several kinds. The Burmese goods taken back to Yunnan were raw cotton, raw and wrought silk, amber, jades and other precious stones, velvets, betel-nuts, tobacco, gold-leaf, preserves, paper, dye woods, stick lac, ivory, and specialized foodstuffs such as slugs, edible bird's nest, among other things. Raw cotton, which was reserved as a royal monopoly, was in great demand in China. An extensive trade in this commodity had existed between the Konbaung dynasty and Yunnan. Goods were transported up the Ayeyarwady River to Bhamo where it was sold to the Chinese merchants, and conveyed partly by land and partly by water into Yunnan, and from there to other provinces of China. Most caravans consisted of between fifty and one hundred mules, employing ten to fifteen drivers.
History
Muslims in Yunnan
The history of the Panthays in Burma was inseparably linked to that of Yunnan, their place of origin. Within Yunnan, the Chinese Muslim population excelled as merchants and soldiers, which made them ideally suited to the rigors of overland trade in the mountainous regions. Commercial and cultural contacts between the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau and the Irrawaddy Delta and lower Salween River probably predate significant migration by Han Chinese or Bamar populations into either area.In the 8th century, the Yi state of Nanzhao was the dominant power in the region, a position which both it and its successor, the Dali Kingdom, held until the Mongol conquest of the region five centuries later.. Despite the political independence of Nanzhao, Chinese cultural influence penetrated the frontier region throughout the Tang and Song dynasties. It is possible that during the mid-Tang period – in about 801 – surrendered Muslim soldiers, described in the Chinese Annals as the Hēiyī Dàshí were first settled in Yunnan.
It is at least certain that Muslims of Central Asian origin played a major role in the Yuan conquest and rule of Southwest China. As a result, a distinct Muslim community was established in Yunnan by the late 13th century. One important soldier-administrator was Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Turkic court official and general who became Yuan Governor of Yunnan from 1274–79. His son Nasir al-Din, was in charge Yunnan's road systems and commanded the first Mongol invasion of Burma in 1277. Shams al-Din is represented as a wise and benevolent ruler, who successfully "pacified and comforted" the people of Yunnan, and who is credited with building temples of Confucius as well as mosques and schools. During his rule, a significant number of Muslim soldiers of Central Asian origin were transferred to Yunnan, which was still largely unpopulated by Han Chinese settlers. The descendants of these Muslim garrison troops are the nucleus of present-day Chinese Muslim populations both in Yunnan and Burma.
Within Yunnan, the Hui Muslim population flourished throughout the Yuan and Ming periods. In the early Yuan dynasty, Marco Polo noted the presence of "Saracens" amongst the population during his visit. The Persian historian Rashid-al-Din Hamadani similarly recorded in the Jami' al-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, which was the earliest centre of Hui settlement in Yunnan.
Panthays during Konbaung period
In the 19th century, during the Konbaung period, Panthays started to settle in the royal capital of Mandalay, particularly during the reign of King Mindon. Although their number was small, a few found their way inside the court as jade-assessors. They lived side by side with non-Muslim Chinese in Chinatowns, which had been designated by King Mindon as the residential area for the Chinese. The non-Muslim Chinese had started settling in considerably earlier. So by the arrival of the Panthays, there already was a Chinese community at Mandalay with its own bank, companies and warehouses and organized social and economic life.It happened that there were also already Chinese jade-assessors in the employ of the king. Rivalry between the Chinese and Panthay jade-assessors in courting the royal favor naturally led to a quarrel between the two groups, resulting in a number of deaths. King Mindon did not give much serious thought to the religious and social differences between the Panthays and the Chinese. But after the Chinatown quarrel, the king began to see the wisdom of separating the two groups.
King Mindon granted the Panthays of the royal capital land on which to settle as a separate community. The goal being to preventing further quarrels between them and the Chinese. The Panthays were given the rare favor of choosing their own place of residence within the confines of the royal capital, and they chose the site on which the present-day Panthay Compound is located. It was bounded on the north by 35th Street, in the south by 36th Street, in the east by 79th Street and in the west by 80th Street. This site was chosen because it was the camping ground for the mule caravans from Yunnan, which regularly came to the capital via the Hsenwi route.
The King also permitted a mosque to be built on the granted site so that the Panthays would have their own place of worship. Having no funds for an undertaking of such magnitude, the Panthays of Mandalay put up the matter to the Sultan of Yunnan. Sultan Sulaiman had already started a business enterprise in Mandalay and was happy to take the opportunity.