"Salam Aleikum," I greeted the gentleman at the cash desk of the Grand Mosque in the central Chinese city of Xian. "Wa aleikum assalam!" he greeted back in Arabic. "You are a Muslim. Free entry!" he said, inviting me in.
No, I'm not a Muslim. I just wanted to visit the old mosque. It is now a tourist attraction in the city, a former capital of China, known as "Chang'an," or "Eternal Peace" in English.
Non-Muslims visiting the mosque need to pay the equivalent of €5 to enter the place of worship, a hefty entrance fee in Xian.
The man at the cash desk was, nevertheless, delighted with my greeting in Arabic, as other domestic tourists apparently only greet him in Chinese.
Xian is the end point of the ancient Silk Road. Since the 7th century — during the Tang Dynasty — the city had witnessed intensive international exchanges. The Tang ruler commissioned the monk Xuanzang to bring Mahayana Buddhist texts from India to China and translate them from Sanskrit into Chinese. Buddhism, like Islam, is an import to China.
The first champions of the Muslim faith reached China by sea. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, met the Tang emperor in 651 and received an imperial concession to build the first mosque in the country.
The Great Mosque of Xian, not far from the imperial residence, is also said to have been built around this time.
Arab traders also came to the city from the west via Muslim-influenced Central Asia.
They brought luxury goods and foreign ideas with them. Today, the mosque is located next to a bazaar in the middle of the Muslim quarter.
Around 17 million Muslims currently live in China, according to the Washington-based think tank Pew Research. Most of them are Shiites. The largest Muslim communities are those of the Hui and the Uyghurs, each with just under eight........