Revising the date of Jewish arrival in Kaifeng, China, from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) to the Hung-wu period (1368-98) of the Ming Dynasty

The Sinologists Chen Changqi, Wei Qianzhi, Zhang Qianhong and Liu Bailu have suggested that the Chinese Jews settled in Kaifeng, China, during the Song Dynasty. However, there are no historical records or physical evidence that prove the existence of a Jewish community during the Song Dynasty. A recent discovery of records refutes the Song-entry theory, and suggests that the synagogue of the Kaifeng Jews was first established during the Ming Dynasty. These records include the description in a Buddhist book Fo-zu Tong-ji (Buddha Almanac) of monk Ni-wei-ni, a sentence that recounts the history of the Kaifeng Jewish Chao clan on a 1679 stela, and the genealogical sequence of the Kaifeng Jewish Li clan in a book, Diary of the Defence of Pien

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · China · Judaism · Period (music · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History

• Late Tang China and the World, 750–907 CE

  Open Access•Shih-Ying Yang, Shao-Yun Yang•Late Tang China and the World,…•2023

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