Liu Zhi (scholar)

Liu Zhi
Tomb of Liu Zhi in Yuhuatai District, Nanjing
Traditional Chinese	劉智
Simplified Chinese	刘智
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Liú Zhì
Jielian (courtesy name)
Chinese	介廉
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Jièlián
Yizhai (pseudonym)
Traditional Chinese	一齋
Simplified Chinese	一斋
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yìzhāi

Liu Zhi (Xiao'erjing: ﻟِﯿَﻮْ جِ, ca. 1660 – ca. 1739), or Liu Chih, was a Chinese Sunni Muslim scholar and philosopher of the Qing dynasty, belonging to the Huiru (Muslim) school of Neoconfucian thought. He was the most prominent of the Han Kitab writers who attempted to explain Muslim thought in the Chinese intellectual climate for a Hui Chinese audience, by frequently borrowing terminologies from Buddhism, Taoism and most prominently Neoconfucianism and aliging them with Islamic concepts. He was from the city of Nanjing. His magnum opus, T'ien-fang hsing-li or 'Nature and Principle in the Direction of Heaven', was considered the authoritative exposition of Islamic beliefs and has been republished twenty-five times between 1760 and 1939, and is constantly referred to by Muslims writing in Chinese.

In his childhood, he received instruction from his father, Liu Sanjie (劉三杰). At the age of 12, he studied scriptures with Yuan Ruqi (袁汝契) at the Garden of Military Studies Mosque in Nanjing, (which no longer exists). At the age of 15, he began a career of study in his home: for fifteen years, he read up on Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism and "Western Studies." He considered Confucius and Mencius to be "Sages of the East" and Muhammad to be a "Sage of the West," and that "the teachings of the Sages of East and West, today as in ancient times, are one." He further believed that the scriptures of Islam are also "generally similar to the intentions of Confucius and Mencius." From around the age of 30, he took up residence at the foot of Qingliangshan in Nanjing, where he began to interpret and expound on the Islamic scriptures, using Confucian studies, for a period of about twenty years. During this time, he twice brought his manuscript with him to visit and solicit advice and the opinions of both Muslims and non-Muslims, leaving his tracks throughout Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Anhui, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and other places. In his later years, he resided at his studio, Saoyelou ("House of Sweeping Leaves"), at Qingliangshan in Nanjing.