Strangers, guests and beggars in Xinjiang: The ambiguity of hospitality among the Uyghur

Ildik Bellr-Hann
(Martin-Luther-Universitt, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany)

Introduction Social relations may be acted out in numerous ways but in spite of the enormous diversity some traits are comparable. This is certainly true for mechanisms of exchange such as the forms of redistribution which constitute the focus of the present paper. Essentially understood as a communal act, hospitality is an expression of human sociability. Although present in most societies, some place a higher value on it than others; under certain circumstances it may become a source of communal pride and as such an important component of communal identity. This is certainly the case for the modern Uyghur of Xinjiang in Northwest China, a Turkic speaking Muslim group, who evaluate hospitality (mehmandariliq, mehmandostluq) as a peaceful, co-operative form of interaction with unambiguously positive connotations. Hospitality is often identified as one of the best Uyghur national traditions. According to a representative statement in a modern Uyghur folklore manual: Among the Uyghur hospitality is one of the oldest and finest traditions. When a guest comes, the Uyghur say. good fortune has come. For this reason, whenever a guest comes, no matter what the conditions are, he receives a warm welcome. (Raxman & al., 1996, p. 28.) Urban and rural Uyghur, intellectuals and peasants alike, tend to agree on this valorisation: hospitality represents an intrinsic value which is then put to work in the construction of ethnic identity. It is typically conceived of as an altruistic act, but when placed within its wider social context, it is possible to recognize underlying assumptions of reciprocity.

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This paper is a preliminary attempt to understand the meanings of hospitality in Uyghur tradition primarily through analysing indigenous and European sources dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It will be argued that, whichever form it takes, hospitality subsumes forms of redistribution which display inherent ambiguities; it is an important mechanism of social control, expresses rules of inclusion as well as exclusion and continues to be an important means to regulate internal social hierarchies. The concluding section of the paper will point to some of the implications of these ambiguities for contemporary social relations. The testimony of oral tradition Hospitality as an unambiguously positive national trait is typically evoked in local discourse implying behaviour that is altruistic, universal and conflict-free. It is frequently evoked in Uyghur oral tradition, where, however, ambiguities are emphasized, rather than the positive evaluation of the modern discourse. The following specimens of Uyghur oral tradition were recorded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 1. The beloved figure of Central Asian oral tradition, Nsrddin pndi, visited a strange town at the time of the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice. In each house he entered, he was entertained lavishly. After returning home he told his wife that he had found a town where good people offered visitors unlimited hospitality. The couple decided to move there permanently, but since the holiday was already over by the time they arrived, they were turned away from every house and were not even offered a cup of tea. Having realized their mistake, they returned to their hometown.1 2. In pre-socialist Xinjiang it was customary practice that, when a group of men wished to sample new melons, they took some sheep fat, meat and rice to a melon field, where they were offered melons by the proprietor. After eating the melons, they returned to his house, where a meal was cooked for them from the ingredients the guests had brought. After they had consumed the food, each visitor received a melon to take home, and each paid the melon planter one sr.2 Another entertainment took the form of summer picnics held by a group of ten to fifteen families of a neighbourhood, who shared the cost of their open-air meal.3 3. The last story was presented as a true incident about a teacher of religion (molla) who, accompanied by his students, went to the countryside
1 2 3

Jarring, 1948, pp. 55-56. Jarring, 1951, pp. 41-44 Grenard, 1898, p. 142.

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to sample melons. Complying with the rules of hospitality, the host conducted his guests to his field, but he gave them bad melons. The teacher became offended and, while the owner of the melon field went home to fetch food for his guests, he composed a poem about the greed and avarice of his host and hid it on the melon field. The following day other mollas visiting the field found the verse; they laughed and admonished the melon planter. Gossip went around, and when the melon planter next visited the town, he was teased by children as well as by the disciples of the offended molla. He was subjected to public ridicule, and the teasing only stopped when he took a sheep and a platter of bread to the molla and publicly apologised.4 The implications of these stories are as follows: offering hospitality was selective and some of its forms were bound to ritual action. Bringing food, paying money to the host and the sharing of costs all foregrounded principles other than altruism. The rules of hospitality were so binding that violation of its laws could entail communal sanctions against the offender. The concept of hospitality As in many other societies, the standing of a household in pre-socialist Uyghur society could be upheld and re-enforced through acts of generosity.5 These could take the form of offering hospitality to members of the immediate community, i.e. kin and neighbours, to strangers, and acts of charity to the poor and the needy, acts which represented mechanisms of periodic redistribution. In a study of hospitality in early modern England Felicity Heal has demonstrated the common roots of hospitality and charity: the latter was conceptualised as hospitality to the poor. Hospitality in an extended sense could be offered to close kin, neighbours, friends, strangers, travellers and the needy. Heal convincingly demonstrates how, as a result of economic and demographic changes in England, between 1400-1700 public relief for the poor gained prominence over personal charity. Thus, the all encompassing concept of hospitality was split into hospitality in the more restricted sense, designed to ensure social integration, and charity, which confirmed social separation, entrenching existing hierarchies.6 Following Heal, I find it useful to distinguish between restricted and extended hospitality in the Xinjiang context. Restricted hospitality typically involved people familiar with each other, who as a result of territorial propinquity had regular contact with each other and in this sense
4 5

Raquette, 1909, pp. 6-7. Compare with Shryocks description of the situation in Jordan, 2004. 6 Heal, 1990, pp. 15-16, 393.

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belonged to one community.7 It was offered to kin and neighbours, people who were perceived by the hosts as one of us, people who were of comparable social standing and economic position which enabled them to reciprocate hospitality. For hosts and guests hospitality was a means to perpetuate and reproduce existing communal relationships, to maintain community.8 By contrast, extended hospitality, i.e. charitable acts, typically involved the poor and the needy, in some sense all outsiders or strangers. Restricted hospitality involving relationships embedded in residential proximity were governed by a number of rules, among which the sharing of food ranked high. In the early 1930s in southern Xinjiang, local ideals of what constituted neighbourliness as formulated by an indigenous author, included the obligations of offering cooked food to ones immediate neighbour, watching over the neighbours house during his absence, refraining from criticising him even if he had committed an offence, and visiting in case of sickness. The obligation was particularly binding in cases of emergency: when a person became ill and was not visited for three days by his neighbour, he became upset and offended. On such occasions, some food bread, at least had to be taken as a get-well gift.9 In Yarkand, when a person happened to enter anothers house when a meal was cooking or at the time the food was being served, he was inevitably invited to join in the meal.10 The sharing of food within the framework of neighbourly relations displayed simultaneous connotations of mutuality and social equality. Rules of everyday hospitality (i.e. outside the major rituals) were so binding that, in the early twentieth century in southern Xinjang, it was held that if the same person entered another persons house as many as ten times a day, the tablecloth had to be spread out afresh on each occasion. If a visitor left a persons house without having been offered hospitality, it brought shame to the household. People from the highest social strata had a special guest room in their house. But to build a guest room outside ones own courtyard counted as bad manners, and even disgraceful, perhaps because distancing the guest from ones own house ran against the principles of sharing. Wellto-do families were especially expected to offer hospitality to visitors. Those with stables had to cater for visitors who happened to arrive on horseback: at harvest time rich peasants would put aside a certain amount of their maize
7 8

Not unlike the closeness as introduced by Eickelmann, 2002, pp. 145-146. Gudeman, 2001. 9 Prov. 464.15V, 36R. 10 Prov. 464.25R.

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and barley for guests horses.11 In his exposition of hospitality, the indigenous author, a convert to Christianity, Nur Luke repeatedly made use of the concepts of ayip (shame, dishonour) and namus (honour), which suggests that local notions of hospitality fit in well with the so-called honour and shame societies, in which honour accrued to acts of beneficence and shame to forms of avarice.12 Commensality among community members was to some extent always ritualised, even when the visit was unannounced. Guests had to be seated facing the direction of one of the four points of the compass. The equal social standing of hosts and guests was symbolically implied by the use of shared bowls, from which food was taken with fingers and spoons. By the early twentieth century an elaborate system of politeness rules was in force, stipulating which dishes could be consumed from a shared bowl, how many people were allowed to share a bowl and which dishes had to be served individually.13 Although the rhetoric of hospitality implicit in the above statements suggests an ethic of equality, hospitality was definitely socially graded: more deferential treatment was due to visitors of high social standing and wealth than to poor and less prestigious guests. A highly respected visitor was offered the place of honour (tr) facing the entrance, while persons of lower prestige were seated farther away. A man of rank was offered a pitcher and a basin in which to wash his hands; a poor man was given a ewer. The respected visitor was offered all kinds of food, and upon leaving he was accompanied by his host seven steps away from the house, while the less respected guest was treated to a more modest meal and seen no further than the entrance.14 The interconnectedness of social standing and manifestations of hospitality was explicitly stated in local oral tradition, as is demonstrated in a Taranchi proverb from northern Xinjiang: It is fitting to go to a wedding in a good caftan, and to the feast on horseback. The native explanation goes that when visiting during religious festivals, men who arrive on horseback amuse themselves more than those who arrive on foot. The guests wearing good clothes were invariably seated at the place of honour and entertained with respect, while guests wearing old clothes were disregarded.15 Some forms of hospitality accentuated social differentiation within the community. When a rich or well-to-do person had a house built,
Prov. 212.49-60. Heal, 1990, p. 389. On honour and shame societies see for example Peristiany, 1965; Herzfeld, 1980; Gilmore, 1986; Peristiany & Pitt.Rivers, 1992. 13 Prov. 464.35R. 14 Prov. 464.35R. 15 Pantusov, 1909, pp. 71-72, 100.
12 11

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after the construction work was over he gave a big feast for the labourers and bricklayers, who also received presents of clothes. Organised for his social inferiors, the occasion served to ensure the good will of the builders and, therefore, good luck for the new house. In what appears to have been a second celebration, the owner of the new house invited his friends and neighbours, who brought items of furniture, such as felt rugs, cups and various other objects for the house, as well as consumables such as tea and meat, to congratulate and bless the occasion.16 The staggered, two-tiered nature of the celebration demonstrates that local notions of hospitality differentiated between confirming existing ties of community, based on assumed mutuality and equality, and the entertainment of social inferiors. Agricultural rituals which followed seasonal changes and the rhythm of production also included aspects of redistribution. In the first half of the twentieth century in the southern oases, when wheat was first sown a big pot of pilaff was prepared and offered to the day labourers. This communal meal was called nzir qili. Although hospitality here was offered to social inferiors, it was neither a clear case of charity, nor pure hospitality offered to social equals. Instead, the sacrificial aspect was emphasised: prayers were addressed to the Prophet Adam, the originator of farming, and the occasion may be interpreted as a kind of thanksgiving or fertility ceremony.17 Hospitality created and perpetuated the prestige of the host. Being invited meant for the guest confirmation of his community membership accomplished through his relative position in the seating order. Even though such invitations were part of a chain of what Marshall Sahlins called generalised exchange,18 within each major ritual of restricted hospitality hosts and guests engaged in acts of direct reciprocal exchange. In the late nineteenth century invited guests were told in advance what financial contribution they were expected to make. The less affluent insider could also participate: if he were unable to contribute financially, he could make a contribution in kind, by carrying the dishes and crockery or helping out in other ways.19 Restricted hospitality placed guest and host in contrasting positions. Just as hosts were expected to display at least minimal hospitality by offering tea and bread, guests were obliged to accept hospitality. Refusal of tea and food by a visitor was tantamount to rejecting community: it was interpreted as an
16 17

Prov. 207.II.20. Prov. 212: 130-7. 18 Sahlins, 1974. 19 Grenard, 1898, p. 141.

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offence to the honour of the household.20 In modern Xinjiang it is still customary that, when guests are departing and they thank their hosts, the hosts in turn express gratitude to their visitors. As Gunnar Jarring explains: All that had been placed on the table-cloths was the property of the guests and all that was not eaten was a gift from them to the host. So the host had to thank them for it.21 This implies that the concept of hospitality encapsulated the conceptual inversion of everyday property relations: the host as owner of the food and drinks transferred ownership of the goods spread out on the tablecloth to his guest. The guest consumed as much of the food as he liked, and, in his temporary role as owner of the food, exercised generosity by leaving, and thus donating, some to his host. Temporary role inversion thus emphasized the ritual nature of the communal meal. Charity In Xinjiang in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the local government made efforts to render charitable donations a public responsibility. The distribution of regular grain aid to the needy started in Kashgar just before the end of the nineteenth century, after the oasis had been hit by a major earthquake. The natural catastrophe entailed a dramatic rise in prices. To counter the social consequences, the Chinese authorities ordered a certain amount of grain to be put aside for the victims from the state granary. By the early twentieth century the local government overtook some responsibility for providing for the poor of Kashgar (ajizlarni baqmaq) on a more regular basis. Almshouses (qlndrxana, ajizlar n olturali yurt) were built by the Chinese authorities for the destitute, who became permanent or temporary boarders; but saintly shrines and cemeteries, the traditional shelters of the poor, where they profited from pilgrims charity, continued to serve as alternative abodes.22 In pre-socialist Xinjiang, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, sharing had a definite religious dimension. This explains why, in addition to the governments feeble attempts to institutionalise care for the poor, households continued to retain their customary significance as major providers of social security for the destitute until the region became integrated into socialist China in 1949. Local concepts of alms were rooted in Islamic tradition: sdiq meant both voluntary and mandatory alms, while zakat was the alms tax.23 As one of the five pillars of Islam, payment of the alms tax is the
20 21

Prov.212: pp. 50-54. Jarring, 1986, p. 19. 22 Prov.207.I.44. 23 Cf. Weir 1995; Zysow, 2002.

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obligation of every adult Muslim who does not suffer from mental infirmity, possesses a minimum of property and has accumulated sufficient wealth within the lunar year.24 Thus, the mechanisms which served the periodic redistribution of resources were rooted in religious understandings of morality and reciprocity and were embedded in local social institutions. Practically all major communal rituals served as occasions for almsgiving. Ritualised almsgiving typically took place at the time of religious festivals, a practice well known all over the Islamic world.25 In the first half of the twentieth century, alms were regularly distributed on the Night of Power (qdir keisi) to commemorate the revelation of the Koran. Although this was normally identified as the twenty-seventh day of the month of Ramadan, a beggars Ramadan song implies that almsgiving could start as early as the fifteenth day of the fast.26 The Festival of Sacrifice was another occasion when redistribution assumed institutionalised forms. On this day, among the Turki-speaking Dolanis of the Yarkand river valley, Sheep were only sacrificed at the houses of the well-to-do; those who cannot afford one of their own go around in batches to the houses of their wealthiest friends for the salaam ceremony. Standing before the owner of the house they bow with a sweeping movement of the arms and a stroking of the beard intoning a sonorous Amin the while, after which each person is entitled to a sup of sacrificial mutton. On the first two days of the Festival of Sacrifice only men perform the salaam; the second is the womens day, when separate tables are spread in the andarun for the fair visitors.27 The Barat celebrations, a popular religious festival widely observed in presocialist Xinjiang, took place in the middle of the Islamic month of bn (Shabn). During this religious festival, ritual cakes were taken to the graves of the dead and were consumed by mendicants (qlndr, diwan) and beggars (tilmi, gaday).28 Each year on the eleventh of the month of spr (Safar), rich people gave food or grain donations to the very poor residing in their neighbourhood.29 All these examples demonstrate direct and indirect forms of distributing alms to recipients identified as strangers, a vague concept which included both real and familiar strangers. Real
24 25 26 27 28 29

Sabra, 2000, p. 33. Ibid., p. 53-58. Jarring, 1986, p. 193. Skrine, [1926] 1971, p. 186. Grenard, 1898, p. 247. Prov.464.32R.

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strangers were people who came from far away, from outside ones community, which meant that his social and economic status remained hidden to the hosts. In contrast, the concept of the familiar stranger refers to local people whose low socio-economic status was well-known to the hosts and guests, and who for this reason were disqualified from normal community membership. In other words, their otherness created social distance and excluded them from everyday reciprocal social relations with other community members. Life-cycle rituals and other communal ceremonies were also occasions for the charitable redistribution of resources. After a wedding ceremony, the wedding party started with musicians playing their instruments and guests dancing. The music informed the poor of the neighbourhood about the event, and many of them gathered to have their bowls filled. No-one left emptyhanded, because we believe that Allah will listen to the prayers of the poor and we were anxious that they should all pray for our prosperity.30 In the first half of the twentieth century the concluding ceremony of the wedding ritual in Kashgar, known as White Road, took place after the bride had entered her new husbands home. At this point, some cotton and flour were placed in front of her and later given to the poor.31 The ritual of isqat was performed by the graveside. In the southern oases, this was calculated as follows: the first fourteen years were deducted from the dead persons age, since it was assumed that during this time he had lived innocently and could not have committed a sin. For each remaining year, one or two tgs were disbursed to strangers by the graveside. In a ritualised verbal exchange the strangers had to agree to take over the dead persons sins.32 On the day of death, alms consisting of cash and a piece of soap were distributed among beggars.33 On the fortieth day following death, invited guests arrived to take part in the festive meal offered to commemorate the deceased. In the courtyard all male guests, who, as a sign of mourning had left their hair and facial hair grow for forty days, had their hair cut as a sign of breaking the mourning. The barbers expenses were met by the landlord, and beggars were also invited to join and benefit from the communal ritual to mark the end of the mourning.34
Jarring, 1975, p. 27. Sykes & Sykes, 1920, p. 312. 32 Prov. 212: 104-108; Bellr-Hann, 2001. 33 Skrine, [1926] 1971, p. 204. 34 Prov.212: 90-8. for other examples for the connection between death rituals and charity see Sabra, 2000: pp. 95-97.
31 30

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On the last day of the hair-tying ritual, a rite de passage for young women in pre-socialist Southern Xinjiang, beggars were invited to be entertained.35 Other communal rituals such as healing ceremonies were also accompanied by almsgiving. In the early twentieth century, to ease her approaching delivery a woman from Kashgar engaged a healer to perform a sance (healing/exorcism ritual). Following the conclusion of the ritual, she gave alms to the poor.36 Offerings to the poor could be made to help cure the sick (presumably even without the explicit framework of a healing ritual).37 Shrine-visiting during the month of muhrrm involved the setting up of spirit flags (tu-lm) and the taking of votive gifts such as money, cattle, a horse, a sheep or a hen to the shrine. After the guardians had recited prayers everything was distributed to strangers (rip adamliri).38 Almsgiving was also an integral part of the male communal entertainment known as the mrp. Before the main dishes were served to the guests, piles of large bread loaves were placed on the tablecloths in front of the guests with piles of small round breads on top. The latter were for the guests to consume, but the large loaves underneath were distributed among the poor.39 The mrp was the prerogative of the well-to-do; a display of ones wealth in the form of offering a lavish feast to ones social equals had to be balanced with the distribution of alms. Free meals were offered to the poor upon completing the building of a new house. In an agricultural ritual which followed threshing, twenty-five to thirty kilograms of grain were taken and partly handed over to strangers as the thanksgiving alms of the new crop (yiliqni kran sadaqasi), also known as kpsn;40 the rest was taken home by the workers. From the new grain, bread was baked or a meal was cooked and shared with people of high social standing, especially representatives of the religious establishment, who prayed over it to ensure blessings.41 Strangers, guests, beggars We have seen that in pre-socialist Xinjiang hospitality was ritually extended to social inferiors and strangers. They were almost indispensable in communal rituals as recipients of charity and the boundary between these
35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Jarring, 1975, pp. 29-30. Sykes & Sykes, 1920, p. 314. Jarring, 1951, p. 81. Prov. 464.47R. Jarring, 1975, p. 15. Cf. Schwarzs definition: alms food given to the poor after a harvest (1992, p. 684). Prov. 212: 130-7.

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two appears to have been blurred. Strangers were often referred to as guests (musapir), a term which carried connotations of respect and social obligations, but also a measure of distrust. The term was ambiguous, since it could also mean outsider, vagabond or rover, which explains why guests were often regarded with a great deal of suspicion. An alternative way of referring to them was rip adamlar, an expression which could mean both somebody coming from far afield, but also a local tramp, a beggar, or a combination of the two, i.e. a poor stranger. The multiplicity of meanings associated with these terms reveals their interconnectedness and suggests that all these categories, guests, strangers and the poor represented people relegated to the communal margins.42 Just who was considered a stranger and how social relations with such persons were regulated was a complex issue. While in some cases religious, ethnic or ethno-religious boundaries played a role, in other instances the boundaries of exclusion and inclusion had to be drawn differently, since linguistic and cultural factors were not sufficient. In setting up such boundaries residence and social status also played a decisive role. If the stranger came from a distance and was not part of the hosts local community, and if he showed signs of comparable or higher economic status, the arrival became a candidate for the status of guest. Thus, the status of guest stood midway between that of hostile stranger and that of community member.43 At the same time, familiarity rooted in shared residence, i.e. membership of the same face-to-face community, could be overridden by the low social status of the visitor, if he was too poor to potentially return hospitality, a beggar or mendicant. These complexities behind the concept of the stranger suggest that Georg Simmels ideal type is unhelpful;44 Harmans perspective, which suggests that the stranger is only produced in relation to what constitutes a member seems more flexible and fruitful.45 The guest was offered the benefit of the doubt and enjoyed hospitality, the beggar was offered charity. Although locals definitely distinguished between
42 Hartmann, 1902, p. 115; Skrine, [1926] 1971, p. 74. Similar ambiguity can also be found in other languages, for example in English. This ambiguity is also inherent in the etymology of the English words hostile, host, [transformation from hostile stranger (hostis) guest (hospes, hostis)]: the word hostis claims therefore as its radical sense, not the obligation to reciprocal violence, but the notion of strangeness which underlies this transition. Host - strangeness is reciprocal whether it enjoins distrust or hospitality (Pitt-Rivers, 1977, pp. 101-102). 43 Pitt-Rivers, 1977, p. 97. 44 Simmel, 1992. 45 Harman, 1988, p. 12.

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acts of hospitality and acts of charity, making use of both local and general Islamic terminology, the ambiguous references to strangers in the sources suggest that the boundary between recipients of hospitality (guests) and of charity (the poor, beggars) was often fuzzy. In both cases the visitor was offered temporary inclusion in the community, and participated in the redistribution of resources as a recipient. This blurring of the boundaries between almsgiving and hospitality offered to strangers was also noticeable in the public redistributions organised by religious and secular officeholders to build up their prestige and extend their circle of clients. In the late nineteenth century Ala Xan of Khotan regularly kept an open table in his house, which was always buzzing with visitors ranging from mollas to mendicants and other clients.46 Here redistribution simultaneously took the form of hospitality and charity and these were embedded in and reinforced patron client relationships. The sources quoted above (many of them indigenous) all agree on the redistributive function of communal rituals, but they are less clear about the beneficiaries: charity to the poor and donations distributed among strangers seem to be omnipresent features of these occasions, but it seems that there was no clear boundary between the two. A further indication for the implicit emic (i.e. insiders' view) blurring of these categories can be found in the concept of nzir. In modern Xinjiang among the Uyghur ritualised communal meals are still commonly known by this term, which was defined by my interlocutors during fieldwork in the mid-1990s as an altruistic act, when food is offered to others with no expectation of return. Thus, the emic concept of nzir does not distinguish between providing hospitality and charity: the very definition emphasizes its redistributive function and makes no distinction between charitable acts and hospitality in the restricted sense. An ethnographic example by an indigenous author of social practices in southern Xinjiang in the early twentieth century further demonstrates another kind of indeterminacy: receiving charity and acting as hosts were not necessarily mutually exclusive. The author, himself a learned molla, characterized some yxs (shaykhs, guardians of shrines, often connected to Sufi orders) as pious swindlers and accused them of duplicity: they had begged from the rich and redistributed whatever they got through spreading a ceremonial tablecloth for the poor, in order to spread their fame. Some were in the habit of going out to the fields in the summer at the time of the harvest, and, claiming to be the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad or to
46

Grenard, 1898, p. 232.

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the saintly lineage of khojas, demanding the special harvest alms (kpsn)47 from the threshed grain. They were generally disliked, but when they asked for the harvest alms, people gave these to them, because it was feared that one of them could be the Prophet Xizir, who was in the habit of appearing in the shape of a mendicant. For this reason, everyone gave them something, and no begging yx returned empty-handed from the threshing fields.48 Stories confirming the supernatural associations of charity abound in Uyghur oral tradition. In the archetypal account a molla refuses to give some ripe melons to a beggar, the beggar subsequently turns out to be none other than the Prophet Xizir, and the molla is duly punished.49 As in Mediterranean societies and elsewhere in the Islamic world, in traditional Uyghur society the stranger is often a beggar; this equation may be explained by the fact that both categories were potential recipients of redistribution, in other words, persons to whom hospitality in the extended sense was due.50 Simmels point concerning the sociological meaning of poverty is of relevance here: the objective conditions of poverty do not suffice to create the social category of the poor; it is only when society recognizes poverty as a special status through exercising charity that they are turned into such, since the group is not otherwise united through interaction among its members.51 Attitudes towards the poor revealed a pervasive ambivalence. Their presence was often considered a nuisance and sometimes even a threat but they were also credited with bringing good luck and blessing to a house. It was commonly held that if no beggar entered a courtyard for more than seven days, then some calamity would befall members of the household. The underlying logic was that of reciprocity: donation of alms gave an opportunity to the family to fulfil religious obligations, and they would receive blessings in exchange. The beggars blessing was gratefully received, and his curse was feared. Beggars were not always regarded as passive recipients of charitable donations but were expected to reciprocate; their social marginality potentially endowed them with supernatural powers, which could be mobilised to benefit or harm the individual and the household.

Schwarz, 1992, p. 684: alms given to the poor after a harvest. Prov.464.10R. 49 Raquette, 1909, pp. 10-12. 50 That a supernatural being God in Greek society or the Prophet Xizir in Eastern Turkestan could take the place of stranger or beggar ensured the enforcement of the moral duty of hospitality. (Pitt-Rivers 1977: 99-100). 51 Simmel, 1992, pp. 552-553.
48

47

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Implications for contemporary society Rules of hospitality have retained their function in expressing and reinforcing social hierarchies both within ones community and with outsiders in present day Xinjiang. Politeness rules followed during commensality have been perpetuated in ways very similar to those in presocialist times. Neighbourliness and close kin relations continue to be strengthened through sharing meals, and life-cycle and religious rituals invariably include offering hospitality in the sense of sharing food as well as multiple acts of giving and receiving. According to my own ethnographic observations in the 1990s one important change in this respect is a tendency to diversification: charitable donations appear to have become more characteristic of religious rituals, while life-cycle rituals tend to be dominated by acts of reciprocity acted out among (ostensible) social equals. Major contributions made by the invited guests are carefully recorded by the host and the expectation is that the present or monetary donation will be reciprocated on a later occasion when the roles of host and guest are reversed. While such delayed, generalized exchanges have egalitarian implications, assigning the place of honour to guests of a higher status is one way in which hierarchies are made clear, as they were in the past. The ambiguities inherent in the concept of hospitality have also been perpetuated. Reformist efforts in recent years have sometimes sought to demarcate restricted hospitality from charity. In their attacks on nonIslamic institutions such as the commemoration of the dead organized on the third, the seventh and the fortieth days following a death, as well as on its first anniversary, Islamic reformists condemn the hospitality displayed on such occasions as manifestations of conspicuous consumption and encourage people instead to donate to a good cause, i.e. to be charitable.52 Selectivity in hospitality and commensality are also practised by the Uyghur to confirm hierarchical relationships along ethnic boundaries. It is well known that, while the Uyghur may occasionally invite Han-Chinese colleagues to a wedding, the roles of guest and host in these circumstances are typically irreversible because Muslim dietary rules do not permit the Uyghur to consume Chinese cuisine. While the political power hierarchy places the Han Chinese above the Uyghur, Uyghur dietary rules dictate the rules for inter-ethnic hospitality. If such commensality is to take place at all, it invariably places the Uyghur in the position of host and therefore holding
52 These reformist endeavours coincide with the Chinese governments efforts to restrict excessive ritual spending.

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the upper hand, while the Han Chinese occupies the inferior position of the guest, which represents an inversion of the political power hierarchy. Having said that hospitality is based on the assumption that host and guest are social equals, it is instructive to recall Pitt-Rivers point that host and guest can at no point within the context of a single occasion be allowed to be equal, since equality invites rivalry. Therefore their reciprocity resides in an alteration of roles.53 This alteration of roles and its implicit assertion of social equality is denied by the Uyghur to the Chinese even in circumstances when relations are apparently amicable. It can be interpreted as a parallel to the Chinese denial of political self-determination to the Uyghur. The ambiguity inherent in Uyghur notions of hospitality has been admirably exploited by mrjan Alim, a famous Uyghur poet now living in exile, who in a popular song used the idiom of hospitality to describe ethnic relations in his native land. He portrays the Uyghur as generous, hospitable hosts and the Chinese as guests who have abused their hospitality and refuse to leave. I Brought Home a Guest I brought a guest back to my home And lay a cushion in the seat of honour Now I myself cannot enter The house I built with my own hands. By making him a guest revered I was at last separated from this home Receiving no seat in the orchards I laid down my cushions in the desert. I turned the deserts into oases And still more guests, they filled that place Then lopped off the entire branch And took the fruits away. I brought a guest back to my home And lay a cushion in the seat of honour He leapt into that pride of place And boss became to us And boss became to us.54
53 54

Pitt-Rivers, 1977, pp. 102 (italics in original). I thank Joanne N. Smith for allowing me to use her translation. An earlier version of this translation appears in her unpublished PhD dissertation (Smith, 1999). The first verse has also been translated by Rachel Harris (Harris, 2002, p. 265).

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Conclusion While charity and hospitality sometimes appear as clearly demarcated conceptual realms in pre-modern East Turkestan, they were also closely related. Although local vocabulary distinguished between the two concepts, I have argued that indigenous sources and the concept of nzir all point to their complex interconnectedness. This recognition has prompted me to follow Felicity Heal in distinguishing restricted from extended hospitality. Restricted hospitality was offered primarily to kin, neighbours and members of the local community (the we-group) and occasionally to outsiders of an equal status, and it ranged from the acting out of routinized neighbourly relations to more ritualized occasions. The participants had a well-defined social and economic status in the community or, if they were outsiders, they were attributed a relatively high social status. Restricted hospitality had an integrating function in the sense that it confirmed existing local identities and communal boundaries; although it was based on delayed reciprocity, it also included acts of direct reciprocal exchange. It simultaneously displayed both egalitarian and hierarchical aspects. Extended hospitality, which often took place simultaneously with restricted hospitality involved the ritualised redistribution of resources to the poor and destitute, as well as to those out siders whose social status remained undefined. In the case of charitable distribution, the relationship was unequal, since recipients of alms could not reciprocate hospitality. Strangers whose status as guest was ambiguous were not allowed to pay,55 which set these two groups clearly apart from community members, who on ritual occasions were expected to pay for hospitality either in the form of presents and money, or through providing services. They were also expected to reciprocate hospitality on later occasions. But even in the case of beggars and other recipients of alms a general sense of reciprocity was recognizable: the semi-sacred status of the poor outsider allowed him to reciprocate the received alms with prayers and blessings. We have seen that in Xinjiang offering hospitality to strangers and giving charitable donations to the poor and destitute were closely connected. It is tempting to state that extended hospitality, i.e. charitable redistribution, typically involved the hosts social and economic inferiors or outsiders of uncertain social status and therefore expressed vertical, hierarchical relations, while restricted hospitality took place among social and economic
55

Pitt-Rivers, 1977, p. 102.

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equals, and stood for equality. However, this would be an oversimplification. Ethnographic examples indicate that, although restricted hospitality was characterised by a certain egalitarian spirit, it simultaneously also served to reinforce intra-communal hierarchies. The dichotomy of restricted and extended hospitality has allowed me to integrate into my analysis the communitys relationship to the stranger. It has also enabled me to point to the structural interconnectedness of acts of redistribution, i.e. charity and hospitality. However, it is important to remember that the categories, which also have emic equivalents, are neither rigid nor clear-cut. Rather, they represent the two extremes of a continuum, which comprises notions of sociability ranging from intra-communal relations through relations of the community to outsiders, all acted out in the form of reciprocal exchange. The overarching term hospitality can accommodate charity and temporary hospitality offered to strangers. Extended and restricted hospitality share the following features: 1- both were significant for the confirmation of communal boundaries. 2- they were often tied to life cycle and religious rituals and both had religious underpinnings. 3- both categories were simultaneously informed by ideas of altruism as well as by reciprocity. The apparent altruism implied in emic definitions of nzir contradicted the reciprocal underpinnings, which postulated charity as a meritorious deed, for which the believer would eventually be rewarded. Beggars and other receivers of donations habitually prayed for the wellbeing of the donor and asked for blessings for him and his household. When a poor mendicant begged in the street and received alms, in return he prayed for the donor, and therefore the sacrifice pleased God. 4- exercising any form of hospitality assumed a minimal economic capability. In a recent article Andrew Shryock has shown how Arab hospitality in Jordan has been turned into a public, national virtue, and traditional images of hospitality are being thoroughly reshaped.56 Although the Uyghur take an enormous pride in their hospitality, which on the surface appears to be innocent and therefore acceptable to the Chinese, the full nationalization of hospitality has not been achieved in Xinjiang. In the present conditions of Uyghur political subordination, marked by competing versions of historical primacy in the region, the inherent ambiguity of the traditional concept of
56

Shryock, 2004.

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hospitality has lingered on and prevented a nationalization of the sort analyzed by Shryock. The ambiguities inherent in pre-socialist notions of hospitality have retained much of their earlier significance and they may be acquiring new significance in the context of inter-ethnic relations between Han Chinese and the Uyghur. In the contemporary context the law of hospitality is being violated by both: by the Chinese who came as guests and have remained, and by the Uyghur, who on an everyday level are prepared to play the role of host but who refuse to accept Chinese hospitality. In the present tense political climate hospitality between social equals, which assumes the possibility of rivalry, cannot be realised, and social relations are Bibliography Unpublished manuscripts: Prov. 207. I. [A collection of essays on life in Eastern Turkestan], by Muhammad Ali Damolla (Kashgar, 1905-1910), 117p. (Turki). Prov. 207. II. [A collection of essays on life in Eastern Turkestan], by Abul Wahid Axun (Kashgar, 1905-1910), 52p. (Turki). Prov. 464. [A collection of Eastern Turki folkloristic texts], by Molla Abdul Qadir (Lund University Library, Yarkand, ca. 1930). 49p. (Turki). Prov. 212. [A collection of essays on the habits and customs of Eastern Turkestan], compiled by Dr. Nur Luke of Khotan (probably 1950s in Poonah, India), 137p. (Turki). Secondary sources: Bellr-Hann, Ildik 2001 Making the oil fragrant. Dealings with the supernatural among the Uighur in Xinjiang, Asian Ethnicity 2, n 1, pp. 9-23. Eickelman, Dale F., 2002 The Middle East and Central Asia. An Anthropological Approach (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 4th ed.). Gilmore, David D. (ed.), 1986 Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (Washington, D.C. : American Anthropological Association). Grenard, Ferdinand, 1898 Le Turkestan et le Tibet: tude ethnographique et sociologique (J.-L. Dutreuil de Rhins: Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890-1895. Deuxime partie. Paris: Ernest Leroux).

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Pitt- Rivers, Julian, 1977 The law of hospitality, in Julian Pitt-Rivers: The Fate of Shechem or the Politics of Sex. Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Cambridge CUP), pp. 94-112. Raquette, Gustaf, 1909 A Contribution to the existing knowledge of the Eastern Turkestan dialect as it is spoken and written at the present time in the districts of Yarkand and Kashghar (Helsingfors: Socit Finno-Ougrienne). Raxman, Abdukerim, Rwydulla Hmdulla, erip Xutar, 1996 Uyur rp-adtliri (rmi: inja Yalar-smrlr Nriyati). Sabra, Adam, 2000 Poverty and charity in Medieval Islam. Mamluk Egypt, 12501517 (Cambridge: CUP). Sahlins, Marshall D., 1974 Stone Age Economics (London : Tavistock Publ). Schwarz, Henry G., 1992 An Uyghur-English Dictionary (Bellingham: Western Washington University). Shryock, Andrew, 2004 The New Jordanian Hospitality: House, Host , and Guest in the Culture of Public Display, Comparative Study of Society and History. 46, n 1, pp. 35-62. Simmel, Georg, 1992 Exkurs ber den Fremden, in O. Rammstedt, Hg., Georg Simmel, Soziologie. Untersuchungen ber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), pp. 764771.

Skrine, Clarmont P., [1926] 1971 Chinese Central Asia (London: Methuen, 1926; reprinted, NY: Barnes & Noble). Smith, Joanne N., 1999 Changing Uyghur Identities in Xinjiang in the 1990s (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Leeds). Sykes, Ella & Percy Sykes, 1920 Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia (London: Macmillan and Co. Ld). Weir, T. H. [A. Zysow], 1995 Sadaa, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, N.E., vol. VIII (Leiden: Brill), pp. 708-716.

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