Da Pusheng

Da Pusheng (1874–1965) was a Chinese Muslim scholar from Liuhe in Jiangsu, known by his religious name Nur Muhammad, an ahong counted among the four great ahongs of modern China. He studied as a khalifa under the ahong Wang Haoran at Beijing's Niujie Mosque, was appointed by Ma Linyi to direct Muslim education work in Gansu, co-founded the Shanghai Islamic Normal School in 1928 and served as its principal, and after 1949 led China's first hajj delegations and held office in the Islamic Association of China. ¹

There is no English, Arabic or Urdu article on him; this page rests on the Chinese article, as stated in its sources.

He was born at Liuhe in Jiangsu, now part of Nanjing, of Kipchak descent; his original name was Fengxuan. As a boy he studied at the South Mosque in Liuhe and at the Changxiang Mosque, then went to Beijing to serve as a khalifa — a resident student-assistant — under the ahong Wang Haoran at the Niujie Mosque. Returning home he founded a Hui primary school; in 1905 he acted as teaching elder of the Niujie Mosque, and in 1907 he became principal of its Hui Normal School. After the Republic was founded he went to Lanzhou, where the Gansu education commissioner Ma Linyi appointed him director of the provincial Hui education-promotion office and a provincial school inspector. Around 1920 he moved to Shanghai, worked for the Muslim merchants' Xiexing Company, and served as teaching elder of the Fuyou Road Mosque. In 1928 he and Ma Fuxiang founded the Shanghai Islamic Normal School — Ma Fuxiang as chairman, Da Pusheng as principal. During the war with Japan he travelled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India to win international support for China's resistance and wrote an Address to the Muslims of the World; he moved the school to Pingliang, later the National Longdong Normal School, and remained its principal, sat in the People's Political Council at Chongqing from 1941, and lived at various times in Baoji, Zhangjiachuan, Xi'an, Nanjing and Shanghai. After 1949 he headed the first and second Chinese hajj delegations, was a vice-chairman of the Islamic Association of China, a member of the Central Ethnic Affairs Commission, a deputy to the National People's Congress, a standing committee member of the CPPCC and president of the China Islamic Institute. He died at Beijing on 21 June 1965. ¹

His faith is recorded as unknown. The Chinese article, his only one, presents him as an Islamic scholar and ahong formed in the Niujie Mosque's teaching line; it names no school, order or movement for him, and Wikidata carries no religion value for him at all. ^{1 2}

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