History is replete with stories of visionaries whose genius was unappreciated in their own time and place. Many luminaries have been criticised, some even persecuted, by the governing authority under which they lived, or by their public or by both. Some have found acceptance abroad or have been vindicated posthumously. In the words of Jesus, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own town and in his own home.’ The Prophet Muḥammad followed in the footsteps of the prophets who preceded him. He was jeered at, reviled and struggled for decades against members of his own clan and tribe before overcoming his enemies and uniting Arabia under the banner of Islam. The message of Islam thence spread in all directions, claiming followers over a massive swath of Afro-Eurasia. Those who tread the prophetic path, trammelled by adversity, must be willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of delivering their message. The followers of the prophets similarly have faced initial hardships before enjoying success, their triumphs sometimes becoming clear only after their deaths. According to the ḥadīth, ‘Scholars are the heirs of the prophets.’ For some 1,400 years, Islamic scholars have carried the legacy of the prophets, earning thereby obloquy and acclaim, or some measure of each.

Within a century of the Prophet's death in 632 ce, Islam's eastward expansion had brought Muslims to China, but it would take almost a millennium before the legacy of Islamic scholarship reached its Chinese apogee in the person and the writings of Liu Zhi (c. 1660–c. 1730), the most prolific and celebrated of the Han kitāb writers. Liu Zhi embodied Chinese Muslim simultaneity, reflected in his ability to participate in both the Islamic and Chinese intellectual worlds as an insider. Calling upon his literary talents and linguistic finesse, he seamlessly integrated Islamic and Confucian values and tenets into his worldview, which enabled him to harmonise the two traditions in his writings. As reflected in his work, Liu Zhi understood himself truly to be the heir of both the Islamic prophets and the Chinese sages, whom he conflated into a single class under the Chinese term sheng, thereby integrating Chinese and Islamic concepts of the ideal person, ‘a human being endowed with special qualifications that make him a suitable mediator between the divine and mundane realms’.