During the pre-modern period, pilgrimage constituted one feature of Islamic religiosity that formulated a sense of belonging and authenticity for Muslims. For the Sino-Muslim community, the hajj embodied several central elements of religious substance. Most broadly, the pilgrimage conveyed a sense of communal identification, which intensified Muslims’ collective memory of cultural heritage, brought with it religious and social authority, and united all Muslims under the banner of Islam as a single transcultural congregation (Ar. umma). Praising or participating in the pilgrimage allowed Muslims at the geographic periphery of the Islamicate world to move to the umma's centre. Their physical distance from the sacred heart of Islamic geography did not prevent them from connecting with their coreligionists through their perceptions, beliefs or practices.

This chapter focuses on religious pilgrimage and sacred space as a universal category of Islamicate societies and of religious traditions more generally. Through an analysis of Sino-Muslims’ attitudes towards pilgrimage, as they have been expressed in Sino-Islamic intellectual production, we may view their thoughts as part of the broader Muslim world, presaging future comparative inquiry.

All three authors studied here – Wang Daiyu (1590–1658), Liu Zhi (1670–1724?) and Ma Dexin (also called Ma Fuchu) (1794–1874) – cherished the pilgrimage as a religious duty, but authors in successive generations gave it greater weight. As Sino-Muslims entered the global context in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, their writings increasingly underlined the hajj as an indispensable and obligatory Islamic practice. Other authors also considered the hajj, and a number of Sino-Muslims actually performed the pilgrimage (Wang and Liu did not), but these three represent attitudes reflected in Sino- Islamic scholarship in general and the Han kitāb specifically.

Overall, the perception of the hajj changed from a symbol of true belief to a potentially critical practice, and in the late nineteenth century it finally became an essential observance and religious duty. Wang Daiyu described the theological foundations of the pilgrimage, its role as a link to the time of Creation and union with God. Liu Zhi underlined the physical practice of pilgrims, stressing the ceremonial and experiential aspects of the pilgrimage by detailing the practices associated with it. Ma Dexin emphasised the performative aspect of the journey itself, while arguing for its power to rectify and renew religious understanding and asserting its doctrinal necessity.