Semu

Semu (色目 in Chinese characters) is the name of a caste established in China under the Yuan Dynasty. Contrary to popular belief, the term "Semu" (interpreted literally as "color-eye") did not imply that caste members had "colored eyes" in contrast with black-eyed Mongol Yuan people. It in fact meant "assorted categories" (各色名目, ge4 se4 ming2 mu4), emphasizing the ethnic diversity of Semu people. They had come to serve the Yuan Khanate by enfranchising under the dominant Mongol Caste. The Semu were not a self-defined and homogeneous ethnic group per se, but one of the four castes of the Yuan Dynasty: the Mongol Caste, Semu Caste, Khitay Caste ("Hanren " in Chinese) and Manji Caste ("Nanren" in Chinese). Among the Semu were Buddhist Turpan Uyghurs, Tanguts and Tibetans; Christian Assyrians; Alans; Muslim Arabs, and various Islamic Persian and Turkic peoples including the Khwarazmians and Karakhanids.

While administratively classified as Semu, many of these groups rather referred to themselves by their self-aware ethnic identities in everyday life, such as Uyghur. Muslims, Persians, Karakhanids and Khwarazmians in particular, were actually mistaken to be Uyghurs or at least, "from the land of the Uyghurs". Therefore they adopted the label conferred to them by the Chinese: "Huihui" (see Hui), which was a corruption of the name Uyghur, but at the same time distinguishable from the name reserved for Buddhist Turpan Uyghurs proper, "Weiwuer". Of the many ethnic groups classified as "Semu" during the Yuan, only the Muslim Hui managed to survive into the Ming period as a large collective identity with self-awareness of common identity spanning across the whole China.

Other ethnic groups were either small and confined to limited localities (such as the Muslim Turpan Uyghurs in Wuling, Hunan, and the Babylonian Jewry of Kaifeng, see Kaifeng Jews), or were force to assimilate into the Han Chinese or Muslim Huis (such as some Christian and Jewish Semu in the Northwest, who, though thoroughly Islamicized, still unto this day retain peculiar labels like "Black Cap/Doppa Huihui", "Blue Cap Huihui").

Among the Huihui, or Hui, there were in fact Muslim lineages that have migrated to China via Central Asia or by sea route prior to the Yuan migration of merchants, adventurers, craftsmen and service men from the Muslim World to China. These Muslims were not previously known as Hui, but have come to associate themselves with the "Muslims from the land of the Uyghurs" by the mere fact of common religious identity. "Hui" has thus become synonymous with the Islamic religion in the Chinese language since the Ming period (but not before that). Besides identifying themselves as Huis, the Semu Muslims of the Yunnan province, especially those descended from the Khwarazmian statesman Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, or Sayyid Ajjal, came to be labeled as Panthay wherever they migrated to in Southeast Asia, including Myanmar and Thailand.

This name Panthay is particular to the Yunnan Huis and is not shared by Huis in other parts of China such as Fujian and Ningxia. Zheng He is probably the best-known Panthay Hui in the West. The learned Semu, including scribes, interpreters and statesmen who served the Mongol military class, were known for their contributions to Chinese literature and sciences. Many of them became masters of Chinese poetry and also helped compose state-commissioned historical works on previous dynasties. Their privileged position in the Yuan bureaucracy was in part due to the Mongol military class's distrust of the native Khitay and Manji subjects. One such Yuan Semu mandarin and poet was Guan Yunshi, a Turk of disputed origin.

After the fall of the Yuan, many Semu intellectuals, soldiers, due to their less entrenched loyalty to the Mongols, also became quickly assimilated into the Ming political culture and became prominent mandarins and aristocrats. Some no longer retained separate ethnic identity and became Han Chinese, others still served the Ming court as Muslim Huis. The Ming court's tolerance for loyal Muslims and respect for their practices and ethnic identity partially explains the strength and vitality of the Muslim Hui community in modern China, compared to other Semu groups such as the Christians and Jews.