It was an indication of the acknowledgment and encouragement given to Islam by the authority of the Yuan Dynasty that a good number of mosques were built as sites for Muslims‘ religious activities. The Mosques became a place where Muslims of various identities could come together to perform religious services and engage in various social activities. Hence, Islam became an important medium to foster and strengthennational ties, eventually leading to the birth of the Hui Huis as an ethic group.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the distribution of the Hui Huis appeared to be “being dispersed widely and concentrated in small groups”? By “being dispersed widely” the Hui Huis were scattered all over the country; and by “being concentrated in small groups”
the Hui Huis throughout the country lived in compact communities with mosques at the center of their community. The unique characteristics of the geographical distribution of the Hui Huis, different from that of other minority groups had much to do with the specific environment in which the Hui Huis lived during the Yuan Dynasty.
The Hui Huis were adept at engaging in business and managing finance and were capable of and experienced in administration. Additionally for the great contributionthey had made to establish the Yuan Dynasty and administer the country, the Hui Huis won the trust of the Yuan rulers. They were given higher political status, and many of them were appointed officials at various levels. In almost all positions there were Hui Huis - civil and military, central and local, provincial and grass-root. They were in possession of land, houses, servants, subordinates and large property.
To meet the needs of the wars, the Yuan government carriedout the system of Tun Tian (having garrison troops or peasants open up wasteland and grow food grains) in its early period. When the whole country was reunified, it began to implement this system comprehensively. Among the Hui Huis who opened more wasteland and grew more grains, most were in the Northwest.
The Mongols conquered the world with their sharp cavalry, so they attached great importance to grazing horses, and opened14 grazing lands throughout the country. Among the herdsmen who were engaged in military horse grazing, many were Hui Huis. Huihuiwa near to Gongxian County in Henan Province, and Yidu and Qingzhou in Shandong Province were important places where Hui Huis grazed horses. These military herdsmen were transformed into civil households afterwards and became local inhabitants.
The Yuan Dynasty also practiced the system of Jun Hu (militarized households)? The government allocated lands for Jun Hus for military maintenance, and were exempt from tax. So Jun Hus were both militarized households and peasant households at the same time, who fought as soldiers did in times of war and farmed and grazed like peasants in times of peace. Most of the Hui Huis recruited into the army as gunners or craftsmen usuallydid not take their families, and became permanent local inhabitants when they settled down where they fought or stationed. They lived there, farming and intermarrying with local people.
The Yuan government also encouraged the Hui Huis who came along with the Mongols from the west to settle down in China to be engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, and gave them many preferential policies such as allocating wasteland for them to cultivate, permitting them to engage in land business with favorable taxation treatment. Thus, the Hui Huis coming from the west soon became laborers who cultivated wasteland and developed agricultural production. In the Northwest in particular including Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and Xinjiang, they lived and intermarried with local people, and eventually became permanent inhabitants there.
Among the Hui Huis coming along with the Mongols from the west there were a great number of craftsmen. For example, when the capital of Khorezm (a part of the ancient Persian Empire, conquered by the Arabs around 700 A.D., and by the Mongols in the 13th century, now in Uzbekistan) was destroyed, over 100 thousand craftsmen were sent to China, and more than 30 thousand craftsmen captured in the Battle of Samarkand weremoved to China and settled down in compact areas too.
During the Yuan period, Hui Hui traders who came along with the Mongols from the west and Muslim traders from Southeast Asia were everywhere in the country. Traffic became convenient after the Mongols‘ conquering marches to the west, and motivated by the preferential treatment, Hui Hui traders came to China in large numbers and in the end settled down where they worked.
The Yuan Dynasty was appreciative of the scientific talents of the Hui Huis who came from the west and put them in important positions. To make good use of these professionals, the Yuan government set up special departments to deal with certain work, for example Guang Hui Si (department of wide welfare) was in charge of the Hui Huis‘ medicine; Hui Hui Guo Zi Jian (the Imperial College of the Hui Huis) was for training translators; and Hui Hui Si Tian Jian (astronomy department of the Hui Huis) was in charge of the management and study of the Hui Huis’ astronomy and calendar system. Many Hui Hui experts like astronomer Jamal al-Din and Kamal al-Din, artillery-making expert "Ala‘ al-Din and Isma"il, architect Ihteer al-Din, medical scientist Dalima, and linguist Haluddin were placed in various institutions established by the imperial court.
The Yuan rulers held an attitude of tolerance and protection towards all religions. Islam developed rapidly at that time. The Mongols‘ conquering marches to the west and the religious policies they adopted directly promoted the extensive spread and development of Islam in the Northwest of China and Central Asia, and made Islam develop into the religion that was later to be in a leading position.