Muhammad Ma Jian

Who was Muhammad Ma Jian?

Muhammad Ma Jian was a Chinese Islamic scholar and translator.

Born in Shadian village, Gejiu, Yunnan, Ma Jian went to Shanghai to pursue his studies in 1928. In 1931, he left China for Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt as a member of the first group of government-sponsored Chinese students to study there. While in Cairo, he wrote a book in Arabic about Islam in China, and translated the Analects into Arabic. He returned to China in 1939. There he edited the Arabic-Chinese Dictionary and translated the Qur'an and other Islamic works. He became a professor of Beijing University in 1946. In 1981, the China Social Science Press published his Chinese version of the Qur'an; an Arabic-Chinese bilingual version was later published by the Medina-based King Fahd Holy Qur'an Printing Press.