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projects, a network of irrigation canals and waterworks to prevent the harbor from filling up with the sediment from the Jin River. Inside the wall, shaded by the tiger’s-claw trees that lined the streets, walked people of every ethnicity: Malays, Persians, Indians, Vietnamese, even a few Europeans, each group with its own neighborhood. Rising into Zaytun’s coal-smoke-filled sky were seven great mosques, three churches (Eastern Orthodox and Nestorian) and a cathedral (Roman Catholic), and countless Buddhist institutions—one visitor claimed that a single monastery had three thousand monks. The Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, who visited in the 1340s, marveled at the scores of huge junks in the harbor; around them, he said, swarmed small vessels “past counting,” buying and selling. Ibn Battuta called the port “one of the biggest in the world—I’m wrong, it is the biggest.” The traveler was not simply exaggerating to make a good tale; Zaytun, with several hundred thousand people crammed into the littoral beneath the hills, was one of humankind’s richest, most populous cities. Little wonder that Polo’s account inspired people like Colón to dream of going there!

After the Song dynasty fell to the Mongol invasion in the 1270s, the last embers of resistance burned in Fujian. An opposition movement there installed a Song prince as emperor. The Mongols quickly attacked in great force, and the Song prince took refuge in Zaytun with his courtiers and troops. A well-connected Muslim Arab merchant named Pu Shougeng had long been the local superintendent of trade ships, which placed him in charge of both the local militia and the local navy. The Song prince asked Pu to give him control of Zaytun’s hundreds of ships—an instant navy. The prince’s sudden acquisition of naval power would pose a threat to the Mongols, who had no navy.

A Mongol general sent emissaries to Pu, asking him not to back the Song emperor. After consulting with local scholars and landlords and other foreign trading families, Pu presented Zaytun and all its ships to the Mongols in 1276. To seal the deal, he ordered the murder of some of the prince’s family, who happened to live in town. The Song forces had been camped outside the city. Angered, they besieged Zaytun for three months before fleeing the advance of the Mongols.

The Mongols—who had now formed the Yuan dynasty—lavishly rewarded the conspirators, effectively giving control of the port to the Pu family and their allies in the Muslim trading families.1 So powerful did Zaytun’s Muslim minority become that some Fujianese converted to Islam, which allowed them to register as foreigners and enjoy foreigners’ privileges. Eventually most government positions throughout Fujian were held by Chinese converts.

As one might expect, the Islam practiced by these newcomers was far from the pure faith of Arabia. Rather than making the pilgrimage to distant Mecca, Fujianese believers traveled to the hills outside the city to walk seven times around the tombs of two early Sufi missionaries. Others adopted the Chinese custom of venerating their ancestors’ graves. Few learned the precepts of the Qu’ran—the book was not fully translated into Chinese until 1927. Fujianese imams, most of whom did not speak Arabic, memorized the original text, declaiming it phonetically in the mosques. As memories faded, the services descended into gibberish, meaningless recitations before uncomprehending audiences. In one way, though, this remote outpost of Islam preserved tradition most faithfully: Zaytun’s Muslim families, old and new alike, were split into quarrelsome factions, Sunni, Shi’ite, and Sufi.

Each faction dominated part of the government, controlled a section of the harbor, and had its own private militias. Pu’s lineage and its associates, who were apparently Sunni, had the Mongols’ favor and thus the most political power. The bulk of Zaytun’s foreign population, though, was Persian, and therefore Shi’ite. The Shi’ites had the biggest militias—enough to stop the Sunnis from grinding them under their heels. (Little is known about