Īnother important contact was made in 1890 when Sultan and Caliph Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire dispatched a naval vessel to Japan for the purpose of saluting the visit of Japanese Prince Komatsu Akihito to the capital of Constantinople several years earlier. This helped Islam spread and reach the Japanese people, but only as a part of the history of cultures. In the late 1870s, the biography of Muhammad was translated into Japanese. The first modern Muslim contacts were with Indonesians who served aboard British and Dutch ships in the late 19th century. In the 17th century text Safine-ye Solaymani, Shia writer Mohammad Ibrahim described Japan and its culture, economy, recent political upheavals and their relationship with foreign merchants. In the 17th century, Iranian merchants from Thailand arrived to Nagasaki during the Edo period. He had sailed to the islands in Malacca in 1555. Įarly European accounts of Muslims and their contacts with Japan were maintained by Portuguese sailors who mention a passenger aboard their ship, an Arab who had preached Islam to the people of Japan. In the 13th century, a manuscript written by Persians from Quanzhou in China for the Japanese monk Keisei was brought back to Japan. According to Chinese sources, Lan Yu owned 10,000 Katana, Hongwu Emperor was displeased with the general's links with Kyoto and more than 15,000 people were implicated for alleged treason and executed. Excellent ebony wood is found there." And: "Gold and ebony are exported from Waqwaq." Mahmud Kashgari's 11th century atlas indicates the land routes of the Silk Road and Japan in the map's easternmost extent.ĭuring that period there was contact between the Hui, general Lan Yu of the Ming dynasty and the swordsmiths of Japan. The earliest Muslim records of Japan can be found in the works of the Persian cartographer Ibn Khordadbeh, who has been understood by Michael Jan de Goeje to mention Japan as the "lands of Waqwaq" twice: "East of China are the lands of Waqwaq, which are so rich in gold that the inhabitants make the chains for their dogs and the collars for their monkeys of this metal. Kashgari's map features an island on the top, corresponding to the east from China. Some elements of Islamic philosophy were also distilled as far as back as the Heian period through Chinese and Southeast Asian sources. There are isolated records of contact between Islam and Japan before the opening of the country in 1853, possibly as early as the 1700s some Muslims did arrive in earlier centuries, although these were isolated incidents. Today, Muslims are made up of largely immigrant communities, as well as, though smaller, the ethnic Japanese community. There were isolated occasions of Muslim presence in Japan before the 19th century. However, due to this small initial population base, immigration from Muslim majority countries has made Islam the fastest growing religion in the country in terms of percentage increase, with its followers growing by 109%, from 110,000 in 2010 to 230,000 at the end of 2022, out of total population of around 126 million. Islam is one of the smallest minority faiths in Japan, representing around 0.15% of the total population as of 2022. The history of Islam in Japan is relatively brief in relation to the religion's longstanding presence in other nearby countries.
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