Imperial China and Islamic empires had much in common: both civilizations incorporated a vast geographical terrain and a diversity of peoples that were administered through a complex bureaucratic state apparatus. Continental China’s millennia-long existence and contributions to world culture, and the Muslim expansion out of Arabia into a succession of religio-dynastic realms under which the arts and sciences flourished, created for each civilization a self-confident sense of identity bound up in their respective historical legacies. Such an intense sentiment of achievement makes possible several responses to outside influence, depending upon the circumstances. If there is no perceived threat, a tendency toward resistance and isolationism, whether actively or passively undertaken, can occur as a consequence of disinterest in or disdain for the foreign force

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