Guangtian Ha's The Sound of Salvation is one of the most important books to have appeared in recent years with respect to the study of Islam/Muslims in China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in rural Ningxia and marshaling an impressive array of sources indicative of the author's wide-ranging linguistic mastery and knowledge, the book provides an in-depth account of the histories, ritual modalities, and soundscapes of the Jahriyya Naqshbandi Sufi order. Situated mainly in Northwest China (with offshoots in Yunnan and the Northeast), the Jahriyya—literally the “loud ones” in Arabic—have long attracted scholarly attention due to their entanglements with the so-called Muslim rebellions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.1 Fixated on their violent or confrontational encounters with the imperial authorities, a considerable portion of the literature on the Jahriyya has looked at topics ranging from their interactions with the Qing courts to the martyrological and spiritual dimensions of their devotional...
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