The Mamluk Sultan of Egypt ordered Jidda to treat Chinese traders honorably upon their arrival in the early 15th century.

[4] Egypt, and specifically Cairo's Al-Azhar University, has long been an important destination for Chinese Muslims seeking Islamic learning.

[11][12][13][14] Na Zhong, a descendant of Nasr al-Din (Yunnan) was another one of the students sent to Al-Azhar in 1931, along with Zhang Ziren, Ma Jian, and Lin Zhongming.

It spread to China via Hui Muslim students like Muhammad Ma Jian who studied at Al-Azhar in Egypt) a saying of Muhammad, spread to China, which says "Loving the Motherland is equivalent to loving the Faith" (traditional Chinese: 愛護祖國是屬於信仰的一部份; simplified Chinese: 爱护祖国是属于信仰的一部份; pinyin: àihù zǔguó shì shǔyú xìnyǎng de yī bùfèn) (Arabic: حب الوطن من الایمان ḥubb al-waṭan min al-imān).

Exchanges were interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, but resumed in 1981; the group of ten sent from China to Al-Azhar that year included three Uyghurs, six Hui, and one Kazakh.

[22] Individual Chinese traders and entrepreneurs began arriving in Egypt in the late 1990s and early 2000s; they came largely from Zhejiang, Fujian, and the Northeast.