He used the Arabic name Abd al-Qayyum Ruh al-Din Yusuf (عبد القيوم روح الدين يوسف).
[4] He was also styled as "Mawlana al-Hajj Yusuf Ruh al-Din Ma Fujuh" (مولانا الحاج يوسف روح الدين ما فو جوه).
After passing through the Sipsong Panna, they went south to Konbaung Burma, then took a riverboat along the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to Yangon.
[6] After Mecca, Ma stayed in the Middle East for another eight years; he first went to Cairo, where he studied at al-Azhar University, then travelled throughout the Ottoman Empire, going to Suez, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Cyprus, and Rhodes.
The Panthay Rebellion, which flared up in 1856 as part of a wider series of uprisings by the Hui (Muslim Han Chinese) and other minorities, was led mainly by Du Wenxiu; though Ma disagreed with Du's revolutionary methods, he also encouraged his followers to aid in the uprising; later, he would try to act as a peacemaker between the central government forces and the rebels.
[9] However, despite his efforts to bring about peace, the Qing government still regarded him as a rebel and a traitor; he was executed two years after the suppression of the rebellion.
This view emerged partly due to the growing marginalization of the Hui within China and calls for unity among themselves against the tide of the dominant Han-led society.
Taiwanese researcher Li Shoukong asserts that many Hui rebels had employed a similar tactic of pretending to surrender in the early years of the rebellion.
In 1863 Ma Dexin declared himself "King-Who-Pacifies-the-South (Pingnan Wang)", seized the official seals & stopped using the Qing reign year when dating documents.
[22] Sources say that Ma produced the first Chinese translation of the Qur'an,[23] as well as writing numerous books in Arabic and Persian about Islam.
[3] His most famous writings compared Islamic culture and the Confucian philosophy to find a theoretical and theological basis for their coexistence.
Ma Dexin appears to have picked up anti-Shia views from his time in the Ottoman lands and referred to them by the derogatory name Rafida (若废子) in his works, which attacked and criticized Shias and some Sufis.
Šarḥ al-laṭā'if (شرح اللطائف) Liu Zhi's The Philosophy of Arabia 天方性理 (Tianfang Xingli) Arabic translation by (Muḥammad Nūr al-Ḥaqq ibn Luqmān as-Ṣīnī) (محمد نور الحق ابن لقمان الصيني), the Arabic name of Ma Lianyuan.