This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Muslim diplomats and merchants reached Tang dynasty China within a few decades of Islam's own founding, arriving by both the overland Silk Road and by maritime routes through southern ports such as Guangzhou. Traditional Chinese Muslim accounts credit an embassy from Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, with introducing Islam directly at the Tang court as early as 616 to 618.
Modern historians treat that early embassy account as legendary rather than documented, and instead point to a firmly attested official contact in 651, when an Arab embassy sent during the Rashidun Caliphate was received by the Tang emperor Gaozong at his court. That reception marks the first confirmed diplomatic contact between the Caliphate and China, distinct from the merchant and trader presence that had likely reached Chinese ports by other routes somewhat earlier.
What this changed for Islam's spread was the opening of a durable channel between the Islamic world and China at the level of empire to empire recognition, not merely commerce. From Gaozong's reception of the 651 embassy onward, merchant communities already trading through Guangzhou and other southern ports had an official diplomatic relationship behind them, one traditional Chinese Muslim memory later pushed back by decades in the story of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas' own embassy.