hanasheh) as required in Nikkur, marking them as distinct from Muslims who otherwise, like them, also refrained from eating pork." The evidence on the stelae shows that they identified the emergence of Judaism as coinciding with the early Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1046–256 BCE, in modern reckoning). Abraham (阿無羅漢:Āwúluóhàn) was recorded as wakening as from sleep to the 19th generation from Pangu-Adam (阿躭:Ādān), and grasping profound mysteries, founded Judaism. This is said to have occurred in the 146th year of the Zhou Dynasty (i.e., 977 BCE). The floruit of Moses (乜攝:Miēshè) in turn is set in the 613th year of the same dynasty, namely around 510 BCE. In their prayers and liturgy, the traditional community followed Talmudic usage, celebrating all the Jewish festivals, observing the prayers, rituals and days of fasting variously associated with the Jewish Sabbath, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim and Tisha B'Av. Within a few centuries, nonetheless, practices regarding the coming of age ceremony, wedding and death and burial were acclimatized to the respective Chinese customs, though the text of the Kaddish in the Memorial Book suggests the prayer was recited at funerals. By sometime after the mid 19th century all of these practices appear to have been abandoned, including the observance of the Sabbath. Outside the synagogue was a large hall, the Tz'u t'ang (祖堂:zǔ táng) or "Hall of the Ancestors" where, according to the Portuguese Jesuit Jean-Paul Gozani (1647–1732) who lived in Kaifeng from 1698 to 1718, incense bowls were placed to commemorate the patriarchs and outstanding figures of the Law, as well as various holy men (聖人:shèngrén). This was similar to Chinese rites regarding ancestors, with the difference that no images were allowed. Their Pentateuch was divided into 53 sections according to the Persian style. The Jesuits The existence of Jews in China was unknown to Europeans until 1605, when Matteo Ricci, then established in Beijing, was visited by a Chinese official from Kaifeng. According to the account in De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas, Ricci's visitor, named Ai Tian (), was a chüren (舉人:jǔrén) – someone who had passed the provincial level of a jìnshì degree decades earlier in 1573. Ai Tian explained that he was a member of a 1,000 strong Israelite congregation that worshipped one God. They were unfamiliar with the word "Jew" (yóutài) which, according to Zhang Ligang, first appeared in the 1820s when a German missionary used