diff --git a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
index 7e74a5386ef3..9a31cb74b4cd 100644
--- a/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
+++ b/drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
 #include <linux/hrtimer.h>
 #include <linux/kmemleak.h>
 #include <linux/dma-mapping.h>
+#include <xen/xen.h>
 
 #ifdef DEBUG
 /* For development, we want to crash whenever the ring is screwed. */
@@ -131,6 +132,17 @@ struct vring_virtqueue {
 
 static bool vring_use_dma_api(struct virtio_device *vdev)
 {
+	/*
+	 * In theory, it's possible to have a buggy QEMU-supposed
+	 * emulated Q35 IOMMU and Xen enabled at the same time.  On
+	 * such a configuration, virtio has never worked and will
+	 * not work without an even larger kludge.  Instead, enable
+	 * the DMA API if we're a Xen guest, which at least allows
+	 * all of the sensible Xen configurations to work correctly.
+	 */
+	if (xen_domain())
+		return true;
+
 	return false;
 }