I almost gave up looking for this place cos of the whole drama ... tired and it was getting dark. As I walked through the narrow streets, I prayed and asked God to show me the way .... :) ... and He did .... praise God.I have to say that of all the places that I have visited, this is one of the best that I have gone and really enjoy and marveled at this art-piece. It's so so Chinese yet so Muslim. what a mixture of art and religion ....
This mosque, i believe one of the earliest mosques in China was build in 724AD during Tang Dynasty and has a history of 1270yrs! Amazing right?
Anyway ,.... found an article which is well written and informative online .... just read from the article for info : http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=9146 ..... as follows :
The Great Mosque of Xian is the largest and best preserved of the early
mosques of China. Built primarily in the Ming Dynasty when Chinese
architectural elements were synthesized into mosque architecture, the
mosque resembles a fifteenth century Buddhist temple with its single
axis lined with courtyards and pavilions.
Like the Great Mosques at Hangzhou, Quanzhou and Guangzhou, the
Great Mosque of Xian is thought to have existed as early as the seventh
century. The mosque that stands today, however, was begun in 1392 in the
twenty-fifth year of the Ming Dynasty. It was ostensibly founded by
naval admiral and hajji Cheng Ho, the son of a prestigious Muslim
family and famous for clearing the China Sea of pirates. Since the
fourteenth century, the mosque has undergone numerous reconstructions.
Most of the buildings extant today are from the Ming and Qing Dynasties
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The mosque was constructed
on Hua Jue Lane just outside the city walls built by the Ming Dynasty,
in what was once the jiao-fang neighborhood for foreigners to the
northwest of the city. Today, this neighborhood is part of Xian proper,
with the city's famous Drum Tower a block away.
The mosque occupies a narrow lot about 48 meters by 248
meters, and the precinct walls enclose a total area of 12,000 square
meters. Unlike many Chinese mosques, it has the layout of a Chinese
temple: successive courtyards on a single axis with pavilions and
pagodas adapted to suit Islamic function. Unlike a typical Buddhist
temple, however, the grand axis of the Great Mosque of Xian is aligned
from east to west, facing Mecca. Five successive courtyards, each with a
signature pavilion, screen, or freestanding gateway, lead to the prayer
hall located at the western end of the axis.
The first courtyard is entered via two modest side gates
along the north and south precinct walls. Its eastern precinct wall is
constructed of finely ground and polished brick and has a wide screen
wall at its center, carved with floral patterns organized into three
diamond shapes. Ornamental projections resembling wooden dougong
brackets are carved into the brick under the raised eaves of the roofed
screen wall. At the center of the courtyard is an imposing wooden
gateway, or pailou. This nine-meter high freestanding pailou
is a four columned roofed structure buttressed on all sides by wooden
props, anchored into stone bases. Multiple tiers of meticulously carved dougong brackets support its blue glazed tile roof.
The rooms along the northern wall have staggered facades, with the "Unmatched Pavilion", or Yizhen Pavilion,
in the center. The pavilion, used as a lecture hall, is three bays wide
and has a hipped roof fronted by a central projection with wide, raised
eaves, reminiscent of a bangke tower. This roof is mimicked to a lesser
degree on the flanking halls, with elaborate awnings spanning over the
entryways. Beautifully carved lambrequins compliment the recessed
curtain wall at the back of the porch at the Unmatched Pavilion, which
has a finely carved door and lattice windows. Even the steps leading up
to the lecture hall were once carved with floral motifs. Sculpted
dragons and flowers decorate the roof ridges and crests. Notably,
figurative sculpture can only be found atop the roofs of the mosque
complex and not along paths or flanking gateways, quite unlike a
Buddhist temple.
In the second court, separated from the first by a shallow roofed pavilion, stands a rectilinear stone pailou
built to resemble a wooden structure. It's three doorways, the central
of which is higher and wider than the two flanking, each bear an
inscription. Two freestanding vertical brick piers, carved with ornate
floral motifs and crowned with tiled roofs with upswept eaves and dougong brackets, follow the stone pailou.
These monumental piers, which are repeated again in the third
courtyard, house stone tablets with Arabic inscription in their central
arched niches. Reception rooms, now used as shops and residential space,
flank the second court. The area to the south of this courtyard was
originally designated for Hui burial, although this practice never fully
developed.
Through another roofed pavilion is the third courtyard, the Qing Xiu Dian,
or "Place of Meditation". Here, the commanding structure is the
octagonal "Pavilion for Introspection", also known as the "Tower of the
Visiting Heart" (Xing Xin Ting or Sheng Xin Lou). This
brick tower is over ten meters tall with three stories separated by
eaves and wrapped by wooden balconies. Unlike its predecessors, where
the bangke tower (moon watching pavilion) is separate from the minaret, this Ming mosque merges the minaret and the bangke tower
into the tallest structure of the complex. Its eaves are decorated with
blue glazed tiles and dragon heads are carved into the ridges. Dougong brackets
are seen below the raised eaves of the roof. Inside, a moveable
staircase leads up to the ceiling caissons, which are carved and
brightly painted with lotus flowers. The third courtyard has a series of
rooms along its north and south walls. These rooms are internally
divided and once hosted the library and the imam's quarters, with a
narrow courtyard for ablutions. The paneled wooden partitions of these
rooms are covered with painted carvings of chrysanthemums, lotus flowers
and peonies.
The fourth courtyard is entered via three marble gates with
wooden doors. The prayer hall, preceded by a large platform, is at the
western end of the courtyard. Before this platform stands the Phoenix
Pavilion or the Feng Hua Ting. Built during the Qing Dynasty, the
pavilion is said to resemble a phoenix with its outstretched wings and
interrupts direct view to the prayer hall. Its roofline connects three
distinct pavilions, extending from the central hexagonal structure
towards two pyramidal roofed gazebos. This apparently Chinese roofline
conceals the wooden cupola that crowns the central space, carried on
squinches, attesting to the continued use of imported Islamic elements
in interior space. Lecture halls also flank this courtyard. The South
Hall serves as a gallery for inscribed tablets that record the history
of the mosque. Beyond the Phoenix Pavilion are two small pools, now
containing fountains, set astride the central axis, followed by the
stone "Cloud Gateways" of the granite "Moon Platform" preceding the
prayer hall.
The prayer hall, which is the focus of this ceremonial
layout, is comprised of a porch and a great hall with a projecting qibla
bay. These three sections cover an area of about 1,270 square meters.
They are covered by a single roof with three distinct segments, a common
feature of Ming era mosques taken from Han palace architecture. The
joined hipped roofs of the porch and the main hall roof have parallel
north-south ridges. The hipped roof of the projecting qibla iwan is
perpendicular to that of the main hall. The heights of the roofs are
kept proportional to the depth of the space, following Hui tradition.
The portico, hall and iwan are differentiated by separate
roofs, a common feature of early Hui mosques taken from Han palace
architecture. The open portico, carried on six columns, is covered by
the gentle bump of a rolled-shed roof, which dips down to join the roof
of the great hall. This large hall, of equal width to the portico,
sports a pitched roof raised above the others on two rows of six
columns. It is curtailed at the back by the hipped roof of the qibla
iwan, whose eaves are supported on twelve external columns. The rounded
timber columns supporting these roofs are marvelously decorated with low
relief woodwork. There is more sculptural woodwork on the lambrequins
and the heavy dougong brackets. Six hundred polychrome panels
with floral motifs and carved brackets decorate of the ceiling. Heavy
cylindrical columns, painted deep red like the walls, divide the first
two spaces into seven bays. Blue scrolls bearing Arabic calligraphy are
hung from the porch columns.
The qibla bay at the western end of the prayer hall is dimly
light with two skylights. The two meter tall pointed arch of the mihrab
is decorated with carved arabesques and calligraphy and painted with in
darker hues of red, brown than the central space. Four bands of Quranic
inscriptions encircling the mihrab reveal the influence of Chinese
calligraphy on Arabic lettering; one such inscription is embedded in a
pool of lotuses.
Behind the prayer hall, and accessed by two circular "moon gates" on either side of the portico wall, is the fifth court with two small constructed hills used for the ceremonial viewing of the new moon.
Behind the prayer hall, and accessed by two circular "moon gates" on either side of the portico wall, is the fifth court with two small constructed hills used for the ceremonial viewing of the new moon.
