Id Kah Mosque

For the mosque in Afghanistan, see Id Gah Mosque.

Id Kah Mosque
ھېيتگاھ مەسچىتى (Uyghur)
艾提尕尔清真寺 (Chinese)
The Id Kah Mosque in 2023
Religion
AffiliationIslam
StatusActive as a tourist site; closed to worship except for elderly worshipers on select days.
Location
LocationKashgar, Xinjiang
CountryChina
Id Kah Mosque is located in Xinjiang
Id Kah Mosque
Location of the mosque in Xinjiang
Map
Interactive map of Id Kah Mosque
Coordinates39°28′20″N 75°59′03″E / 39.47227°N 75.984106°E / 39.47227; 75.984106
Architecture
ArchitectSaqsiz Mirza
TypeMosque
StyleMing
Completed1442 CE
Specifications
Capacity20,000 worshipers
Length120 m (390 ft)
Width140 m (460 ft)
Interior area16,800 m2 (181,000 sq ft)
Minaret3
Minaret height18 m (59 ft)
Official nameId Kah Mosque
艾提尕尔清真寺
TypeCultural
CriteriaReligion
Designated25 June 2001
Reference no.5-0440-3-246
Uyghur name
Uyghurھېيتگاھ مەسچىتى‎
Transcriptions
Latin YëziqiHëytgah Meschiti
Siril YëziqiХейтгах Месчити
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese艾提尕尔清真寺
Traditional Chinese艾提尕爾清真寺
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinÀitígǎ'ěr Qīngzhēnsì
[1]

The Id Kah Mosque (Uyghur: ھېيتگاھ مەسچىتى, romanized: Hëytgah Meschiti; Chinese: 艾提尕尔清真寺; pinyin: Àitígǎ'ěr Qīngzhēnsì; derived from Persian: عیدگاه, romanized: Eidgāh, lit. 'Place of Festivities') is a mosque in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang autonomous region of China. With the capacity of 20,000 worshipers inside the mosque and its sahn, it is the largest mosque in China.

Completed in the 15th century with subsequent renovations, during the 20th and 21st centuries the mosque was a key focal point for civil unrest centered on the Uyghurs, including the Xinjiang conflict and ongoing human rights abuses. The mosque has been mostly closed for worship since 2016 due to Chinese authorities' attempts to limit religious extremism and terrorism. It is only open to elderly worshipers on select holy days. As of March 2023, the mosque remained closed for worship, although it is open to tourists.[2]

History

The mosque was built in 1442 CE by Saqsiz Mirza, the elder of two sons of Amir Sayyid Ali, to commemorate his ancestors,[3] and incorporated older structures dating from 996 CE.[citation needed] The mosque's modern golden-brick structure was built in 1798, replacing the older building, and was further expanded in 1838 to its current size.[4]

On 9 August 1933, Hui General Ma Zhancang killed and beheaded the Uyghur leader Timur Beg, displaying his head on a spike at Id Kah mosque.[5][6][7][8] In March 1934, it was reported that the Uyghur emir Abdullah Bughra was beheaded and had his head displayed at Id Kah Mosque.[9][7] In April 1934, the Hui general Ma Zhongying gave a speech at Id Kah Mosque, telling the local Uyghur populace to be loyal to the Kuomintang and the Republic of China government in Nanjing.[5][6][7]

Akbar Rafsanjani, the president of Iran, visited the mosque in September 1992.[10]

The mosque was listed as a Chinese major cultural heritage site in 2001.[citation needed]

In 2009, Id Kah was the largest mosque both in Xinjiang and in China.[11][12] Every Friday, it housed nearly 10,000 worshippers and could accommodate up to 20,000.[13] On other days of the week, around 2,000 Muslims came to the mosque to pray.[11] In 2011, between 4,000 and 5,000 people attended Friday prayers in the mosque.[14]

Recent developments

Main article: Persecution of Uyghurs in China
The mosque entrance in 2015, with the removed plaque visible above the doors.

On 30 July 2014, the imam of the mosque at the time, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death by extremists shortly after attending morning prayers.[15][16] His unknown successor was jailed for 15 years by the Chinese authorities in 2017, having been accused of spreading extremism.[17][18]

Radio Free Asia reported in 2018 that a plaque containing Quranic scriptures, which had long hung outside the front entrance of the mosque, had been removed by authorities. Turghunjan Alawudun of the World Uyghur Congress said that the move was "one aspect of the Chinese regime’s evil policies meant to eliminate the Islamic faith among Uyghurs, to eliminate Uyghur faith, literary works, and language."[19] In May 2020, Radio Free Asia again reported on the removal of the plaque.[19]

The mosque's current imam, Memet Jume, said in a 2021 interview with the Associated Press that the number of worshippers attending Friday prayers at the mosque had dropped to between 800 and 900 in 2021.[14][20] He attributed the drop to "a natural shift in values", rather than Chinese government policies.[14]

The Independent and The Globe and Mail have reported that the Id Kah Mosque has been transformed from a working mosque into a tourist attraction.[21][22][23] Since 2016, it has been mostly closed to worshipers, opening only on select holy days to small groups of elderly adherents.[2] Henryk Szadziewski from the US-based Uyghur Human Rights Project told Radio Free Asia that while the mosque remains standing, "its disappearance would cause outrage given its importance. The significance of its existence to the Chinese authorities is to demonstrate to the world observance of Uyghurs' religious freedoms."[24] According to Uyghur imam Ali Akbar Dumallah, who fled China in 2012, scenes of small groups of people praying at the Id Kah and other mosques are staged by the government for visitors.[20] According to the World Uyghur Congress, a mass celebration that took place outside Id Kah Mosque during the 2021 celebration Eid al-Fitr was staged as part of a propaganda facade by Chinese authorities to attempt to falsely portray Xinjiang as a region with strong religious freedom and to whitewash its religious repression in the region.[25][26]

Architecture

The mosque incorporates architectural features observed in Central Asian, West Asian and to a lesser extent, Chinese architecture.[4] The mosque is centered around the prayer hall and has a courtyard on both sides of it.[27]

The Id Kah Mosque covers an area of approximately 16,800 square metres (181,000 sq ft).[28] It consists of a chapel, a sutra hall, a gate tower and some other auxiliary buildings. The temple gate is made of yellow bricks, the gate is 4.7 metres (15 ft) high, 4.3 metres (14 ft) wide, and the gate building is approximately 17 metres (56 ft) high. Two 18-metre-high (59 ft) minarets were built asymmetrically on both sides of the gate tower, and a crescent moon stands on the top of the tower. At dawn each day, the imam in the temple will climb the tower five times and call for Muslims to come and worship. Behind the gate tower is a large arch, with a minaret at the top.

The mosque was renovated in 1981,[29] and the mosque's façade was covered with tiles between 2004 and 2005.[30]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Id Kah Mosque". IRCICA. 2019. Retrieved 27 October 2025.
  2. ^ a b Hoshur, Shohret (3 July 2023). "Historic Kashgar mosque open for tourists, but not worshipers". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 27 October 2025.
  3. ^ 旅游词典 (1992). 旅游辭典 (in Chinese). 陕西旅游出版社.
  4. ^ a b Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman (2015). China's Early Mosques. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 268. ISBN 978-0-7486-7041-3.
  5. ^ a b Starr, S. Frederick (2004). Xinjiang: China's Muslim borderland. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 77–79. ISBN 0-7656-1318-2. Retrieved 28 June 2010.
  6. ^ a b Millward, James A. (2007). Eurasian crossroads: a history of Xinjiang. Columbia University Press. pp. 198–200. ISBN 978-0-231-13924-3. Retrieved 28 June 2010.
  7. ^ a b c Forbes, Andrew D. W. (1986). Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: a political history of Republican Sinkiang 1911–1949. Cambridge, England: CUP Archive. pp. 93, 123–124. ISBN 0-521-25514-7. Retrieved 28 June 2010.
  8. ^ The Times reported that a Turki chief was beheaded on 25 August 1933.[better source needed]
  9. ^ Tyler, Christian (2004). Wild West China: the taming of Xinjiang. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 116. ISBN 0-8135-3533-6. Retrieved 28 June 2010.
  10. ^ Dillon, Michael (2024). We Need To Talk About Xi. London, U.K.: Ebury Press. p. 146. ISBN 9781529914450. OCLC 1405989185.
  11. ^ a b "All Quiet on the Western Front". Beijing Review. June 2009. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  12. ^ China Report: Political, Sociological and Military Affairs. Foreign Broadcast Information Service. 1985.
  13. ^ Neville-Hadley, Peter (2003). Frommer's China. Frommer's. p. 302. ISBN 978-0-7645-6755-1.
  14. ^ a b c Moritsugu, Ken; Kang, Dake (6 May 2021). "Ramadan in China: Faithful dwindle under limits on religion". Taiwan News. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  15. ^ "Imam of China's largest mosque killed in Xinjiang". BBC News. 31 July 2014. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  16. ^ Areddy, James T. (31 July 2014). "State-Appointed Muslim Leader Killed in China". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
  17. ^ NEWS, KYODO (23 May 2021). "Ex-Muslim leader at China's biggest mosque in Xinjiang incarcerated". Kyodo News+. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  18. ^ "Former Muslim leader at China's biggest mosque in Xinjiang incarcerated". The Japan Times. 24 May 2021. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  19. ^ a b Sintash, Bahram (22 May 2020). "Removal of Islamic Motifs Leaves Xinjiang's Id Kah Mosque 'a Shell For Unsuspecting Visitors'". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
  20. ^ a b Moritsugu, Ken; Kang, Dake (6 May 2021). "Will there be any Muslims left among the Chinese Uyghurs?". Christian Science Monitor. Associated Press. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  21. ^ Fifield, Anna (25 September 2020). "'Prisons by another name': China is building vast new detention centres for Muslims in Xinjiang". The Independent.
  22. ^ Vanderklippe, Nathan (9 March 2021). "Lawsuit against Xinjiang researcher marks new effort to silence critics of China's treatment of Uyghurs". The Globe and Mail.
  23. ^ Vanderklippe, Nathan (4 November 2019). "'Like a movie': In Xinjiang, new evidence that China stages prayers, street scenes for visiting delegations". The Globe and Mail.
  24. ^ Sintash, Bahram (22 May 2020). "Removal of Islamic Motifs Leaves Xinjiang's Id Kah Mosque 'a Shell For Unsuspecting Visitors'". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  25. ^ "Staged Eid Celebrations Whitewash China's Abusive Policies in Xinjiang: Uyghur Rights Advocate". Radio Free Asia. 13 May 2021.
  26. ^ Echols, William (20 May 2021). "China's 'Wolf Warriors' Spread Staged Eid al-Fitr Dance Video". Polygraph.info. Retrieved 16 June 2021.
  27. ^ 蔡燕歆 (3 March 2011). Chinese Architecture. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-18644-5.
  28. ^ Qi, Xiaoshan (October 1994). Ancient art in Xinjiang, China. 新疆美術攝影出版社. ISBN 9787805472232.
  29. ^ China. Apa Publications. 1997. ISBN 978-0-395-66287-8.
  30. ^ Neville, Robert (28 June 2009). "Pourquoi la Chine casse-t-elle Kachgar?". LExpress.fr (in French). L'Express. Archived from the original on 30 June 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2021.

Further reading

  • Chang, Jing Qi (1982). "Islamic Architecture in China". In Brace Taylor, Brian Brace (ed.). In The Changing Rural Habitat. Vol. II: Background Papers. Singapore: Concept Media, for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. p. 74.
  • Loubes, Jean-Paul (1998). Architecture et Urbanisme de Turfan: Une Oasis du Turkestan Chinois (in French). Paris: L’Harmattan. pp. 159–160.
  • O’Kane, Bernard (1994). "Iran and Central Asia". In Frishman, Martin; Khan, Hasan-Uddin Khan (eds.). The mosque: history, architectural development & regional diversity. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 126–128.
  • Qiu, Yulan (2003). Ancient Chinese Architecture: Islamic Buildings, edited by Sun Dazhang. Vienna: Springer-Verlag. pp. 131, 146.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Kah_Mosque