The Great Mosque of Xi’an
Mosque architecture

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.
Mosque of Xi An

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.
Reconstructions

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.
Precinct

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.
Layout

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.
First courtyard

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.
Pailou

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.
Pavilion

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 decorated

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.
Second court

In the second court, separated from the
first by a shallow roofed pavilion, stands a
rectilineal 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.
Piers

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.
Residential space

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.
Third courtyard

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.
Bangke tower

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.
Eaves

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.
Rooms

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.
Fourth courtyard

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.
Phoenix Pavilion

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.
Roofline

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.
Halls

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.
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.
Roof

The joined hipped roofs of the porch and
the main hall roof have parallel northsouth 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.
Portico

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.
Columns

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.
Woodwork

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.
Polychrome

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.
Qibla bay

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.
Inscription

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.