Huaisheng Mosque

The entrance to the mosque, c. 1873

The Huaisheng Mosque and Guangta Minaret, 1860 by Felice Beato[1]

The Huaisheng Mosque and Guangta Minaret

Old Chinese Muslim manuscripts say the mosque was built in 627 by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, a Companion of the Prophet who supposedly came on to China in the 620s.[2] Although modern secular scholars do not find any historical evidence that Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas actually visited China,[3] they agree that the first Muslims must have arrived to China within the 7th century,[3] and that the major trade centers, such as Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and Yangzhou, probably already had their first mosques built during the Tang dynasty, even though no reliable sources attesting to their actual existence has been found so far.[2][n 1]

The minaret measures 36 meter high and consists of two stories, it was the highest building in the city until the beginning of the 20th century. it was a valued unit in the Middle Ages; it was used as a light house, a wind vane, and control tower.[5][1]in ancient time it had a golden rooster in its top.[1]

It is very likely that the mosque existed during the early years of the Song dynasty. In 1349, Ramadan ibn Alauddin, the first named Korean Muslim, was buried in the mosque cemetery. The mosque was rebuilt in 1350 then again in 1695 after being destroyed in a fire. The Huaisheng Light Tower or minaret was built at an earlier period.[6] As late as the 19th century, the minaret tower was one of the major landmarks of Guangzhou.[7]

The Tatar traveler Abdurreshid Ibrahim who was an acquaintance of one of the Mosque's ahongs, Wang Kuan, was dismissive of the claim that this mosque was built by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas. He called it a peculiar idea:

This history is indisputable to the Chinese and it would seem to be impossible to persuade them that this was not the case ..... Sa’d bin Vakkâs was a famed person among the Noble Companions and the ten companions who were promised Paradise, and his biography is well known to Muslims. If Vakkâs had been an envoy [from the Arabs to China], the great Hadith scholars would have recorded it ... because some of them would have understood that anything that happened in the era of our Prophet Muhammad would have to be written down, without ignoring the slightest detail. If an envoy had been dispatched to China like this, Hadith scholars should have recorded it."[8]

^ a b c Hagras, Hamada (2023-01-01). "THE INITIAL ARCHITECTURAL SHAPE OF THE GUANGTA MINARET: TEXTUAL AND ARCHITECTURAL STUDY". Shedet. 10 (10): 207–226. doi:10.21608/shedet.2023.291373. ISSN 2356-8704. ^ a b c Lipman, Jonathan Neaman (1997). Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China. University of Washington Press. p. 29. ISBN 962-209-468-6. ^ a b Lipman 1997, p. 25. ^ Leslie, Donald (1986), Islam in Traditional China: A Short History to 1800, Canberra College of Advanced Education, pp. 42–6, ISBN 9780858892736. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page). ^ "Great Mosque of Guangzhou". Archived from the original on 2005-02-19. Retrieved 2005-04-28. ^ Cite error: The named reference eb was invoked but never defined (see the help page). ^ Yamazaki, Noriko (2014-07-03). "Abdürreşid İbrahim's journey to China: Muslim communities in the late Qing as seen by a Russian-Tatar intellectual". Central Asian Survey. 33 (3): 405–420. doi:10.1080/02634937.2014.953877. S2CID 144013422.

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