Huaisheng Mosque
— — a lighthouse the city built around.
Not only on a wall.
“An old mosque on Guangta Road in central Guangzhou, set behind a quiet wall a short walk north of the Pearl River. Inside the courtyard the Guangta, the Light Tower, rises pale and round, said to have served as a lighthouse for the sea traders who came up the river when this was the southern end of the silk routes. By tradition the mosque is among the oldest in the world, founded in the seventh century.
Huaisheng Mosque, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
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The place, in three passes.
Huaisheng Mosque stands on Guangta Road in Yuexiu District, the historic core of Guangzhou in southern China. Tradition holds that it was founded in 627 during the early Tang dynasty by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, which would make it among the oldest mosques in the world outside Arabia. The present buildings are the result of repeated rebuildings, most thoroughly after a fire in 1343 and again in the seventeenth century, but the layout and the minaret remain.
The defining feature is the Guangta, the Light Tower, a smooth round minaret of pale plastered brick rising roughly 36 metres above the courtyard. The form is unusual for Chinese religious architecture and reflects the mosque's early connection with the Indian Ocean trade. By the time of the Song dynasty the tower stood near the river edge, and accounts describe it as a navigation marker for ships coming up to the Guangzhou anchorage. The prayer hall sits on a low platform with a green-tiled roof in the local manner.
The mosque remains a working place of worship for the Hui Muslim community of Guangzhou and the city's large population of West African and Middle Eastern traders. The courtyard is open to visitors outside prayer times; dress is modest and shoes are removed before entering the prayer hall. The mosque is a short walk from Ximenkou metro station on Line 1 and from the old Thirteen Factories quarter along the Pearl River that gave the city its long history as a port of foreign trade.