Tongxin Mosque 同心清真大寺

About Tongxin Mosque

Its elevated platform, carved entrance screen and connected prayer halls create a distinctive architectural sequence. The site also carries local memory of the Red Army’s 1936 arrival and meetings in Tongxin. It remains a mosque, so the public architectural visit should follow the community’s current arrangements.

According to tradition, Tongxin Mosque was built about 600 years ago in the early Ming dynasty on the site of a collapsed Lama temple. Stone inscriptions record three later renovations, in the Wanli, Qianlong and Guangxu eras. An earthquake destroyed the mosque in 1739, and the Hui community rebuilt it on the same site in 1791 with a platform base seven metres high, largely fixing its present scale; it was demolished again after a Muslim uprising led by Ma Hualong (马化龙) was suppressed during the Tongzhi era, and rebuilding, led by the imam Ma Yuanzhang (马元章), was completed by 1907.

The mosque compound covers 3,542 square metres. Its prayer hall consists of connected front and back halls fronted by an attached porch, with pillar heads carved as lotus and brackets carved with plant and Arabic motifs; the two halls together span about 408 square metres and can hold 800 worshippers. Of four pairs of carved plaques that once hung on the hall's pillars, only one survives, the rest destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. A cemetery behind the mosque contains the shrines of two Sufi saints.

What to look for

• The raised platform and carved entrance screen frame the approach.
• Connected prayer halls combine Chinese building forms with Islamic decoration.

Location & getting there

Getting to Tongxin Mosque

Travel to Tongxin county town in Wuzhong and specify Tongxin Great Mosque, rather than a mosque in Yinchuan. Arrange the last local connection and ask at the entrance which areas are available to visitors.