Bukui Mosque

Bukui Mosque (Chinese: 卜奎清真寺; pinyin: Bǔkuí Qīngzhēnsì) is a mosque in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang in northeast China. It is located in Mosque Road (Chinese: 清真路; pinyin: Qīngzhēn Lù) off of Bukui Street. It was built during the Qing Dynasty, and listed in 2006 as a Major Sites Protected at the National Level. It is the largest and oldest mosque in the province.

History and structure

The name "Bukui" is the Chinese transcription of a Daur word meaning "auspicious". Bukui Mosque originally consisted of two separate mosques:

• The East Mosque, a three-storey, 374 square metres (4,030 sq ft) building constructed in Kangxi 23 (1684), predating the city of Qiqihar by seven years
• The West Mosque, a two-storey, 173 square metres (1,860 sq ft) building constructed in Xianfeng 3 (1852) by followers of the Jahriyya menhuan who immigrated from Gansu

The mosque contains roughly 2,000 square metres (22,000 sq ft) of constructed space; the whole compound covers an area of roughly 6,400 square metres (69,000 sq ft). The two prayer spaces together can hold a total of roughly 450 people.

The mosque's long history has led to a saying in Qiqihar: "the mosque existed long before the town Bukui". In 1958, the two mosques were reorganised as a single mosque, with the name "Qiqihar Mosque". The mosque was listed as a city-level protected cultural relic in 1980, and as a provincial-level protected cultural relic in 1981; its name was then also changed to the present "Bukui Mosque". An assessment done that year found that while the East Mosque was in relatively good condition, there was serious structural damage to the West Mosque. Reconstruction efforts were undertaken in 1989-1990. On 25 June 2006, the State Council of the People's Republic of China entered Bukui Mosque onto the 6th batch list of the Major Sites Protected at the National Level.

See also

• Islam in China
• List of mosques in China
• List of famous mosques
• Timeline of Islamic history
• Islamic architecture
• Islamic art
• List of mosques