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Worshippers, tourists revere this towering symbol of Islam
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苏公塔礼拜寺 (sū gōng tǎ lǐ bài sì) Emin Minaret Mosque
Emin Minaret Mosque is one of the largest Uygur mosques in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
About 2 kilometers east of Turpan, the mosque is best known for its impressive minaret, namely, the Emin Minaret. Towering nearly 55 meters above ground, the minaret is the tallest of its kind in China.
Construction of the mosque kicked off under the rule of Emin Khoja (1694-1777), the Duke of Turpan, to show his gratitude to the “imperial kindness” of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which helped him defeat the Dzungar Mongols.
But the duke died before the mosque was completed.
His son Suleman, who succeeded the duke, carried on the project and the mosque was completed in the 43rd year of the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-99).
In Chinese, people call the great minaret in the mosque Sugongta, meaning, the Pagoda of Prince Su (Suleman). It’s also called Emin Minaret in memory of the Duke of Tarpan.
The mosque features a mixture of distinctive Islamic architectural characteristics and Uygur building traditions.
The mosque has only one roofed building, the main hall, which is nine bays wide and 11 bays deep. Ranging from 3 to 5 meters, a bay was a basic building spatial unit in ancient China.
The central part of the hall is used for worshipping and the surrounding rooms for rest.
The hall can house nearly 1,000 worshipers attending daily prayers.
It is built mainly with clay bricks. Even the hall’s domes are made with such bricks. But the outer rooms are supported by elegant thin wooden pillars and beams.
There are a number of dormers in the hall for ventilation and lighting. All the mosque’s doors and windows are built in the shape of a lancet arch with distinctive Islamic characteristics.
In front of the mosque, there is a large pointed-arch niche. At the lower part of its back wall, there’s a wooden door that opens into a vestibule which provides access to both the inner hall and a passage to the tall minaret.
The vestibule itself is covered by a dome with an inside diameter of 5.7 meters.
Sitting in the northeast corner of the mosque, the Emin Minaret was designed by a Uygur architect named Ibrahim, featuring a pre-Safavid Iranian style. The 44-meter-tall minaret sits on a platform about 10 meters above a highway that runs tangentially along the mosque.
Made solely of sun-dried bricks, the minaret is an elegant circular structure that tapers sharply towards its tip. The diameter at its bottom stretches more than 14 meters, but it shrinks to just 2.8 meters at the top.
The exterior brick walls of the minaret are carved into complicated, geometric and floral patterns in a typical Islamic style.
Inside, there is a 72-step staircase that goes to the top. And at different heights and in different directions, there are narrow pointed-arch windows for both ventilation and lighting.
In the passage at the bottom of the minaret, there is a stone tablet erected in 1778, the year construction was completed. On the tablet, there are Arabic and Chinese inscriptions lauding Allah and Emperor Qianlong.
Today, the mosque and the famous minaret attract throngs of visitors and worshipers every day.
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