Dingzhou Mosque

The Dingzhou mosque is one of the oldest mosques in China. It is located at Jiefang Street in Dingzhou City, Hebei Province. It was rebuilt in 1348 during the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368). During the Ming Dynasty, it underwent a thorough repair in 1521, and a front hall, a rear hall, sidesteps, wing rooms, and a mimbar were added to the mosque. And it was named Worship Mosque. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the government ordered to rebuild the mosque in 1731 and named it as The Mosque. Because in the Ming dynasty an eminent noble family funded the repairs several times, and a member of the family was the religious leader in the mosque, it was also called the Governmental Mosque at that time.

The layout of the mosque has a traditional Chinese Siheyuan (a courtyard surrounded by four buildings) layout, but it has Islamic architectural form. There was a brick structure left from the Yuan Dynasty in the main worship hall, and the structure is the oldest extant domed construction. Many precious cultural relics are preserved in the mosque, especially the large number of steles. The Memoirist of Rebuilding the Mosque is one of the oldest steles that explain the dogma of Islam in Chinese.