Chapter 47 Section 10 Chengdu Drum Tower South Street Mosque

Chengdu Drum Tower South Street Mosque was built in the early Ming Dynasty.At that time, although Sichuan was not the main place where Muslims lived, several mosques were built in urban and rural areas of Chengdu, among which the mosque on Gulou South Street was the largest one.During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the Gulou South Street Mosque in Chengdu was rebuilt. The buildings in the temple mainly include worship halls, archways, bangge towers, bathrooms, scripture classrooms, and left and right wing rooms. In 1941, due to the bombing of Japanese invaders, buildings such as Bangge Tower were destroyed. The main existing buildings include the worship hall and so on.

The worship hall is rectangular, surrounded by double-step corridors with rolling sheds. The depth of the whole building including the corridors is 31.55 meters, and the width is 16.86 meters.The characteristic of this hall is that the roof of the hall is built with double eaves and claw-corner roofs on the rectangular plane, and then the double eaves and gable roofs are built on the front and rear ends of the eaves, so that the ridge plane is I-shaped.Only the rear wall of the main hall is made of bricks, and wooden lattices are installed on the other three sides.The lattice pattern is simple and elegant, and it adopts the craft of hollow carving, which is very delicate.There are two rows of golden wooden pillars in the hall. There are lattice doors and celestial official hoods between the pillars, which divide the hall into two and add to the solemn atmosphere of the room.

Compared with other mosques, Gulou South Street Mosque in Chengdu has a unique architectural structure and original arrangement, which provides important material materials for our study and understanding of the development of Islamic architecture in Southwest China today.