The Baba Mosque is one of the famous
mosques in China. It is also called the Jiuzhao Pavilion, the Baoning
Mosque, Panlong Mountain Qubbah. It is located on Panlong
Mountain near Langzhong City, Sichuan Province.
The mosque has a religious origin. It was
originally the graveyard of a famous Islamic leader and scholar. His followers
built a series of buildings here. These buildings were expanded with the help
and support of the government. A building complex composed of Chinese and Islam
architectures finally came into being.
The mosque covers an area of 13,000 square
meters. The major buildings include the temple gate, the entrance wall, the
cemetery, the sermon room, the guest room, the stele pavilion, and the worship
hall, etc. The temple gate is a wood-and-stone construction. There are tablets
and carved pattern on the temple gate. Embossments carved on the entrance wall
are rare artworks. The cemetery is the main part of the mosque and is composed
of the arched entrance, the cemetery gate, the decorated archway, and the
Jiuzhao Pavilion. There are sermon rooms and worship halls outside the
cemetery.
In the mosque there are lots of cultural
relics, most of which are epigraphs. The mosque is still the main congregation
place for Dagongbei Menhuan, one of the main sects of Islam in
China.