Research Catalog

Title

China's early mosques / Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt.

Author

Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman

Publication

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2015]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxiv, 331 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), maps, plans; 25 cm.

Summary

This book explains how the worship requirements of the mosque and the Chinese architectural system converged. What happens when a monotheistic, aniconic, foreign religion needs a space in which to worship in China, a civilisation with a building tradition that has been largely unchanged for several millennia? The story of this extraordinary convergence begins in the 7th century and continues under the Chinese rule of Song and Ming, and the non Chinese rule of the Mongols and Manchus, each with a different political and religious agenda. This book explains that mosques, and ultimately Islam, have survived in China because the Chinese architectural system, though unchanging, is adaptable: it can accommodate the religious requirements of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and Islam. It includes case studies of China's most important surviving mosques (including 30 premodern mosques, the tourist mosques in Xi'an and Beijing, and the Uygur mosques in Kashgar). It aims to build an understanding of the mosque at the most fundamental level, asking what is really necessary for Muslim worship space. It presents Chinese architecture as uniquely uniform in appearance and uniquely adaptable to something as foreign as Islam.

Series Statement

Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art

Uniform Title

Edinburgh studies in Islamic art.

Subjects

• Mosques
• Mosques > China > History
• Architecture > China > Islamic influences
• Islamic architecture > China > History
• China
• Architecture, Chinese

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-318) and index.

ISBN

• 9780748670413
• 0748670416

LCCN

2015510122

OCLC

• ocn917363149
• 917363149
• SCSB-5845904

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries