The Dong Da Mosque & the Kaifeng Synagogue

There are many strong connections between Kaifeng's Dong Da (Great Eastern) Mosque, the Kaifeng Muslim community, and the Kaifeng Jewish community and their synagogue building. The synagogue and mosque are in the same neighborhood. As we saw, when the synagogue was dismantled, some material may have been taken to Dong Da. As we saw previously, the photographs of the Dong Da Mosque taken in the early twentieth century show how the synagogue probably looked in the 1850s. Kaifeng, along with most of China, had been in economic, political and social decline since the 1700s.

We will reference this work about the Dong Da Mosque: Hui Mosques in Northern China

by Candice Del Medico (PhD student at the Université Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne, recipient of a fieldwork grant from the EFEO) on the European Research Centre for Chinese Studies webpage. I will quote this article directly. See the article for more detail.

No Islamic building from the Tang dynasty survives today. We can suggest two possible explanations: either the first Muslims of China prayed at home, or they met in unmarked places. The mosque proper appeared much later. Today some sites are dated to this period, but the authenticity of the testimonies about them has been strongly questioned by researchers.[3]

The Tang dynasty was an imperial Chinese dynasty that ruled from 618 to 907 CE. This applies for the Kaifeng Jews as well. There is little doubt they lived in Kaifeng, and only in 1116 CE did they construct a synagogue. This most likely applied to the Kaifeng community:

The traditional Hui mosque is located in the heart of the Muslim city. It is a quiet, silent enclosed space in opposition to the tumult of restaurants and markets surrounding the site.

Domenge's 1722 sketch shows that the synagogue was enclosed by walls and buildings from the surrounding city. This applies to the synagogue was well:

The Hui mosque is most often defined by a set of buildings, not by a single one. It is a real complex around several courtyards and concentrating different functions. The Hui mosque is not only a place of worship, but also a space for gathering, trade, hosting and sometimes teaching.

The Kaifeng synagogue had three courtyard with dwellings for residents and visitors, halls for meetings and classrooms, and a kitchen and ritual bath.

court yard entry, Dong Da Mosque

The Kaifeng Jews stressed to visitors that they did not worship images, but they had two stone lions, and on bowls and other decorate surfaces there were "dragons or aquatic monsters" like that of decorative items in

From the outside, the traditional Chinese Hui-style mosque is almost impossible to distinguish from a Buddhist temple. It has a walled enclosure made from brick with some sculptures of plants, geometric patterns and Chinese calligraphy. Similarly, the decorative terracotta elements present on the roof of the wall, like figures of dragons or aquatic monsters, do not indicate the nature of the building. Only the inscription in Chinese “qingzhensi 清真寺” or “libaisi 礼拜寺”[5] above the front door informs us about the site’s use. Even inside the complex, at first glance it may be difficult to see the difference from a temple. Yet the Hui mosque has its own characteristics, a mixture of the Chinese and Islamic architectural traditions.

The general lay out of the synagogue complex would follow Chinese temples, and Chinese Muslim styles and conventions:

The entrance is located in the first courtyard and a path is created to the hall of worship, the most important hall of the complex, in the last courtyard. A central axis separates the complex symmetrically. Two secondary axes parallel to the main path are used to manage the flow of visitors. This scheme is very representative of the Chinese architectural principles found in sacred places.

the symmetrical gardens and paths, Great Mosque, Xian

The Dong Da Mosque runs east-west. The entry is on the east side, and the mosque building at the far west. Chinese temples were on a north south axis. Dong Da and the Kaifeng Synagogue were east west. Both the synagogue and the Dong Da mosque do not contain this Chinese element:

The wall-screen is intended to chase the spirits of Chinese tradition. This wall is not present in all the mosques because it references superstitions which do not exist in Islam.

The wall screens are absent from Dong Dai. Nor do they appear in drawing of the synagogue. Burning incense in the Hall of Ancestors was rite the Kaifeng Jews support. But this element of Chinese mythology was not permitted.

historic photo of a "spirit" screen

Structures to protect stele from the elements are is use and Dong Da, and were in the Kaifeng Synagogue:

Structures protecting stelae, named beiting in Chinese, are present in the various religious complexes of Northern China. They usually take the form of a decorated brick pillar, or square planted pavilion. These buildings protect stelae linked to the history of the complex from inclement weather. These pavilions include calligraphy, inscriptions on Islam in China, and old maps of the site. Only the most remarkable stelae are displayed. The aim is to highlight the reputation of the mosque, especially if its stelae were engraved by famous figures.

These were present in the third courtyard of the Kaifeng Synagogue, number 7, circled in red:

stele locations, synagogue

Dong Da is exactly like Kaifeng Synagogue in the exterior, and on its grounds. There are major difference for the interior. Here is a screen shot of the prayer room at the Dong Da Mosque:

Like mosques the world over, it is an open space without furnishings. This type of design makes sense for a Moslem prayer space, that must accommodate worshippers who assume many different postures during services, all close to the ground. The Kaifeng synagogue was probably as spacious as this photo, but it would have had more objects:

The Dong Dai Mosque has many decorative elements, but mainly along the walls:

the Dong Da mihrab, which faces east

Overall, the design and space were the same. The Kaifeng Synagogue was composed of two buildings, connected by covered walkway. The Dong Da layout seems to be of two interconnected buildings

The Dong Da Mosque and the Kaifeng Synagogue share the joint origins of their respective groups, Jews and Muslims who spoke Persian upon arriving in China and settling in Kaifeng, at around the turn of the first millennium. Through the centuries, they would build and rebuild Chinese looking mosques and synagogues, and become increasingly ethnically Chinese through the centuries.

The Muslims of Kaifeng were a much larger group (there are currently 150,000 in living in the city, and the numbers were most likely historically steady in the tens of thousands). The Jews of Kaifeng never numbered more then five-thousand, at most time, and usually far less. When the economics, social and political costs of the trade based on am avaricious colonialism, and its military components, weakened China, and its people, the small number of Jews in Kaifeng rendered communal survival impossible. The Muslims of Kaifeng evolved into the Hui Muslim group, native Chinese speakers who adhere to Islam. There are 11.5 million Hui Muslims in China. If the Kaifeng Jews had larger numbers to absorb the shocks Chinese history in the 19th century, there would be a people much like the Hui: Chinese, but Jewish.

We will later turn to the Hui Muslims in Kaifeng to try and understand the interior life of the community that the documents and visits to Kaifeng do not tell us. For example, what did the Kaifeng Jews eat? Some of the answer no doubt lies in Muslim foods found in Kaifeng.