Chongqing Mosque

Chongqing Mosque traces its roots to a Ming-dynasty place of worship established in the city’s old town, historically located on Zhongxing Road in Yuzhong District. Sources place its founding anywhere from the mid-1400s to the Wanli era (late 1500s–early 1600s), with construction credited to Ma Wensheng, a Hui Muslim official from Henan. The mosque was originally one of three linked sites in the city — a west, south, and north mosque — with the north and south congregations eventually merging into the main west-side site. The original building was destroyed by Japanese bombing in 1940 and rebuilt in 1942, then underwent a major renovation in 1982 that gave it its distinctive Arabic-style green dome, topped with a star-and-crescent finial. A taller, 18-story annex known as the Chongqing Muslim Building was added downtown in 1996.

In 2020, as part of a citywide program to relocate and rebuild historic religious sites, the mosque moved entirely to a new, much larger complex in Jiulongpo District, near the Hui Muslim cemetery in the Erlang area — the site reflected in the coordinates above. Covering roughly 2.7 hectares, the rebuilt mosque blends Arabic Islamic architectural forms with Hui Chinese design: four minarets rising 68 meters at each corner, a grand prayer hall large enough for around 2,000 worshippers, and a separate hall for women. It is now the largest and most modern mosque in southwest China, and remains the seat of the Chongqing Islamic Association and the center of the city’s Islamic community, hosting Friday communal prayers and Ramadan observances.