China's Great Mosque of Xi'an looks like a pagoda, not a domed mosque
In eighth-century Chang'an, then the largest city on Earth, one of East Asia's first grand mosques rose without a single minaret, because the state banned them. Its present building resembles a Chinese temple with a green roof. Across the Islamic world, mosques took on the look of whatever land they reached.
The word masjid means a place of prostration, from the Arabic sajada, to prostrate, and it reached English through French mosquée and Italian moschea. A mosque need not even be a building; any spot used for Islamic prayer, including an open courtyard, can qualify. The earliest were simple, and between roughly 650 and 750 CE they typically combined walled open and covered spaces, often with a minaret for the daily call to prayer.
Which was first is debated. Candidates include the sanctuary around the Ka'bah in Mecca, which Islamic tradition credits to Abraham, and the Quba Mosque that Muhammad built after leaving Mecca in 622 CE. Some architectural historians instead name the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, raised on the site of Muhammad's home with his own hands, its roof held up by palm-trunk columns around a large courtyard. That layout became a model, and later rebuilding under the Umayyads added the first mihrab, the niche that marks the direction of Mecca.
Local styles then took over. The Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia, the first in northwest Africa, introduced the square minaret that became typical of the region, while Spanish and Maghrebi mosques borrowed Visigothic horseshoe arches. Mosques existed in India from the seventh century but only became widespread under the Mughals, whose onion domes and pointed arches reflect Persian and Central Asian taste; the Jama Masjid in Delhi and Lahore's Badshahi Mosque date from the mid-17th century. Javanese builders from the 15th century used tiered timber roofs like Balinese temples, and domes did not reach Indonesia until the 19th century. In Mali, the Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest mud-brick building in sub-Saharan Africa.
Beyond prayer, mosques have long doubled as courts, schools, alms centres, wedding venues and homeless shelters. Most pre-modern ones were funded by charitable endowments called waqf, and today privately funded mosques are growing alongside government-regulated ones.
Source: Mosque
