Beytulla Mosque, Islamic mosque in Yining City, China.
Beytulla Mosque, officially the Yining Jiefang South Road Mosque, stands at 45 Jiefang South Road. The 2003 rebuild is a four-storey building of 6,950 square metres: a basement and ground-floor commercial area, with prayer halls for 3,000 to 5,000 people on the upper floors. The old minaret was kept; the former prayer hall had 40 columns and over 200 floral paintings.
The Qing court allocated 10,000 taels of silver for this mosque, built in Ningyuan under Aqimu Bek Elom Zhabu and completed, by legend, in 1773. It was expanded around 1865 and again in the early 20th century. In 1995 it was declared unsafe, demolished and rebuilt on the same site; the white-domed reconstruction opened in October 2003 at a cost of 9.5 million yuan.
The mosque's name, Beytulla, means "House of God" in Arabic. Before the 1995 demolition, its prayer hall held 40 pillars and over 200 floral paintings, and its 50-room preaching hall housed more than 200 students. Since 2005 it has been listed as a key tourist site in Yining.
The mosque stands at 45 Jiefang South Road, on a busy stretch of the street. The 2003 building has four levels: the basement and first floor are commercial space, while the prayer halls occupy the second and third floors, reached by stairs. The minaret survives from the earlier complex; the other old structures were demolished.
Before the 1995 demolition, the mosque had a minaret, a prayer hall of about 1,000 square metres with 40 pillars and over 200 floral paintings, and a preaching hall of more than 50 rooms housing some 200 students. The minaret was kept when the rest was rebuilt in 2003.
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