Vietnam Travel
Halal Travel Guide: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims (Part 1)
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Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday. view all
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday. view all
Reposted from the web
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday.
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday.
Halal Travel Guide: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims (Part 1)
Articles • ali2007fr posted the article • 0 comments • 13 views • 3 days ago
Reposted from the web
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday. view all
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday. view all
Reposted from the web
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday.
Summary: Ho Chi Minh City — Mosques and Cham Muslims is presented here as a firsthand travel account in clear English, beginning with this scene: During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. The account keeps its focus on Ho Chi Minh City, Cham Muslims, Vietnam Travel while preserving the names, places, food, and historical details from the Chinese source.
During the 2018 New Year holiday, I visited the Hui Muslims who speak the Cham language in Sanya, Hainan. This sparked my interest in the Cham Muslims of Vietnam and Cambodia, so I decided to visit their communities during the Spring Festival holiday. Worried about the language barrier, I decided against going deep into the traditional Cham communities along the Vietnam-Cambodia border or the Vietnamese interior. Instead, I visited the urban Cham community in Ho Chi Minh City. Luckily, I received a warm welcome from the local Cham Muslims in Ho Chi Minh City and learned a great deal.
Let me first introduce the history of the Cham people. Champa, also known as Zhanpo, was a country established by the Cham people in southern Vietnam in 192 AD. The Cham people were originally an Austronesian-speaking group that moved from Borneo to the Indochinese Peninsula. After the 4th century, they were strongly influenced by India, using Sanskrit and practicing Brahmanism and Buddhism. Because their land was narrow and fragmented, the Champa Kingdom focused on maritime trade. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it became an important trading port on the Maritime Silk Road. Chinese merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou or Quanzhou, as well as Arab and Persian ships coming from the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, all chose to stop in Champa. Because of this, many Arab and Persian merchants lived in Champa during the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Two stone tablets with Arabic Kufic script were discovered in the cities of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang in southeastern Vietnam. The first tombstone belongs to a road worker named Abu Kamil, who passed away on November 20, 1039. The other stone is a notice about how Muslims lived with the local people. It uses a mix of Kufic and Naskh scripts and is thought to date from 1025 to 1035. The inscription suggests that Arab and Turkic merchants lived here.
Rubbings of the two inscriptions, taken from Cultural Exchange Between Champa and the Malay World.
After the 12th century, Champa fell into long-term warfare, and many Cham people fled to Cambodia and Malacca. From the mid-to-late 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate (1400–1511) became the most important Islamic nation in Southeast Asia, and Champa maintained close ties with it. In 1511, the Portuguese occupied the Malacca Sultanate, causing many Malays to move away, with some settling in areas where the Cham people lived. These Malay Muslims integrated with the Cham people, who also spoke an Austronesian language, through trade and marriage, leading many Cham to convert to Islam.
Western missionary M. Mahot MEP began living in Champa in 1676, and his records are considered the earliest and most reliable Western accounts of Champa's conversion to Islam. In a letter written in July 1678, he noted: 'Regarding the Champa religion, Malay Muslims are more vigilant than we are; they have immigrated to Champa in large numbers and have brought the Champa king and his court into Islam.' In 1685, M. Feret, a missionary from the Paris Foreign Missions Society who tried to preach in Champa, recorded: 'The King of Champa is a Muslim, and he even obtained a Quran from the Paris Foreign Missions Society for his own use.' According to the 19th-century Cham document Ariya Tuen Phaow, a Malay Islamic leader named Tuen Phaow led a large group of Cham and Malay people back from Cambodia to the Panduranga Kingdom in 1793. They joined forces to resist Vietnam. During this time, many Cham people converted to Islam, and this struggle is known as the final peak of the Islamization of the Cham people.
Starting in the 18th century, some Cham Muslims from Cambodia moved to the Mekong Delta on the Vietnam-Cambodia border. The Mubarak Mosque in An Giang was built in 1750 and is one of the oldest mosques in Vietnam.
A photo of the Mubarak Mosque at the Vietnam History Museum.
In 1862, France and the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam signed the Treaty of Saigon, which officially gave France control of Saigon. From then on, Saigon gradually grew into a French commercial hub in Southeast Asia. During French rule in Vietnam, the government gave the Cham people a relatively loose policy of self-governance, which led many Cham Muslims from Cambodia to move to the Mekong Delta. Most of these Cham people worked as manual laborers or small vendors. At the time, the most influential Muslims in Saigon were those from Malaysia and Indonesia who came to trade. The first mosque in Saigon, the Al Rahim Mosque, was built by Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
Tamil Muslims from South India began arriving in Saigon to trade in the late 19th century. Between the 1930s and 1950s, they built the Saigon Central Mosque in the city center, the Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque next to the Indian Muslim cemetery in the northwest suburbs, the Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque in the southwest suburbs, and the Cholon Mosque in the Chinese district of Cholon to the west.
In 1954, Vietnam was divided into North and South, and Saigon came under the rule of the South Vietnamese government. The South Vietnamese government maintained good diplomatic relations with the Federation of Malaya at the time and later with the Malaysian government. Many Cham mosques in Vietnam were built with help from Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Ho Chi Minh City, these include the Haiyat Al Islam mosque built in 1962, the Alsa Adah mosque built in 1968, and the Jamiul Anwar mosque built in 1969, among several others.
After Vietnam unified in 1975, the government began seizing and collectivizing all private property in South Vietnam, almost always without any compensation. Indian Muslim merchants in Saigon were hit hard and lost all of their property. Fearing further persecution, most Indian Muslims left. The mosques they left behind later became places of worship for Cham Muslims.
There are currently 15 mosques in Ho Chi Minh City. I visited 8 of them on this trip, but since 2 were closed, I actually went inside 6. I will share my experiences with you below.
A 1968 map of Saigon.
1. Saigon Central Mosque.
Saigon Central Mosque was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935 and is the most important mosque in Saigon.
After Vietnam was unified in 1975, Muslims in Saigon faced a huge shock. The Vietnamese Muslim Congregation was closed, and its founding members fled to the United States. Saigon Central Mosque and its religious school were both occupied. Many Muslim leaders were detained and their whereabouts became unknown, while a large number of Muslims were imprisoned or fled the country.
It was not until 1978 that Vietnam lifted a series of bans on Muslims. After 1979, the Saigon Central Mosque reopened thanks to the efforts of Muslim diplomats. However, for Friday prayers (Jumu'ah), the mosque had to sign a written agreement with local police and administrators every week. They had to list the number of attendees, their names, and their addresses before they could pray, and they had to re-register every single week.
Besides this, Islamic books had to be translated into Vietnamese before officials decided if they could enter the country. Books in Arabic and Malay were almost impossible to bring in.
After 1986, Vietnam began allowing mosques to teach Islamic knowledge and Arabic. They also allowed the formation of mosque management committees, which helped Vietnamese Muslims slowly get back on track. Today, the Saigon Central Mosque is the most important mosque in Ho Chi Minh City. Besides the local Cham people, business people from Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as Muslim travelers from all over, come here to pray.
A 1945 map of Saigon.
The entire building has a strong South Indian style.
The official name of the Saigon Central Mosque is the Indian Jamia mosque.
Noorul Imaan Arabic school is an Arabic school, and Haji JMM Ismael Library is an Islamic library.
The pool used for wudu.
Typical clothing for Cham Muslim men.
A Cham Muslim uncle sells durian ice cream, and it tastes great.
The homemade bicycle bell on the uncle's bike.
2. Saigon Green House Restaurant
Saigon Green House is the best Cham Muslim restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a bit pricey, but the food is delicious and has a wide variety. The menu on their official website looks very tempting. Official website: https://halalsaigongreenhouse.com/menu
Eat phở first!
Pineapple fried rice
Fried spring rolls
Drink iced tea
Bitter melon served with fish balls made from a fish called featherback (xilin gongbei yu).
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Aman Mosque, located in Chau Phu District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was built in 1965.
The mosque in the picture is Jamiul Azhar Mosque in Phu Tan District, An Giang Province, Vietnam. It was reportedly built in 1425 and is the most important mosque for Cham Muslims in Vietnam.
3. Al Rahim Mosque
Al Rahim Mosque was the first mosque in Saigon. It was built by Malay and Indonesian Muslims in 1885.
A map of Saigon from 1895
A 1945 map of Saigon.
I ate a local street snack, a Vietnamese baguette (Bánh mì), right outside the mosque.
The baguette arrived in Saigon after the French occupied the city in 1861. Early on, baguettes were seen as a luxury item because the price of imported wheat was very high.
During World War I, wheat imports stopped, so more cheap rice flour was mixed into Vietnamese baguettes, which made them much fluffier. As prices dropped, the baguette (phap-ban) started to become a part of the everyday diet for Vietnamese people.
Before the 1950s, Vietnamese baguettes were still made in a classic French style, spread with mayonnaise or jam. After Vietnam was divided into North and South in 1954, over one million people moved from the north to the south, which greatly changed the food scene in Saigon. In the late 1950s, some northern immigrants began selling baguettes on the street, and the modern Vietnamese baguette started to take shape.
After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, baguettes were only sold in state-run restaurants and were often served with other dishes, which is the origin of today's practice of dipping baguettes into rice noodle soup (pho). After Vietnam started its socialist market economy reforms in 1986, the baguette (banh mi) became a common street food again.
Every morning until noon, there is a small shop selling rice noodle soup (pho) right by the mosque entrance.
Chicken rice noodle soup (pho ga)
4. Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque
Niamatul Islamiyah Mosque is tucked away, so most tourists have a hard time finding it. I first heard about this place from an article on the Saigon website titled "Take a Tour of D10’s 64-Year-Old Mosque."
The Niamatul Islamiyah mosque dates back to a cemetery built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in the late 19th century. The site still preserves a graveyard and an old horse-drawn carriage used to transport the deceased.
In 1952, Indian Muslims built the mosque next to the cemetery to use when visiting graves to remember the dead. After 1975, most of these Indian Muslims returned to their hometowns, and the mosque continued to be used by Cham Muslims.
According to my online research, there are now over 40 Muslims of "Hoa" (Vietnamese Chinese) descent who pray here. From what I saw on the spot, the Muslims here look very different from the Austronesian-speaking Cham people and actually look a lot like the Han Chinese from the Chaoshan and Minnan regions. But when I chatted with everyone, they all just said they were Cham people who returned to Vietnam from Cambodia.
The young man on the far right is named Hakim, and he acted as our translator because his English is very fluent. When the older men heard I was from China, they talked to me a lot about the country. They knew there are many Muslims in Xinjiang and even asked me how far it is from here to Xinjiang.
The older man on the right is the imam of the mosque.
Everyone drinks coffee and hot tea, though they say young Cham people rarely drink hot tea these days.
It is almost time for namaz, so the imam changes into his formal sarong (longyi), puts on his white robe and turban, and gets ready to lead the prayer.
Start the prayer.
An older man here treated me to rice noodles (fen) and pastries (gaodian).
Behind the mosque is a cemetery dating back to the late 19th century. Brother Hakim gave me a detailed explanation.
The horse-drawn carriage for transporting the body (maiti).
786 is a symbol for halal used in South Asia and Southeast Asia. You can also see it in southwest Yunnan and among the Hui Muslims in Lhasa. If you assign a number to each letter of the phrase Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm (In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful) based on the Arabic abjad system, the sum of all the numbers is 786.
5. Jamiul Islamiyah (Nancy) Mosque
Jamiul Islamiyah Mosque, also called Nancy Mosque, was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1950. After the Indian Muslims left in 1975, it became a mosque for Cham Muslims. The mosque was rebuilt twice, in 1980 and 2004. It is now an Arabic-style building designed by a Vietnamese architect.
There is a barbecue shop next to the mosque and a famous Vietnamese noodle soup shop (pho) called Pho Muslim in the alley behind it. Unfortunately, both were closed for the Tet holiday when I visited.
6. Jamiul Anwar Mosque
Jamiul Anwar Mosque was built with aid from Malaysia in 1968. Currently, 240 Cham Muslims pray here.
When the mosque was first built, the area around it was still a watery countryside on the edge of the city. But as the city grew, the area is now full of residential neighborhoods. The mosque is tucked away inside a maze of complicated alleyways.
On the way to the mosque, there is a halal snack shop.
The lady there speaks English, and we had a great time chatting.
Delicious desserts.
Duck noodle soup (yaruofen).
The Cham Muslims, Kinh people, and Chinese people live together here in great harmony.
Keep walking into the alley and you will see several Halal signs. This area has the highest concentration of halal snack shops among the few mosques in Ho Chi Minh City.
Finally, I arrived at the mosque.
A group of Cham Muslim uncles are chatting.
The drum inside the mosque looks like it has been used for many years.
The classroom on the first floor.
The prayer hall on the second floor.
The photos on the wall show mosques in traditional Cham Muslim communities near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.
7. Cholon Mosque
The Cholon Mosque was originally named Cholon Jamial Mosque and was built by South Indian Tamil Muslims in 1935. After 1975, all the Indian Muslims left, and today 80 Cham Muslims pray here.
Cholon is the most famous Chinese community in Vietnam, located about 5 kilometers from Saigon. Cholon was formed in 1782, and Cholon City was officially established in 1879. Everyone except the Chinese calls this place Cholon.
For more on the scenery of Cholon, see my diary entry Old Dreams of Cholon. Duras’s novel The Lover is set here.
Right next to the Cholon mosque is a local market.
Next door is a halal shop, but it is closed for the Spring Festival holiday.