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It’s always overwhelming to find yourself surrounded by more than 30,000 people at any point in time…whether at a sporting event, concert, or celebration…but it boggles the mind when such a gathering is performed peacefully, quietly, and quickly.  So it was on this quiet morning of Eid ul-Fitr that we woke up extra early to experience what happens when Muslims from all over Xinjiang converge on a single location to celebrate the end of Ramadan.

Kashgar’s Id Kah Mosque

Located in the heart of Kashgar, a city on the westernmost tip of China and populated primarily by Chinese Muslims, is the largest and, according to many, most beautiful mosques in China.  I refer to the Id Kah Mosque as the “8 Car” mosque because when I asked a local say the name, I could have sworn it sounded exactly like he was telling me to go find eight cars somewhere.  For Muslims in this area this place is a holy site – many travel for days to worship here during the big festivals.  For those who have travelled around much of the world, however, its really quite small and somewhat unimpressive.  The building, that is.

The day before Eid we decided to take a look around the mosque to find out what all the buzz was about.  At the cost of a whopping 30 RMB per person (approx. $4) we spent an entire fifteen minutes wandering around a large, open-air courtyard towards a prayer hall that housed nothing but carpets to kneel on and columns to keep the roof from caving in.  We weren’t impressed.  We shouldn’t have expected much more, I guess, but our understanding of the Muslim culture was practically nil so it was hard not to be disappointed after paying to see it all.  If I had known then how many people were going to be cramming into every available floor space in this enclosed area, I might have viewed things a bit differently.

Ramadan and Eid ul-Fitr

For those unaware, Eid ul-Fitr marks the end of the month-long religious fasting called “Ramadan”.  For the entire month a fast is supposed to be observed from sun-up to sun-down until the final day when they hold a celebration that seems to me to be as big in their culture as Christmas is in America.  People travel long distances to see family, visit friends, and in many cases to visit an important mosque.

So when we woke up that morning after Ramadan, we knew there would be a lot of people, but that still didn’t adequately prepare us for what we saw.  We arrived at 8am to find people from every direction of the city converging on the small yellow mosque which seemed to swallow thousands of them every second.

The only sound we heard were soft footsteps and one small boy trying to sell carpets to those who only brought plastic bags to kneel on.  For one full hour the masses never stopped coming and the mosque never stopped swallowing.  I later found out that the mosque can hold up to 25,000 people at once, but I figure there’s got to be some huge fire code violation going on there.

**Extra Reading: How China Taught Me to View Islam**

The Gathering and Prayer

Have you ever witnessed this many people performing the same actions and saying the same things all at once?  It’s eerie!  Even though I share very little of their beliefs – or perhaps for that very reason – it sent chills down my spine.

They were of course all facing Mecca, one part of this ritual I was already aware of, and the words and prayers being spoken were echoed everywhere and completely incomprehensible to me.  The entire ritual lasted less than 20 minutes, a portion of which you can see in the video below.

Once finished, everybody left in the same manner as they arrived: peacefully, quietly, and quickly.  It’s something I’ll never forget, and if you ever find yourself near a major mosque during Corban or Eid, the two largest Muslim festivals, get yourself out of bed early and go watch.
If you have seen this in person, what did you think?