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Ox Street Mosque or Cow Street Mosque (牛街清真寺; Niu Jie Qingzhensi) was first built in 966. It was destroyed in 1215 by Genghis Khan. Reconstruction of the mosque occurred during the reign of Qing Emperor Kangxi (r. 1661 - 1722).<br/><br/> The mosque has all the usual features of mosques found elsewhere in the world – minaret, prayer hall facing Mecca, Arabic inscriptions – the buildings themselves are distinctly Chinese. It remains Beijing’s largest and oldest mosque.
Yahyâ ibn Mahmûd al-Wâsitî was a 13th-century Arab Islamic artist. Al-Wasiti was born in Wasit in southern Iraq. He was noted for his illustrations of the Maqam of al-Hariri.<br/><br/> Maqāma (literally 'assemblies') are an (originally) Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century. Both authors' maqāmāt center on trickster figures whose wanderings and exploits in speaking to assemblies of the powerful are conveyed by a narrator.<br/><br/> Manuscripts of al-Harīrī's Maqāmāt, anecdotes of a roguish wanderer Abu Zayd from Saruj, were frequently illustrated with miniatures.
Yahyâ ibn Mahmûd al-Wâsitî was a 13th-century Arab Islamic artist. Al-Wasiti was born in Wasit in southern Iraq. He was noted for his illustrations of the Maqam of al-Hariri.<br/><br/> Maqāma (literally 'assemblies') are an (originally) Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century. Both authors' maqāmāt center on trickster figures whose wanderings and exploits in speaking to assemblies of the powerful are conveyed by a narrator.<br/><br/> Manuscripts of al-Harīrī's Maqāmāt, anecdotes of a roguish wanderer Abu Zayd from Saruj, were frequently illustrated with miniatures.
Abakh Khoja (Apaq Xoja, or more properly Āfāq Khwāja (? - 1693/94) was a religious and political leader in Kashgaria (in modern-day southern Xinjiang). He was also known as Khwāja Hidāyat Allāh (Hidayetullah Khoja). He was a great-grandson of the famous Naqshbandi Sufi teacher, Ahmad Kasani (1461–1542) and was revered as a Sufi teacher in his own right.<br/><br/> Abakh Khoja seized power from the Chagatay dynasty of Yarkand by inviting Dzungar invaders through the secret diplomacy of the Dalai Lama. Abakh Khoja was a powerful ruler, controlling East Turkistan including Khotan, Yarkand, Korla, Kucha and Aksu as well as Kashgar.<br/><br/> Abakh Khoja's mausoleum is considered the holiest Muslim site in Xinjiang. It is located in Haohan Village, a northeastern suburb some 5 km from the city centre of Kashgar. First built c.1640, initially as Muhammad Yusuf tomb, the beautiful tiled mausoleum contains the tombs of five generations of the Afāqi family, providing resting places for its 72 members, both men and women.
Xavier Pascal Coste (26 November 1787, Marseille - 8 February 1879) was a French architect. His father was one of the leading joiners in Marseille. Showing intellectual and artistic promise, Pascal began his studies in the studio of Penchaud, architect of the département and the municipalité. In 1814, he was received into the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His time in Paris was a pivotal one in his life - there he met the geographer Edme François Jomard, who put him in touch with the viceroy of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, who took Coste on as his architect in 1817.<br/><br/> In 1825 Coste returned to France with an impressive series of drawings of the architecture of Cairo, but he soon went to Egypt once again at Mehmet Ali's request, where Mehmet Ali made him chief engineer for Lower Egypt. Coste remained there for four years, during which time he accumulated many sketches, but he found the Egyptian climate difficult and returned to France in 1829. There he became a professor of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, thanks to the links he had kept up with Penchaud. He remained in this post until 1861, when he was one of the founder members of the intellectual centre known as the Athénée.<br/><br/> In parallel with these activities he travelled around France and to Germany, Belgium and Tunisia and produced several authoritative works on architecture - his Architecture arabe (1827) earned him a place on the French king's embassy to the Shah of Iran. In Iran Coste and the painter Eugène Flandin were authorised to visit the ruins of Ecbatana, Bishtun, Taq-e Bostan, Sarpol-e Zahab, Pasargadae and Persepolis, where he made many sketches. On his return via Baghdad, he saw the ruins of Seleucia, Ctesiphon and Babylon. He continued via Nineveh, to which the archaeologist Paul Émile Botta was also travelling to begin his excavations.
Representations of the Prophet Muhammad are controversial, and generally forbidden in Sunni Islam (especially Hanafiyya, Wahabi, Salafiyya). Shia Islam and some other branches of Sunni Islam (Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi'i) are generally more tolerant of such representational images, but even so the Prophet's features are generally veiled or concealed by flames as a mark of deep respect.