Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
mercenaries hired by Narai to man Wichaiprasit Fort, largely comprising North Africans,
presumably Muslims.
There had also been Cham Muslims living in Ayutthaya, where they made their homes
on rafts on the waterways and worked as farmers, boat builders and traders. When Ayut-
thaya fell and Thonburi was founded, they sailed their rafts down the river and joined the
existing community. So large did the Cham community become that they occupied both
banks of the canal, with mosques on both sides. Tonson Mosque, here on the north bank,
is the oldest mosque in Bangkok, while Kudi Khao on the south bank dates from the time
of Rama
I
.
Tonson Mosque was originally a teak structure raised on a platform and roofed with
terracotta tiles. In style it followed the Siamese pattern. In 1827, in the reign of Rama
II
,
the mosque was rebuilt as a brick structure, again following the Siamese style and with
elaborate mouldings on its stucco-clad gables. By the middle of the twentieth century
this building had deteriorated so badly it was completely rebuilt, being finished in 1954,
this time as a reinforced concrete structure with a traditional Islamic dome. The arched
mihrab
, the pavilion indicating the direction of Mecca, carries an engraved teak tablet that
is believed to have come from a mosque in Ayutthaya, and which displays burn marks.
A century-old copy of the Koran has been written in very fine script using either a fish
bone or rice husk, and is contained in a decorated teak box with mother-of-pearl inlay.
A prominent feature is a suspended lamp that has a square brass lampshade inlaid on all
sides with green glass and engraved in memory of Rama
V
. In the mosque compound, two
older buildings have survived: a structure erected to welcome visiting royalty in 1915, and
an octagonal pavilion built in 1930. The graveyard is also of historical interest, containing
the final resting place of many prominent members of the Muslim community, including
high-ranking court officials and royal consorts.
The Cham are the remnants of the Champa kingdom, which prevailed in what is now
southern and central Vietnam and parts of southern Cambodia from the seventh through
to the eighteenth centuries. They had used Sanskrit as their scholarly language and were
initially Hindu, but Arab maritime trade from the tenth century onwards saw the spread
of Islam into parts of the kingdom. The late fifteenth century saw much of Champa wiped
out, as the Vietnamese moved south. Early in the seventeenth century, as the Ming Dyn-
asty collapsed, thousands of Chinese refugees poured into the Cham region. Many Cham
fled their homelands during this period, some to Cambodia, some to Siam, some to the
Malay peninsula, and some to the Chinese island of Hainan. Although avowedly Muslim,
the communities at Tonson and Kudi Khao have largely been absorbed into the Thai iden-
