The Great Mosque of Demak

The Great Mosque of Demak, on the north coast of Java, is one of the oldest and most revered mosques of Southeast Asia and the symbol of the coming of Islam to Java, the most populous of the islands of the East Indies. It was built about the later fifteenth century as the chief mosque of the sultanate of Demak, the first Muslim state of Java, which rose on the north coast as the old Hindu-Buddhist empire of Majapahit declined, and which became the spearhead of the spread of Islam through the island. The mosque is a masterpiece of a distinctively Javanese Islamic architecture: rather than the dome and minaret of the Arab lands, it is built of timber, with a vast prayer-hall carried on tall wooden pillars and crowned by a great roof of three soaring tiers of shingles rising to a peak, a form drawn from the older sacred architecture of the island and turned to the service of the new faith. By tradition the mosque is the work of the Wali Songo, the Nine Saints, the revered preachers and holy men, several of them of mixed Arab, Chinese and Javanese descent, who are remembered as the apostles of Islam in Java, men who spread the faith not by the sword but by teaching, by example and by wisdom, presenting Islam to the Javanese in their own language and through their own arts and customs, and who are said to have gathered at Demak, which became the cradle of Islamic Java. From Demak the faith and the sultanate spread along the coast and into the interior, and the Muslim Java that took shape in this age endures as the heartland of the most populous Muslim country in the world. This scene depicts the Great Mosque of Demak. In keeping with the project's ethics any figure is anonymous and at a distance.