A mosque on terraces
An ancient temple's base.
Ayie7791 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Aini Ans — CC BY-SA 4.0 · G.B. Hooijer — Public domain
One of Aceh's oldest and most unusual mosques, standing on high stepped stone terraces that were the base of a Hindu temple of the ancient Indrapuri kingdom before Islam arrived; the site became a mosque, and tradition credits its rebuilding to the reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda in the seventeenth century. The mosque itself is a square timber building with a four-tiered pyramid roof in the archipelago's traditional mosque style, carried on many wooden pillars and set on the broad stone walls of the terraces, so the site looks like a small fortress crowned by a mosque. The Dutch documented it in photographs from the nineteenth century. The mosque serves daily prayers; entry is free, and visitors are welcome outside prayer times in modest dress. It lies on the road from Banda Aceh to Medan, about half an hour from the city, a stop on the way or a short outing with the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque.
An ancient temple's base.
The archipelago's mosque style.
Seventeenth century.
Indrapuri, Aceh Besar regency, about 25 km south-east of Banda Aceh
Tradition holds the site was a temple of the Hindu Indrapuri kingdom; when Islam came to Aceh it was turned into a mosque, keeping the solid stone terraces as its base.