The sultanate's mosque
In Riau-Lingga's old capital.
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The royal mosque of the Riau-Lingga sultanate in the town of Daik, the sultanate's old capital on Lingga island south of the Riau archipelago. Its pulpit bears an inscription dating it to 1212 AH, the late eighteenth century, while other sources say construction began around 1803 under Sultan Mahmud Riayat Syah III; it was first a small timber mosque and was later rebuilt in stone. The mosque is an elegant white building with a tiered roof and columns, holding a carved, gilded timber pulpit among the finest in the Malay world, and around it lie the graves of Lingga's sultans and their families. Lingga, with Penyengat island, was a centre of Malay Islamic learning and literature, and illuminated manuscript Qurans preserved today came from here. The mosque serves daily prayers; entry is free, and visitors are welcome outside prayer times in modest dress. Lingga is remote and quiet, reached by ferry from Tanjung Pinang in a few hours, so the trip suits lovers of Malay Islamic history. Daik also has the ruins of the Damnah palace and the three-peaked Mount Daik.
In Riau-Lingga's old capital.
Among the finest Malay pulpits.
Around the mosque.
Daik, Lingga island, Riau Islands
They were the two centres of the Riau-Lingga sultanate: Lingga the sultan's seat, Penyengat the viceroy's and home of scholars and writers, and between them grew the nineteenth-century flowering of Malay Islamic literature.