Main Mosques in Brunei through the Ages
Brunei has been a Muslim country for about 500 years now. You would have thought that there would be lots of old mosques in Brunei. But the oldest I think are no more than 50 years old and most of the older ones have been demolished. Even then the older ones are not much older than say 80 or 90 years old. This is because practically all our older mosques are constructed out of timber so none has actually survived till today. One of the biggest mosques we had was during the reign of the third Sultan, Sultan Sharif Ali. In 1578, Alonso Beltran, a Spanish traveller described it as one of five storeyed tall on the water but that maybe a slightly wrong description as the technology to build 5 storeyed buildings in the 15th century on water was not yet available in Brunei. Most likely it had five roofs to represent the five pillars of Islam (see artist's impression - figure 1). This mosque was unfortunately destroyed by the Spanish in June that same year. Subsequent mosques on the water ...