Turn off Dương Bá Trạc Street into Alley 157 and at first you walk between two tight rows of townhouses like any other lane in the city. Within a few dozen paces, however, the scene changes as women wear headscarves, stalls lay out unfamiliar cakes, not a single beer shop is in sight, and at the end of the branch lane rises a building crowned with a crescent moon cradling a star.
Visit in the evening and you will hear something else as well. From inside the mosque comes the sound of children reciting lessons aloud. They are learning a script that almost no one outside this alley can read. The building serves at once as a house of prayer and as the village school of an entire ethnic community in the middle of the metropolis.
IA Cham neighborhood inside the city
One distinction must be stated right at the outset, because this point is frequently confused. This is a mosque of orthodox Sunni Islam belonging to the Cham Islam community. It is not a Bàni mosque. The Cham people in Vietnam have two distinct religious communities, and conflating the two is the first error the library seeks to avoid.
Most families in this alley trace their roots to Châu Đốc, An Giang (alongside a few families who once lived and worked in Malaysia), having moved to the city in the 1950s and 1960s and remained in this neighborhood ever since. Published accounts record around three thousand believers in this alley, making it the largest single Muslim residential cluster in Ho Chi Minh City, out of a citywide Cham Islam population of roughly nine to ten thousand people spread across multiple wards.
In Islamic teaching, the foundation is belief in the One God, who has no physical form and cannot be depicted. Consequently, the mosque contains no statues, no paintings of people or animals, no incense burners and no food offerings. Decoration is limited to geometric patterns and calligraphic verses from the Qur'an.
A believer's obligations rest on five pillars, namely the profession of faith, prayer five times each day, fasting throughout the month of Ramadan, almsgiving, and the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able. In orthodox Islam, these five duties rest on each individual believer and cannot be delegated to anyone else, which is why the mosque stays open year-round and welcomes worshippers every day.
The main prayer hall is reserved for men, except during the month of Ramadan when women also join prayers inside. This is a general custom of the community rather than a rule unique to this alley. For most of the year women pray at home, which fulfills their religious obligation in full.
The division of roles among Ho Chi Minh City's mosques follows the origin of each community rather than municipal boundaries, and Jamiul Anwar illustrates that pattern most clearly.
The library has separate entries for two mosques in the downtown core. Al Rahim Mosque on Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa Street was built in 1885 by Muslims of Malay and Indonesian origin. Jamia Al Musulman Mosque on Đông Du Street was built in 1935 by Muslims of South Asian origin. Jamiul Anwar, by contrast, belongs to the Cham of Vietnam, an indigenous ethnic group who arrived in the city later and migrated from the Mekong Delta rather than from abroad. Three mosques mark three waves of migration, and the Islamic map of the city is the map of those communities.
What sets this community apart from the two foreign-origin congregations goes deeper still. The two overseas migrant groups brought their religion and gradually blended into the linguistic life of the city. The Cham here brought both their religion and the spoken and written language of their ethnic group, making the task of preservation much heavier. That is why this mosque carries an additional responsibility that the downtown mosques do not bear to the same degree, namely teaching an ancestral script.
Two common misunderstandings should be addressed in a neutral historical tone.
First, the Cham community here does not practice Bàni Islam. Speaking broadly of Muslim Cham is historically understandable but obscures a major difference in religious life. This community practices orthodox Sunni Islam, where each believer prays five times daily, the whole neighborhood fasts throughout Ramadan, and the mosque stays open every day of the year. The Bàni Cham of the former Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận provinces entrust daily ritual obligations to their Acar priestly class, maintain ancestral veneration customs, and open their houses of worship only during festival seasons. The library records this distinction as a factual observation without ranking either tradition above the other.
Second, the evening school inside the mosque is not purely a religious catechism class. Many visitors assume children attend only to memorize Qur'anic verses. In fact, the curriculum teaches Cham script, the writing system of their ethnic group, alongside the Arabic script used to recite the Qur'an. Elders who oversee the mosque state four things the community strives to preserve, namely traditional dress, spoken language, written script and religious practice. The first three belong to ethnic heritage rather than religion alone.
IIFrom Châu Đốc to a city alley
This mosque is much younger than the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mosques in the downtown core, and precisely because it is younger, it tells a story the others do not, namely how a migrant community relocated to a metropolis and rebuilt its entire village rhythm from the ground up.
- 1950s to 1960sChâu Đốc Cham families settle in SaigonCham Islam families from Châu Đốc, An Giang (from the 1950s according to Dân Trí, or around the 1960s according to Thanh Niên and VietNamNet) move to the city in search of livelihoods, settling along the canal in the former District 8, erecting a small prayer room (surao) and bringing their traditional brocade-weaving craft.
- 1966Founding of Jamiul Anwar MosqueThe community officially builds Jamiul Anwar Mosque as its neighborhood house of prayer and gathering place, giving the alley the three pillars of a Cham village, namely homes, a mosque and a language class.
- From the 1960s onwardOpening of the evening script and Qur'an classClasses teaching Cham script and Qur'anic recitation to neighborhood children begin during the early prayer-hall years and run continuously, with some accounts noting a span of sixty-five years.
- 1984First expansion of the mosqueAccording to Thanh Niên, as the number of households in the alley grows, the mosque undergoes its first expansion in 1984 to serve the larger congregation and evening classes.
- 2006Major reconstructionThe mosque is completely rebuilt into the spacious multi-story structure seen today, keeping its exact footprint and prayer orientation. This is the largest reconstruction in the site's history.
- Present dayNeighborhood masjid and evening schoolThe alley forms the largest Muslim residential community in the city with around 3,000 believers. The mosque maintains five daily prayers, Friday Jumu'ah prayer, and nightly classes taught by volunteer teachers who have served for over thirty years.
Published sources report different figures for the size of the evening class, and it is better to state each account plainly than to pick one number at random. Because journalists visited at different times of year, their counts of students, teachers and grade levels vary. A 2023 report in Dân Trí counted around twenty students aged five to ten. A 2025 article in VietNamNet recorded more than forty students, the youngest aged four, organized into four levels, namely Qidam (recognizing the Arabic alphabet), Al-Fatihah (short daily surahs), Al-Qur'an - Tajwid (pronunciation and recitation rules) and Al-Qur'an - Kitab (full Qur'anic reading and religious law). Another 2025 report in Thanh Niên recorded sixty to seventy children aged three to ten taught by six teachers across three levels. Enrollment fluctuates between school terms and summer months, so the library records all three accounts for comparison.
Where all sources agree is clear: classes meet every evening from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. except Thursday night, tuition is completely free, and children progress step by step from letter recognition to reading the full scripture. Textbooks are compiled and printed by the community itself from the notes of senior religious teachers rather than purchased commercially.
IIIPrayer hall, mihrab and the classroom
Structurally this is a typical urban mosque on a tight plot, without a wide forecourt or freestanding outer corner towers, where every functional space is fitted into a compact footprint. Internally, however, its layout differs from downtown mosques in one key respect: the same floor space must accommodate two daily functions, prayer by day and schooling at night.
A wide unobstructed room with a level floor, without chairs, statues or paintings. Worshippers stand shoulder to shoulder in horizontal rows. The main hall is used by men, except during Ramadan when women also pray inside.
A recessed niche set into the west-northwest main wall, pointing along the qiblah toward Mecca. The mihrab is neither an altar nor a shrine, serving solely to orient the rows of worshippers.
A stepped pulpit placed beside the mihrab, used for the sermon during Friday prayer. It is the only spot raised above the common floor level, elevated for practical visibility rather than clerical status.
A water basin and row of taps at the entrance used for mandatory ritual washing before every prayer. Because no one may join the prayer rows without washing first, this area is never cut back despite the narrow plot.
Evening classes use the main mosque floor and adjoining rooms. Children sit on the floor around low plastic tables grouped by level, with two tracks running in parallel during the same hour, one for scripture and Cham script and another for ritual practice.
Limited to geometric patterns, stylized floral motifs and calligraphic verses from the Qur'an, in keeping with the prohibition against depicting living beings. High above rises the crescent moon and star emblem of Islamic architecture.
The evening school deserves special mention because it defines the character of this mosque. The curriculum advances through four stages, starting with the Qidam primer to learn the 28 Arabic letters, moving to Al-Fatihah for short daily prayers, advancing to Al-Qur'an - Tajwid for pronunciation rules, and culminating in Al-Qur'an - Kitab for reading the complete Qur'an. Taught alongside this is Cham script, enabling students to understand the meaning in their mother tongue rather than merely sounding out Arabic letters. According to one longtime teacher, after about two months of learning the alphabet, children begin blending syllables and reading on their own.
Equally important is who teaches. The instructors are neighborhood residents who teach voluntarily without pay, some of whom, like Teacher Aly, have stood before the class for more than thirty years. The primers are printed by the community itself. In short, the entire school is built and sustained by the alley residents because enough people in the neighborhood treat passing on their script as a shared duty.
IVThe lie of the land and orientation
A clear caveat must be stated upfront. Islam does not teach feng shui. The orientation of a mosque is fixed by a single mandatory religious rule, the qiblah direction, pointing toward the Kaaba in Mecca along the shortest path across the globe. From Saigon, that direction points west-northwest (around 291 to 292 degrees). No geomantic compass, no founder's birth year and no trigrams play any part in choosing that direction, and the builders have no discretion to face any other way.
What follows is strictly a reading through traditional Sino-Vietnamese geomancy, offered by the library as a point of comparison for readers familiar with that framework, not a teaching of Islam or a consideration of the community when building the mosque.
First is its position deep inside an alley. Traditional geomancy pays close attention to the approach road, treating a straight lane aimed directly at a doorway as something to be softened, while favoring a curving path that embraces the house. Here the approach is a long, narrow residential lane lined with houses on both sides, with the mosque sitting at the end of a branch alley. In traditional terms, this configuration resembles a long corridor channeling qi (trường lang dẫn khí) straight to a terminal point. Traditional manuals treat narrow conduits with caution because airflow moving through a tight channel becomes swift and abrupt. The mosque's builders were not thinking in geomantic terms, yet their practical layout softens that rush as the building steps back slightly, leaves a small threshold space outside the door, and requires everyone entering to pause and wash with water before stepping inside.
Second is orientation relative to the plot. In a dense urban neighborhood, the plot aligns with the alley grid rather than any cardinal axis, whereas the prayer hall must face Mecca. The two axes almost never coincide, and Islam resolves the discrepancy decisively by angling the rows of worshippers rather than altering the qiblah orientation. Consequently, in many urban mosques the prayer lines run diagonally across the floor relative to the walls. To eyes trained in traditional geomancy, where house axis and compass direction are meant to align, this looks unusual. Here direction takes precedence over the walls.
Third is the water area at the entrance. Traditional geomancy views water as an element that gathers qi and carefully considers where pools are placed. Putting water right by the entrance corresponds in traditional reading to water at the gate (thủy tại môn), where incoming qi meets water, pauses and gathers. Yet the actual reason for the water basin has nothing to do with qi, as it exists solely because ritual ablution is mandatory before prayer. The two systems point to the exact same object while speaking of two completely different things, and the library notes this to show the limits of any comparison.
Finally, there is a feature unique to this site. Traditional geomancy reads a place of worship along a longitudinal axis from outer gate to inner sanctuary, tracing qi through successive courts. Here there is only a single main hall, and that room changes its role by the hour, serving as a prayer hall by day and a children's classroom in the evening. Traditional manuals have no category for a sacred hall that switches function every night, because a traditional sanctuary is conceived as a still space dedicated to a single ritual purpose. That dual daily rhythm lies outside the old geomantic framework, and the library records it just as it is.
VDaily, weekly and Ramadan rhythms
The rhythm of the mosque runs on three cycles, namely five daily prayers, the collective Friday prayer, and annual observances reckoned by the Hijri calendar, the lunar calendar of Islam. Because the Hijri year is roughly eleven days shorter than the solar year, Islamic festivals move gradually through the seasons rather than staying fixed like Vietnamese lunisolar holidays. Woven into those three cycles is the nightly language and scripture class, which runs all year round.
| Time | Activity | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | Five daily prayers | Five prayer sessions spaced across the day according to the sun's position. Before each session, worshippers perform mandatory ritual ablution at the entrance water area. |
| Weeknights (except Thursday) | Cham script and Qur'an class | Classes run from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. every evening except Thursday night. Two tracks run in parallel, one teaching Qur'anic reading and Cham script and the other teaching ritual practice, with students grouped by level. |
| Every Friday | Weekly congregational prayer | The Jumu'ah service, the largest gathering of the week, featuring a sermon read from the minbar followed by collective prayer in rows. It is also when the whole alley gathers together. |
| Entire month of Ramadan | Month of fasting | The ninth month of the Hijri calendar. Believers abstain from food and drink from dawn to sunset. During this month women also pray in the main hall, and in the evening the community gathers to break the fast. |
| Entire month of Ramadan | Ramadan alley market | Once a year in the late afternoon during Ramadan, stalls line the alley selling Halal Cham dishes and Mekong Delta cakes for the evening fast-breaking meal. The market lasts for exactly one month and then disperses. |
| 1st of Shawwal | Festival of Breaking the Fast | Eid al Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan and the most crowded celebration of the year. The whole community gathers at the mosque for prayer and mutual visits. |
| 10th of Dhul Hijjah | Festival of Sacrifice | Eid al Adha, coinciding with the pilgrimage to Mecca. Livestock is sacrificed and the meat shared among community members and those in need. |
Alongside prayer, the mosque organizes charitable giving in keeping with the general practice of a masjid, including obligatory annual almsgiving (zakat) and voluntary charity (sadaqah). Even so, the heaviest responsibility this mosque carries remains its evening school.
Daily life in the alley follows religious norms closely. Food adheres to Halal rules, alcohol is absent, women wear headscarves, and children grow up speaking both Vietnamese and Cham. Over half a century ago, many households in the lane practiced traditional Cham brocade weaving brought from An Giang, though today most make a living through small trade, selling Cham savory dishes and Mekong Delta cakes. After more than sixty years in the middle of a metropolis, what has preserved the community's identity is not a physical wall, but the one-hour class that opens every evening inside the mosque. That is why the library dedicates a separate entry to this site.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Hẻm 157 đường Dương Bá Trạc, phường Chánh Hưng (phường 1 quận 8 cũ), Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh
- Getting there
- The mosque stands at 157B in Alley 157 Dương Bá Trạc Street, Chánh Hưng Ward (formerly Ward 1, District 8), Ho Chi Minh City, just across Nguyễn Văn Cừ Bridge spanning the Tàu Hủ - Bến Nghé Canal from the former District 1 downtown core.
- Coordinates
- 10.7471, 106.6905
This is an active house of worship situated in the middle of a family residential alley rather than a tourist site, so visitors must observe local rules. Remove your shoes before entering the prayer hall. Dress modestly, with men wearing long trousers and sleeved shirts, and women covering their hair, arms and legs. The main prayer hall is reserved for men except during Ramadan. Do not walk in front of worshippers at prayer or speak loudly. The evening class is for neighborhood children, so please do not walk into the middle of the lesson or photograph children without permission. Please be considerate of residents' privacy when walking through the alley.
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?Quick Questions
Where is Jamiul Anwar Mosque located
At 157B in Alley 157 Dương Bá Trạc Street, Chánh Hưng Ward (formerly Ward 1, District 8), Ho Chi Minh City. It is the mosque of the city's largest Cham Muslim neighborhood with around three thousand believers, originating as a small prayer hall around 1960, officially built in 1966, expanded in 1984 and rebuilt in its present form in 2006.
What is taught at the evening class in the District 8 mosque
The class teaches Cham script and Qur'anic reading in Arabic script to neighborhood children from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. every evening except Thursday. Students advance through four stages from alphabet recognition (Qidam) to short surahs (Al-Fatihah), pronunciation rules (Tajwid) and full scripture and law (Kitab). The teachers are unpaid local volunteers, some of whom have taught for over thirty years.
Where did the District 8 Cham community come from
Most families trace their roots to Châu Đốc, An Giang (along with a few families who once lived in Malaysia), having settled in this alley in the 1950s and 1960s. More than sixty years later, the community still preserves its spoken language, script, dress and religious life, largely thanks to the nightly classes inside the mosque.
How does Jamiul Anwar differ from the mosques in former District 1
It differs in the origin of its congregation. Al Rahim on Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa Street was built in 1885 by Muslims of Malay and Indonesian origin, and Jamia Al Musulman on Đông Du Street was built in 1935 by South Asian Muslims, whereas Jamiul Anwar belongs to Vietnamese Cham Muslims from the Mekong Delta. Together with the Cầu Kho Cham mosque on Trần Hưng Đạo Street, each mosque marks a distinct community.
When does the Ramadan street market in Alley 157 Dương Bá Trạc take place
It takes place once a year throughout the month of Ramadan in the late afternoon, dispersing as soon as the fasting month ends. During daytime in Ramadan many eateries in the lane close while residents fast from dawn, then in the late afternoon stalls line the alley selling Halal Cham dishes and Mekong Delta cakes for the evening fast-breaking meal. Because Ramadan follows the lunar Hijri calendar, its solar dates shift each year.