The direction of prayer for all Muslims—whether in a repurposed gym in Utqiagvik, Alaska or in an open-air Bedouin mosque in eastern Jordan—is the Ka’bah in the city of Makkah. Yet, evident in the image above of a mosque in Peking (now Beijing), this imperative rule was disobeyed. An adorned arched doorway topped with an elaborate banggelou (minaret), centres the photograph, taken by the Scottish geographer John Thomson in 1871.¹ In the foreground of the photograph, stands an unnamed figure, whose role and relationship to the building are unknown. Beyond them, barely discernible, are four people sitting outside of the mosque compound wall; beside them stands a man in a turban, and further to his right are two blurry figures. Too small to be purposefully staged, these minor figures appear to be locals. Beneath the relatively benign scene presented here, lays a harsher truth. The supposed mosque at the centre of this photograph did not face Makkah but rather instead was designed and built to face the emperor’s throne. However, none of this was apparent to me when I first came across this image, in the CCA photography collection, rather, this narrative was concealed by the insufficient constructed title ascribed to it.

I stumbled upon this image, as part of an object package list that I reviewed for the Critical Cataloguing project. It was then accompanied by the title—View of the main gateway to a mosque, Peking (now Beijing), China. I decided to probe beyond the caption in a bid to perhaps identify the building or learn more about its architectural details. Subsequently, what we—the Critical Cataloguing team—uncovered revealed a narrative saturated with questions of identity and power. A narrative that depending on the narrator is embellished with romance or subsumed by genocide. This photograph and the contested history attached to it, encapsulates Edward Said’s statement that “nations are themselves narrations.”² And although this narrative was crafted by a Manchurian Emperor, the ongoing settler-colonial project and current genocide of Uyghur people by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in pursuit of assimilating them into Han culture is tied to this mosque, as it can be argued that it was Qing imperial ideology that laid the foundation for a “multi-ethnic China.” In reviewing this photograph and its hidden narratives, our challenge was to consider, how this complex history can be reflected in the catalogue entry of the object.

The mosque in the photograph is located just outside of the Imperial City in Beijing and was constructed under the order of the Qianlong Emperor (1736 - 95), allegedly to console and woo Xian Fei, his “Fragrant Concubine” a Turkic-Muslim woman, taken from the recently annexed Altishahr (today’s Xinjiang).³ This legendary, allegorical figure, who refused the advances of the emperor, symbolized the forcible integration of the Turki people (today’s Uyghurs) into the Qing Empire.⁴ This symbolic union was commemorated in stone by combining Manchurian construction techniques and central-Asian decorative motifs. This was the only mosque to have been built using the Court treasury throughout the Qing dynasty, but it was neither its unique patron nor its mishmash style that separated it from the other mosques of Beijing. Instead, it was the orientation of the prayer hall that made it distinct. The local, Beijinger Muslims,—who have been present in the city since at least Tang dynasty (618 -907)—conscious of their peripheral position and distance from the sacred city of Makkah, orientated not only the prayer hall but all ancillary buildings within a mosque complex towards the holy city.⁵ Uniquely, as stated earlier, this mosque did not face Makkah but instead faced the emperor’s throne.⁶

The photograph’s original caption not only failed to convey this complex narrative but, through its insufficiency, concealed this history. We, the Critical Cataloguing team, set to rectify this. Through research and countless debates over semantics, we agreed on the current revised (or reconstructed) caption—View of the entrance to the Huiziying Qingzhensi (mosque of the Turkic-Muslim Camp, now demolished), Peking (now Beijing), China. This process revealed to us, that no caption can ever be absolute, and the process of critical cataloguing is indefinite. In a bid to be concise, silences and gaps formed, and this current caption still harbours questions regarding names and shifting identities. Huiziying Qingzhensi, the name that has been ascribed to this building by historians, is far from exact and encompassing.⁷ Deriving from the area, it can be translated as the “Hui camp.”⁸ The label Hui historically has had multiple uses. It was firstly used as a general term to refer to Muslims, Christians, and Jewish travellers from Western Asia.⁹ Towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, the term came to solely refer to Muslims, with Islam being known as Huijiao, (the religion of the Hui) and it followers as Huijaotu.¹⁰ With the advent of Social Darwinism in the same period and the introduction of Japanese racial terminology, minzu, the term Hui then emerged as its own ethnoreligious group, ascribed to Sinophone Muslims.¹¹ However, this mosque was built for a different ethnic group, a Turkic-Muslim community, who, prior to the construction of this mosque, had been forcibly converted into imperial subjects. The name of the area and subsequently the mosque comes from an era when the label Hui referred to all Muslims, despite the term now being used solely to refer to Sinophone Muslims.

The main predicament when captioning this photograph is whether we can refer to the building it depicts as a qingzhensi (a mosque) or not. Personally, as a Muslim myself, I find it inconceivable to consider this building a qingzhensi, it is more akin to an architectural folly, and I can assume the Muslims of Beijing would have also struggled to come to terms with it. From an Islamic jurisprudence perspective, a mosque is a place that has been permanently set aside for the five daily prayers to be performed in, often through a waqf (an endowment that renders the property no longer under the ownership of the owner, in this case the emperor). The primary function of a mosque is to provide space for Muslims to congregate and worship collectively. There are minor variations in the way Muslims—despite differences in sects or schools of thoughts—perform the ritual prayer. Each prayer starts the same, the first bodily act is to orientate our body to face the qiblah. This act goes beyond just physically orientating, through this movement we are refining and attuning ourselves to the presence of God, so that we may be able to perceive Him wherever we may be. What then of this mosque that goes against this imperative and defining act? Out of the three most common and basic components of a traditional mosque, mihrab (niche in the wall indicating direction of Makkah), mimbar (pulpit) and minaret, I would argue that the mihrab is the most important. Even in the humblest of mosques there is some ad-hoc sign in lieu of the mihrab, attesting to the importance of the direction of prayer.

Built a decade after the annexation of Altishahr, which saw the complete annihilation of the Dzungar people, this qingzhensi was constructed as a form of humiliation and patronage of Turkic-Muslim people.¹² Here, the emperor has commemorated the subjugation of the Turkic-Muslims by building them a place of worship that defies the basic principles of their faith and inserting himself in their daily prayers.¹³ Rather than viewing this building as a place of religious worship it can be read within a wider landscape of war commemorations commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor. The stela, which once sat in the qingzhensi compound, displays a text written by the emperor inscribed in four languages: Manchu, Chinese, Mongol and Turki (also known as Chagatai written in a Perso-Arabic script). The multiple languages were a reiteration of the Qing imperial quest to redefine China and what constitutes a Chinese language.¹⁴ The text exaggerated the importance of the qingzhensi as it proclaimed the wonderment of visitors and falsely stated that it was the first mosque to be built in China, despite the steady presence of Muslims from at least the Tang dynasty (618 -907).¹⁵ The only unprecedented aspect of the Huiziying Qingzhensi is the direction of prayer that it mandates.¹⁶

Despite the genocidal history behind the inception of this building there is evidence that this qingzhensi was cherished and used as a place of worship by some. When the qingzhensi was demolished at the order of Yuan Shikai (first President of the Republic of China, 1912-16), Ma Rong’en, who was then the Akhun (religious leader), attempted to rebuild it, but it remained incomplete at his death in 1937.¹⁷ In spite of the inception of the building, if the community regarded and used it as a qingzhensi then can it indeed be perceived it as one?¹⁸ However, it is only the voices of the male leaders of the community—those “endowed with the gravity and authority of historical actor”¹⁹—that are presented in the writings of historians.²⁰ How can we then give agency to the marginal accidental figures in the photograph (and others like them)? While the emperor’s inscription suggests that the qingzhensi was not opened to public, it is possible that those accidental figures may have appropriated the space, ignored the false qiblah and prayed facing west, towards Makkah.²¹

In revising this caption, I attempted the impossible task, “to reconstruct the past is, as well, an attempt to describe obliquely the forms of violence licensed in the present.”²² The fate of the marginal figures may remain unknown but their descendants alongside vestiges of the building continued to be present on the site until 2008 when the area was redeveloped by the city government. No longer registered as Turkic and they were regarded as Huizu, Sino-Muslims.²³ However the violent Sinification of this community was completed, long before 2008. When the missionary Marshall Broomhall visited in 1910, he noted that only the older members of the community could still speak Turki and that of the younger generation, “all their customs and dress, except for religious matter are purely Chinese.”²⁴ Thus the Qianlong Emperor’s project of assimilating the Turkic-Muslim—of this neighbourhood at least—was completed in just over a century. However, the quest to fully integrate Xinjiang into the Chinese nation is an ongoing process which continues today.

Photography and language are central to how the contemporary project of the CCP is disseminated to the public. In the past decade, the plight of Uyghurs has gained wider attention due to open-source research and leaked reports which reveal an apparatus of terror—composed of internment camps, residential schools, sterilization, and forced labour—devised to eradicate the Uyghur identity and culture.^{25 26} And like the false qiblah of the Huiziying Qingzhensi, this battle is being spatially fought through architectural styles of mosques, and the proliferation of surveillance technology in cities. In contrast, Sino-Muslims in China enjoy greater religious freedom, with moments of leniency, such as the early 2000s; which saw an increase of Hajj attendance—albeit under stringent conditions.²⁷ However, they have begun to feel the brunt of the CCP quest to produce a “Sinicized” version of Islam.²⁸ This contradicting treatment of Muslims minorities by the CCP mimics the narrative of favoured “Fragrant Concubine” and it is indicative of how “Uyghurs have become racially Muslim in ways that the Sinophone Hui have not.”²⁹

Past and present inform each other. Historical objects cannot be quarantined to the past; how we read this photograph, of a mosque constructed in 1760s Beijing, informs our understanding of the current genocide of Uyghurs in China today. In turn the current genocide informs our reading of this photograph—no longer do we just see a slightly dilapidated qingzhensi, but also an embodiment of terror. And amidst the obfuscation of truth, this caption, the words ascribed to this photograph, plays a part in the ongoing battle of narratives.

This is an incomplete story of an unfinished building. In downtown Beirut, metres from Martyrs’ Square, stands a dilapidated, graffitied concrete shell. Also known as the Egg of Beirut, “the Dome,” or “Sabouneh”—Arabic for “soap,” the brutalist-modernist movie theatre was originally designed in 1965 by Joseph-Philippe Karam. Initial readings of images of the building, which often capture it within the skyline of Beirut Central District, may suggest that the egg-shaped building is out of place. The crane foregrounding and framing this particular image either speaks to the redevelopment surrounding the Egg or its potential demise—a structure under demolition and on its way out. This preliminary reading of a single photograph is, however, surface level. It falls short of capturing the layered history of a building that has survived several threats to its existence and, in turn, has rebirthed into a symbol of resistance, revolution, and reclamation in Beirut. An investigative visual practice¹—one that advocates for reading across, between, and within images as a method for comparison²—facilitates a retracing and resurfacing of the multiple voices and counter-narratives of the Egg.

A complex past haunts the Egg, one that is recorded on its material surface and captured so vividly through images of the building across time. Buildings are not mute.³ They are a form of archive in and of themselves. As registers of matter and transmitters of memories over time, they contribute to the making of history, or histories in the plural, when closely read. The surface of the Egg, peeling away at times and peppered with bullet holes, is a reminder of Lebanon’s past. The Egg was originally designed as part of “Beirut City Centre,” a proposal for a multi-use complex hybridizing the movie theatre with a shopping mall and office spaces.⁴ It was auspiciously used as a cinema until the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975. Construction immediately ceased, leaving the complex unfinished. With its prime location along the Green Line,⁵ and with its distinctive reinforced concrete shell coincidentally resembling a bunker, the Egg was occupied by snipers during the war.⁶ As a frontline spectator, it became not only a witness but also a victim of Lebanon’s socio-political history. Its surface registered the material effects, with each bullet hole.

With its platforms and pilotis exposed and its surface riddled with cavities, the Egg was beyond repair after the war and, therefore, remained largely abandoned. Images of the Egg that circulate popular media merely present the building through this vulnerability—undressed, war-torn, and unfinished. Images, however, are also not mute.¹ Closely reading the Egg through the images that circulated shortly after the war right up until the 2019 civil protests in Lebanon suggest otherwise. The Egg’s exterior and interior are repeatedly seen shrouded with paint, from colourful murals and messages of resistance to political statements condemning the government amid the 17 October Revolution. These once informal and temporal traces on the surface of the Egg resurface as counter-narratives of resistance, revolution, and reclamation. The constellation of images, or rather the visual archive, recording the Egg’s occupation and surface over time are the very documents that construct these counter-narratives.

The visual archive under inquiry here is not assembled through “conventional” sources or accessed through the “official” state-led archive. It has appeared through a combination of citizen-led campaigns and collective political activism produced through social media platforms, predominantly Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.² In 2009 the social media campaign #SaveTheEgg emerged in response to a series of demolition threats associated with the city’s broader post-war redevelopment plans that began in the early 1990s.³ What started as a humble Facebook group, established by student Dania Bdeir,⁴ transformed into an “online” protest to #SaveTheEgg. The use of the hashtag provided a platform to share personal affinities with the building, thereby stimulating broader public awareness, support, and action for its preservation and restoration. The online movement was accompanied by exhibitions and concerts inside the Egg, all of which were memorialised through documented visual traces found within the hashtag. The campaign, which also included petitions and sought alternative design responses to that of private developers, was effective as the fate of the Egg was ultimately secured for a little longer. The building remained closed to the public for the subsequent years until #Eggupation unfolded.

The social media campaign #Eggupation transpired in the context of new tax measures announced by the Lebanese government on 17 October 2019, to address the economic crisis. What followed was a series of protests across the country calling for socio-economic justice. In Beirut, locals were committed to a historic occupation of the Egg, with images on Instagram displaying scenes of protesters climbing the rusted stairs that lead up and into the shell. If we look closely at this image and return to the first, they document a time when protestors had removed the fences and hoarding used to historically shield the Egg. The once-abandoned building was transformed into a “revolutionary classroom,”¹ which facilitated a number of cultural events, including a venue for discussions, film screenings, and raves. The building was also exercised as a meeting and vantage point, a backdrop for the demands of the people, and a canvas for their political messages. The act of occupation not only supported a space of solidarity, but it also saw a reclamation of public property (the Egg) by the public.

Hashtags such as #SaveTheEgg and #Eggupation can be seen as tools of archiving² as they connect individual posts into larger collections, ready to be interpreted and assembled into narratives.³ In the case of the Egg, they were mobilised to collate and circulate visual media to advocate for the preservation of the building as well as a broader reclamation of the city during the revolution. This widespread exposure, enabled by the hashtags, inherently forged a “digital” and lateral network of solidarity,⁴ increasing participatory engagement both online and offline. As we have seen, social media is emerging as an alternative archive. In “Instant Archives,” Haidy Geismar argues that “we need to take seriously how social media has become a new institutional framework.”⁵ As a living and growing repository registering informal traces, social media platforms are completely subverting “the ways in which archives are used as tools of power, social control, and centralisation.”⁶ The grass-roots engagement and citizen-led journalism facilitated through and by social media is not only generating an expanded visual field⁷ but has completely destabilised and re-drawn the boundaries of the “official” archive. Such reimaginings of the archive welcome a more democratised approach to the construction of cultural memory and more broadly, to historiography. Narratives that have consistently been excluded by traditional archives are resurfacing by the public and are becoming accessible to a broader audience.

The participatory witnessing and recording of recent socio-economic and political events in Beirut through social media have re-organized the cultural memory of the Egg, and by extension, the city. Although the Egg’s future remains unclear, its survival is a testimony to the significant cultural role the building has played in the city. In its defiance to be demolished, the Egg remains a spectre of pasts, presents and possible futures. It sits proudly as a reminder of the things that have become and the things that might become. This is an incomplete story of an unfinished building as we hope its surface will continue to register counter-narratives, further reimagining and expanding on the building’s revolutionary identity. The Egg has more to say, if we look beyond what we first see.