Historical of Ancient place ( KRUE SE MOSQUE )

Introduction :

          This blog need to present and show about the ancient mosque (Masjid) in Pattani and also is the heritage place of Thailand, that is “ Krue Seh Mosque”. The ancient mosque is the heritage place of Pattani province and also can attract tourist come to travel in Pattani province of each the year. I will present about historical and biographic of Pattani first.

History of Pattani :

Figure 1 : The Pattani Big Cannon " Phaya-tani "

          The name Pattani is actually the Thai corruption of Patani, its original name means 'this beach' in Patani Malay language. In standard malay, it is "Pantai Ini". Historically of Pattani Province was the centre of the semi-independent Malay Sultanate of Patani Darul Makrif, but paying tribute to the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya. After Ayutthaya fell in 1767, Sultanate of Patani gained full independence but under King Rama I it again came under Siam's control.

          Pattani is located on the Malay Peninsula, with the coast of the Gulf of Thailand in the north. In the south mountainous landscape with the Sankalakriri Mountain range, including the Bu-do Su-ngai Padi National Park, is located at the border to Yala and Narathiwat. There is border of Malaysia.

          Pattani is one of the four provinces of Thailand where the majority of the population are Malay Muslim, making up 90% of the population. They speak the Patani Malay language. The Pattani Malays are very similar in ethnicity and culture to the Malays of Kelantan, Malaysia.

Figure 2 : Krue Se Mosque

Figure 3 : Hitory board of Krue Se Mosque

History of Krue Se Mosque :

Figure 4 : Map of Krue Se Mos

          Krue Se Mosque located at Baan Krue Se about 6 kilometres from the present  Pattani town.  It  was the  first mosque  of  Pattani  and  of the  whole Southeast Asia that built in the Middle East style. At that time it was called Masjid  Pintu  Gerbang  and  later  changed  to  be  the  same  name  with  the location.  It  stood  in  front  of  the  old  palace  gate  on  the  west.  From archaeological remains, it might have built in 1514 during the reign of Sultan Ismail Shajl and completed in the next reign. There were renovations and the biggest renovation was during the reign of Queen Hi Yao (1584-1616) , which 3 is at the reign of King Naresuan the Great of Ayutthaya. The Chinese builder (Lim To Kiam) was commissioned to enlarge the mosque and added more decorations inside.

          From  its  importance  as  the  royal  mosque,  it  was  destroyed  several times  by  the  attack  from  wars  (wars  with  neighbouring  kingdoms  like Palembang  and  Ayutthaya).  After  each  war  renovation  took  placed, unfortunately it had never finished completely. In 1786, Siam was powerful and took control over Pattani. The sacking of Siam had brought the end to Pattani  as  a  kingdom.  Most  of  palaces  and  important  buildings  were destroyed.  Few  sultans  of  Pattani  (under the  governing  of  Siam)  have  put their efforts to  re-establish the Pattani old town, but never  succeeded. The Pattani new town (present town) was erected 1832 and the Krue Se Mosque was left behind since then.

Figure 5 : Thailand Art Department
come to Mosque

          Thailand Fine Arts Department made the first survey of the mosque in 1935 and started a minor renovation two years later. In 1962 on the occasion that  Thailand  celebrated  two  centennial  of  Bangkok  capital,  the  major renovation of Krue Se mosque was taken placed. Even the  renovation was completed there has not been interpretation of the mosque nor in the school’s curricula  of  the  importance  of  Pattani  and  the  mosque.  Not  many  people know  that  this  was  the  mosque  of  one  of  the  richest  town-state  in  the Southeast Asia and it was used  as royal mosque for more than 300 years

The Incident of Krue Se Mosque :

The  April 28, 2004

Figure 6 : April 28, 2004 attack on
the Krue Se mosque

          Krue Se  mosque, again come to the stage of attention when Islamic secessionists launched well-planned and almost simultaneous pre-dawn attacks on 11 government locations and security checkpoints in Patani, Yala and Songkhla provinces in Thailand south. 0n April 28, 2004. Thai authorities reported that 107 insurgents and five members of the security forces had been killed. 32 secessionists were shot down in the Krue Se mosque after 8 hours of battling with the police who surrounded all side of the mosque. These were the bloodiest clashes since a new wave of separatist seccessionist was launched in Thailand’s Muslim-
dominated region in January 2004.

Figure 7 : The Terrorist dead in the Mosque 

          After the event, tourists had been vanished from the sense, both places were heavily guarded by Thai security official, the shooting in the mosque were investigated  by the human right groups  recommended  by the  Thai  government in order  to clarified  the human right violation committed by Thai security official, at last no any Thai security official were punished and “Krue Se  mosque" completely become the  real conflict monument rather than archaeological remains as understand by the archaeologists”