Niujie

Niujie (Chinese: 牛街; pinyin: Niú jiē; Wade–Giles: Niu-chieh "Oxen Street") is a neighborhood at Guang'anmen, in Xicheng District in southwest Beijing. The name "Niujie" can refer to the street Niujie or to the neighborhood Niujie. The community was previously in Xuanwu District before the district was merged into Xicheng in 2010.

The Niujie district is administered by the Niujie Street Administrative Office. The core area of this district is along the street Niujie. The Niujie core area, a Hui people neighborhood, has Beijing's largest concentration of Muslim people. As of 2013 there is a Muslim-oriented hospital as well as social services, cafés, shops, restaurants, and schools catering to the Muslim population. In 2002 Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and C. Cindy Fan, authors of "Growth and Decline of Muslim Hui Enclaves in Beijing," wrote that Niujie "continues to thrive as a major residential area of the Hui people in Beijing and as a prominent supplier of Hui foods and services for the entire city." The neighborhood has the Niujie Mosque, which according to Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and Cindy Fan, "mark[s] the identity of Niujie" and has an element of centrality in the community. Most larger Hui neighborhoods in Beijing have their own mosques.

At up to the Tang Dynasty, what is now Niujie would have been on the city's periphery according to archival research and historical documents. The Niujie Mosque was built between 916 and 1125. Wenfei Wang, Shangyi Zhou, and Cindy Fan stated that the establishment of the Hui settlement "probably" was related to Muslims joining the army of Genghis Khan, who had conquered Beijing, and that based on some gravestones of imams encountered at the Niujie Mosque, a significant community of Hui people had lived in the Niujie area dating back to the Yuan Dynasty. During that dynasty many Muslims moved to Beijing. Therefore, soldiers were the first Hui people in Niujie.

...
Wikipedia