Masjid Agung Sultan Thaf Sinar Basarsyah Deli Serdang

Named in loving honour of Sultan Thaf Sinar Basarsyah, a revered ruler of the Serdang sultanate who reigned in the later nineteenth century of the common era, this great congregational house of prayer rises among the plains of Percut Sei Tuan in the regency of Deli Serdang in the province of North Sumatra on the island of Sumatra. The word Agung in the Indonesian title means great, a dignity reserved for the principal congregational mosques of each region, and the naming of the building after Sultan Thaf Sinar Basarsyah carefully preserves the living memory of a noble prince who patronised religious scholars, supported Quranic schools for children and built mosques across his wide and prosperous domain. Deli Serdang lies on the fertile eastern coastal plain just south of the city of Medan, a fruitful zone that welcomed the faith through Acehnese missionaries, Minangkabau traders from the west and returning pilgrims from across the wider Malay world of ports and sultanates. The region remembers Sheikh Abdurrahman, may God have mercy upon him, whose pesantren school trained many generations of teachers, and the wider scholarly culture of the old Deli court that produced poets, jurists and physicians. The architecture blends the Malay tiered roof with the bulbous dome of the Mughal influenced Sumatran style, topped by a graceful crescent that glints above the rice fields. Inside, lofty timber columns support a cool and shaded prayer hall, while geometric jali screens filter the strong afternoon sun. Five daily prayers gather workers from the surrounding palm oil estates, students of the nearby pesantren schools, and families of the small fishing villages along the Percut estuary. The Jumu'ah prayer is a well attended occasion with a sermon delivered first in Bahasa Indonesia then briefly in Arabic. The month of Ramadan witnesses the sharing of bubur pedas, a peppery rice porridge that is a Deli specialty, before the tarawih prayers begin. Eid al Fitr and Eid al Adha bring thousands of worshippers to the open prayer ground, and in the evenings the visitors happily exchange greetings with neighbours across the district. Guests are warmly welcome at all times, with the old sultan's palace and the grand mosque of Medan within easy reach by car.