By Masri Sareb PutraMasjid Jami’ At-Taqwa Sekadau embodies history, faith, and cultural harmony in West Kalimantan. doc. the author.
In Sekadau, a quiet regency in the eastern stretch of West Kalimantan, water carries memory the way elders carry stories. The Sekadau River slides gently into the mighty Kapuas, the longest river in Indonesia, and at that precise meeting point stands Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa.
The mosque does not dominate the landscape. It does not announce itself with grandeur. Instead, it belongs. As if it has always been there, breathing with the river, aging with the town, praying with generations who have come and gone.
Sekadau lies about 243 kilometers from Pontianak, a journey that gradually pulls you away from the noise of coastal cities into a deeper interior rhythm. By the time you arrive, the air feels slower, more deliberate. On Sultan Anum Street in Mungguk Village, the mosque appears almost modest. Yet modesty, here, is a form of wisdom.
Built in 1804 by Sultan Anum of the Sekadau Sultanate, Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa was conceived not merely as a house of worship but as an extension of governance, ethics, and communal life. The palace once stood just to the east, now largely a memory. The mosque remains, holding that memory intact.
Mosque Born of a Sultan’s Vision
In the early nineteenth century, Sekadau was not an isolated frontier. It was a node. Rivers served as roads, and power flowed with boats, prayers, and trade. Sultan Anum understood this geography not only in political terms but in moral ones. A kingdom, he believed, required spiritual grounding as much as territorial control.
asjid Jami’ At-Taqwa was built as a companion to the palace, revealing a worldview where faith and leadership were inseparable. The mosque’s dimensions, 15.5 by 14.5 meters, reflect restraint rather than ambition. There is no excessive ornamentation, no attempt to overpower the landscape. The structure speaks softly, yet firmly, like a ruler confident enough not to raise his voice.
Standing at the river’s mouth, the mosque becomes a witness. It has watched boats arrive with news of distant lands, watched colonial shadows lengthen and retreat, watched independence dawn quietly rather than explosively. Five daily prayers have marked time more reliably than any clock.
To step inside is to feel continuity. The floor bears the patience of countless feet. The air carries echoes of recitation layered over centuries. This is not a museum. It is a living archive.
Four Pillars, Many Peoples
At the heart of Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa stand four massive pillars made of Ulin wood, known locally as Belian. This timber is legendary in Borneo. It resists rot, insects, even time itself. Houses built with Ulin often outlive their builders, sometimes by generations. Choosing this wood was practical, yes, but also symbolic.
The four pillars are named Hanan, Burhan, Manan, and Dayan. Their names are not decorative labels. They are statements.
Each pillar represents one of Sekadau’s major ethnic communities: Dayak, Chinese, Javanese, and Malay. Together, they hold the roof. Remove one, and the structure weakens. This is not metaphor imposed later by historians. It is meaning embedded from the beginning.
In many parts of the world, difference becomes a fault line. In Sekadau, it became architecture.
The Dayak presence anchors the land, reminding worshippers that long before sultanates and scripts, forests and rivers were already sacred. The Chinese pillar recalls generations of traders and settlers who arrived with goods, skills, and resilience. The Javanese pillar speaks of migration, state policy, and adaptation. The Malay pillar carries the language of Islam, governance, and riverine culture.
When sunlight filters through the mosque and touches these pillars, it does not discriminate. It falls evenly. The mosque teaches unity not through sermons alone but through structure. You pray surrounded by diversity, whether you think about it or not.
Faith, Water, and the Long Memory of Place
Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa is best understood not as an isolated building but as part of an ecosystem. The rivers are not scenery. They are participants. They cleanse, connect, and carry people to prayer. From the mosque’s vantage point, the Kapuas looks endless, a moving reminder that faith, like water, adapts without losing form.
Over two centuries, the mosque has survived floods, political upheavals, and cultural shifts. It has seen the arrival of loudspeakers and electricity, yet it still remembers the era when the call to prayer traveled only as far as a human voice could carry. It has absorbed modernity without surrendering its soul.
What makes Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa remarkable is not only its age but its relevance. It continues to function as a moral center, a place where social boundaries soften. On Fridays, rows of worshippers form without regard to surname or ancestry. The mosque does not erase difference. It arranges it into harmony.
In an age when identity is often weaponized, this mosque offers an alternative narrative. Unity here is not abstract. It is physical. You can touch it. Lean against it. Pray beneath it.
Standing outside at dusk, as the river darkens and the call to prayer drifts across water, you realize something rare: this place does not ask to be admired. It asks to be understood. Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa is not a monument to the past. It is a lesson that still breathes.
To visit Sekadau and not pause here would be to miss the quiet intelligence of Borneo’s interior. This mosque teaches that faith can be firm without being rigid, ancient without being obsolete, and communal without being uniform.
In the end, Masjid Jami’ At-Taqwa does what great literature does. It tells a story larger than itself. A story of rivers and people, wood and belief, difference and belonging. And it tells that story without ever raising its voice.
