A remnant from when Chiang Mai was a detour on the Silk Road, the largest Thai-Muslim mosque in the city is attended by a small, prosperous community of traders at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar. Although the complex has been modernised, the main building was founded a century ago by jeen hor (‘galloping Chinese’), the Thai expression for Yunnanese caravan traders.
Within the past two centuries, the city’s Muslim community has also grown to include ethnic Yunnanese Muslims escaping unrest in neighbouring Laos and Burma.