Bangladeshi Akhal Miah sits cross-legged in a small room, facing a coffin draped in blankets, and chants verses from a Koran hanging from the wall.
'People from all over the Islamic world come to pray at this tomb, from India, Pakistan and Arab countries,' he says. 'Everyone knows it. [Saad ibn] Abi Waqqas brought Islam to China.'
Outside, three Muslims from Ningxia, in northern China, have arrived to pray.
Waqqas was a maternal uncle of the Prophet Mohammed and one of his first converts. According to Chinese Muslims, he arrived in China in AD650, 18 years after the death of the Prophet, as part of a dramatic expansion of the new religion. Waqqas built in Guangzhou the first mosque in China with a free-standing minaret. At 12 metres high, it became known as the Lighthouse Mosque, serving as a beacon for centuries for ships on the Pearl River. It was the tallest structure in the city and had a weather-vane, by which mariners could tell the direction of the wind.
Fifteen metres from the mosque is a tomb that Chinese say belongs to Waqqas; many Muslims also believe this although some Arab scholars say he was buried in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Next to the tomb is a compound with prayer rooms and a place for the faithful to wash along with other Muslim tombs, some dating to the late Qing dynasty.
'We all know of [the mosque],' says Muhammad Hakim, a businessman from Algeria, while eating a dinner of halal meat at an Arab restaurant in Guangzhou. 'We go there for our prayers on Friday. Abi Waqqas was well received by the Chinese emperor. There has never been a war between the Arabs and China.'