Palm tree mosque
| Palm tree mosque | |
|---|---|
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| Coordinates : 33 ° 55 ′ 28 ″ S , 18 ° 25 ′ 0 ″ E | |
| place | 185 Long Street , Cape Town |
| Laying of the foundation stone | 1788 |
| opening | 1807 |
| Direction / grouping | Islam since 1807 |
| Architectural information | |
| Details | |
| Minarets | 0 |
The Palm Tree Mosque , Arabic مسجد شجرة النخيل, English Palm Tree Mosque , or Church of Jan van Bougies , is located in a former house and is considered the second oldest mosque in South Africa . The foundation stone of the house was laid in the Dutch Cape Colony in 1788, before the religious freedom granted by the British and six years before the older Auwal mosque . It is the oldest building on Long Street . The building has served as a mosque since 1807.
The Islamic community in Cape Town, largely co-founded by Imam Tuan Guru, split after his death in 1807 in a dispute over his successor. The freedmen Frans von Bengal and Jan van Bougies were defeated in the election of the new imam and then bought the property in Long Street. The first became the imam of the newly established mosque, which was named after the latter after he became the sole owner.
The name of the mosque goes back to the time as a residential building, when there was a palm grove in front of the then one-story building . This disappeared in the course of the conversion to a mosque between 1811 and 1821. Only a single palm tree reminds of it.
Individual evidence
- ^ Alan Mountain: To Unsung Heritage: Perspectives on Slavery . New Africa Books, 2004, ISBN 978-0-86486-622-6 , p. 94 (accessed July 14, 2016).
- ^ Nigel Worden, Elizabeth van Heyningen, Vivian Bickford-Smith: Cape Town: The Making of a City: An Illustrated Social History . New Africa Books, 2004, p. 126 ff. ISBN 0-86486-656-9 (accessed July 14, 2016)
- ↑ Abdulkader Tayob: Islam in South Africa: Mosques, Imams, and Sermons . University Press of Florida, 1999, pp. 24 ff. ISBN 0-8130-2343-2
- ^ Hans Fransen: The Old Buildings of the Cape . Jonathan Ball Publishers , Johannesburg 2004, ISBN 1-86842-191-0 , p. 42.