In the heart of Nairobi’s bustling city centre, lies a somewhat peculiar landmark. With the arrival of Sayyid Abdullah Shah and the establishment of the Nairobi Muslim community, already discussed in the Saints of Savannah series, a new challenge arose: the need for a Friday (Jamia) Mosque.
Built between 1925 and 1933 the Friday Mosque, sits among the city’s hustlers, matatu (mini-bus) conductors and second-hand clothing shops. What makes it peculiar? The mosque is built in a Mughal style, drawing inspiration from Lahore’s Badshahi Masjid and the Jama Masjid in Delhi. This is clearly visible in its three bulbous domes, chatris (elevated dome-shaped pavilions), central iwan, and courtyard.
The Nairobi Friday Mosque doesn’t exactly reflect local architecture. For some, this could be construed as a problem, creating an artificial barrier of ’foreignness’ that alienates the message of Islam in a new land and context. Furthermore, it can widen the gap between immigrant Muslim communities and the native people of the land, and end up creating mosques that serve as “race temples” – that cater only to one race or ethnicity.1
But far from being an offensive Indian implant on savannah soil, the Friday Mosque became what one journalist affirmed as “a landmark in the heart of Nairobi; a living symbol of Islam in East Africa.”2
The Mughal inspiration is not without significance. In 1857, the mighty Mughal Empire that once ruled much of the Indian Subcontinent, came to a brutal end at the hands of the British. The result of this British victory meant the suppression of Islam and Muslims. Anti-Islam sentiment increased and Muslims were to face wanton discrimination while the British seized every opportunity to remove the last vestiges of the Mughal Empire.3 At the time, the Badshahi Mosque, then the largest mosque in the world, was defaced and used as a cannon firing range,4 and the Jama Mosque in the Delhi, the capital of the Mughal Empire, faced a similar fate.5
It is therefore fascinating that an Indian migrant community that only arrived on the shores of East Africa in 1896 was able, firstly to construct such a grand building, and secondly choose this style, given the politics that surrounded such architecture at the time. For Indian workers, building the mosque in the style of their glorious heritage whilst still under the heels of the very oppressors that ended their past glory, must have had quite an effect on their spiritual psyche.
Despite its obvious foreign antecedents, there was never any outcry about the mosque’s appearance at the time, or since, nor any alternative designs proposed from within the growing Muslim community. The fate that had befallen the Mughal Empire and the Muslims of India was well known, and Kenyans were themselves no strangers to the brutal colonialism of the British. In my opinion, this perhaps enabled the construction of a mosque in a Mughal style, to be viewed in a different light – and not one that created artificial barriers nor alienated the message of Islam on the soils of the Savannah.
Given all of the above, another slightly peculiar aspect of the Friday Mosque was that it was built by a Scottish architect, William Landels.6 The British did have an affinity towards all things Mughal (aesthetically at least), so in that regard this is not all that surprising.7
Its construction was ambitious and painstaking. Stones were imported from India through the Mombasa port, and transported to Nairobi by railway. The Indian railway workers would pick up a block from the railway station and carry it to the construction site on their shoulders.9 The mosque was constructed in an environment that was generally difficult to operate in, largely due to colonial oppression and segregation policies. Added to that, workers would also have had to deal with wild animals, who were known to wander close to the mosque.
Ambitious too, were the minaret plans. The scholar Mostafa Badawi once commented that a minaret symbolises a ladder, ascending from earth to the heavens like the Miraj (Night Journey of the Prophet, pbuh.9 While ground level, clarity, light and vision may be obstructed, at the very top one has a 360-degree view of the horizon. This clarity and light symbolises the ma’arifa (spiritual insight) of the man who comes to know God. It says a lot about depth of yearning for ma’arifa among this community then that Mr. Fletcher, the Nairobi city municipal engineer rejected the minaret plans on the objection that they were too high. Indeed, the original plan would have placed the minarets around 28 storeys high!10
Even with its lowered height, at the time of its 1933 completion, the mosque was the tallest building in Nairobi and the largest mosque in that region of East Africa.11
Though they inherited style inspiration from the Mughals, Indian Muslims in Kenya did not inherit their wealth. Many were from poor backgrounds. The first mosque committee in fact, was comprised of two railway clerks, Mian Allah Baksh and Aziz Ahmed (chairman and secretary respectively) and a tailor, Mian Karam Ilahi (executive board member). It makes their achievement in galvanising support and funds to construct the building, from a nascent Muslim community, all the more impressive.
The grand opening of the mosque took place in August 1933. Pictured above is the schedule from the day itself. Noteworthy is that at 2.30pm, there was a speech scheduled explaining some verses of Mohammed Iqbal, the Indian poet-philosopher. Aside from the fascinating point that Iqbal was being studied in Kenya during his own lifetime, one can contemplate the effect of this thought upon the ‘Mughals in Africa.’ A decade before the grand opening, Iqbal penned Tule-e-Islam (The Rise of Islam), where aside from urging the Muslim community to reinvigorate itself, he stated,
This is the destiny of nature; this is the secret of Islam – Worldwide brotherhood, an abundance of love!
Break the idols of colour and blood and become lost in the community.12
Contemplating Iqbal’s poetry on themes including worldwide brotherhood and the destruction of artificial barriers like colour and race, laid a foundation of plurality for the Mughal Mosque. On its grand opening, a two kilometre-long procession of Indian, Swahili, Arab, Somali and Nubian Muslims marched in the streets to celebrate the mosque’s construction, in the heart of colonial Kenya.13 Religious studies in the mosque were taught in Swahili, Urdu, Arabic and Somali.14
As time has passed, and integration deepened, the mosque committee that was entirely composed of Indians at its beginning, was by 2012, entirely Black African15 – an example against diasporic mosque practices that often reflect ethnic segregation.
The first imam of the mosque, who also laid its foundation stone, was Sayyid Abdallah Shah. The current imam (while writing this article) is a Somali imam, by the name of Jamaluddin Osman, who delivers televised Swahili sermons weekly. These examples point towards ethnic and racial plurality, rather than the exclusivity of alleged ”race temples.”
What of the ‘Mughals’ who chose Africa as home? Time passed and they moved on from being mere wageni, guests, to become wenyeji, among those who belong.16 The story of the Jamia Mosque of Nairobi, is one of a community that resisted colonial oppression by importing a symbol that became a pillar of beauty and plurality in the city. ‘’A landmark in the heart of Nairobi; a living symbol of Islam in East Africa” indeed.
This article is part three of the Saints of the Savannah Series. Read part one, The Punjabi Labourer and part two, The Great Cleric.
Footnotes
1 Abdal Hakim Murad, Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe, The Quilliam Press Ltd, 2020, p 67-73.
2 Steven Nelson, “Nairobi’s Jamia Masjid and Muslim Identity”, Indiana University Press Transition, Issue 119, 2016, p61.
3 Belmekki Belkacem, The Impact of British Rule on The Indian Muslim Community in the Nineteenth Century, University of Oran, 2008, p 42.
4 New World Encyclopaedia ‘Badshahi Mosque’ (https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Badshahi_Mosque#History), last accessed 11 July 2022.
5 Sadia Aziz, “Mosque, Memory and State: A Case Study of Jama Masjid (India) and the Colonial State c. 1857”, The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 47, p13–29.
6 Nelson,2016, p 61-62.
7. Aside from the Mughal-inspired palaces built by the British for loyal maharajas, Vincent Esch’s High Court in Hyderabad, built in 1920, is adorned with bulbous domes and lavish details that take their cues from the Taj Mahal, Ibid p 71.
8 Shukri Abdirahman Maalim, Role of Nairobi Jamia Mosque in Socio-Economic Development of Muslim Community in Nairobi County, University of Nairobi July 2018 p 35.
9 Muhammad Jawad, “Spiritual Significance of Islamic Architecture,” Jan 2 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9qzc1f_7JU), last accessed 17 Oct 2022.
10 Cynthia Salvadori, Settling in a Strange Land: Stories of Punjabi Muslim Pioneers in Kenya, Park Road Mosque Trust, 2010, p 94.
11 Nelson,2016, p 72.
12 Tulu-e-Islam, Iqbalurdu.blogspot.com (http://iqbalurdu.blogspot.com/2011/04/bang-e-dra-163-tulu-e-islam.html), last accessed 19 July 2022.
13 Maalim, 2018 p 40.
14 Murad, 2020.
15 Maalim, 2018 p 136.
16 More on this phenomenon can be gleaned from Dr. Umar Faruq Abdallah’s “Islam and the cultural imperative”, Nawawi Foundation 2004.
