A mosque among the glass office towers of Johannesburg began as a tent in the 1890s.
This is the Kerk Street Mosque, also called the Jumma Masjid, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Several sources describe it as one of the oldest mosques in the city.
One history of the city says Cape Malay Muslims founded its first mosque, built in 1888 in the Malay quarter of Ferreira's Town and demolished in 1907. No photograph or plan of that building is known.
On this site, the community's tent was replaced in 1906 by a building of wood and corrugated iron. In May 1918, a foundation stone was laid for a brick mosque, with four small corner minarets and a portico of three arches.
By the 1980s it was on a list of a hundred Johannesburg buildings worth preserving, but it was demolished around 1990 to make way for a new mosque. Heritage groups opposed that, and, according to Visi magazine, the community answered that a mosque is a living building that serves its people, not a relic.
The new mosque has a vaulted prayer hall, with hand-carved plaster and timberwork by North African craftsmen, including the mihrab. Inside, the prayer hall is turned to face Mecca, at an angle to the city grid outside. It holds up to two thousand worshippers. Its slender white minaret is a landmark among the glass towers.
The first Muslim community to occupy the land set up a tent in the closing years of the nineteenth century, then in 1906 built a wood and corrugated iron structure. In 1918 construction of a brick walled structure was completed. The brick mosque was demolished in 1990 and was replaced with the modern Kerk Street Mosque designed by Driehaus Prize winner Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil.
Architecture and design
The site measures 740 m2 (8,000 sq ft), bounded by Sauer Street and Kerk Street. The site has been used as a mosque since the 1890s, with the first formal structure was built on the site in 1918. Structural collapse and inadequate facilities led to the commissioning of the current project. The mosque follows the city grid of Johannesburg on the outside; the inside is oriented to face Mecca which, from Johannesburg, is 11° east of due north.
Architect Muhammad Mayet's design has a substantial vocabulary of traditional elements contained within its various parts: domes, squinches, pendentives, fan vault and cross vaults. Artisans from Morocco were flown in to do the intricate plasterwork, a craftsman from Egypt was responsible for the wood carving and Turkish professionals hand carved the delicate marble used to adorn the mosque. The exterior is plastered and painted white, creating a plain but elegant appearance that allows the form to be clearly read.
The prayer hall consists of a series of arches on pillars with segmental arches over supporting segmental vaults which run parallel to the Qibla wall. The vaults are interrupted in the middle by a dome which establishes a central axis pointing towards Makkah. The direction of Makkah is emphasized by the main dome on the north side which is raised on a drum which filters light into the interior directly above the mihrab.
The building is of load-bearing brick and masonry construction built on top of a combination of pile and raft concrete foundations. This construction means the temperature inside the mosque remains a constant 23 °C (73 °F). The mosque can accommodate up to 2,000 worshippers.
Today and visiting
The mosque was declared a national monument by the National Monument Council "because of its historical, aesthetic and cultural value".
The History, Architecture and later sections are adapted from the Wikipedia article “Kerk Street Mosque”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article. Text has been shortened.
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