In a desert border town in northern Colombia, Lebanese families built one of the largest mosques in South America.
This is the Mosque of Omar ibn al-Khattab, in Maicao, in the La Guajira region of northern Colombia. Locals call it simply La Mezquita.
Arab families, mostly from Lebanon, settled in Maicao over the twentieth century. The town became a trading hub near the Venezuelan border, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.
The mosque was completed on 17 September 1997, and is named after the second caliph. The Iranian architect Ali Namazi designed it. It was funded by donations from inside and outside the community, and one report puts the cost at roughly three million dollars today.
It has an Italian marble facade, star-shaped windows of coloured glass, a large central dome, and a minaret of about 30 to 37 metres, depending on the source. Women pray on an upper floor that overlooks the men’s hall.
Next to it stands the Dar al-Arqam school, which once had about 800 to 1,200 students.
Reports say many in the Arab community later left, after violence and the collapse of cross-border trade. Estimates of how many remain vary widely. Sources rank this mosque second or third largest in Latin America, but they do not agree.
