Mahmoudiya Mosque

The Mahmoudiya Mosque (Arabic: جامع المحمودية‎, Hebrew: מסגד מחמודיה‎) is the largest and most significant mosque in Jaffa, now part of the larger city of Tel Aviv. It is composed of a complex of buildings arranged around two large courtyards and a third, smaller, courtyard. The buildings, gates, and courtyards were built at different stages throughout the 18th and 19th centuries while Southern Syria was under Ottoman rule.

History

Initial construction of the Mahmoudiya Mosque is said to have occurred in 1730 on the orders of governor Sheikh Muhammad al-Khalili. A sabil (fountain), embedded in the southern wall of the mosque, is attributed to Sulayman Pasha, governor of Acre in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Most of the current mosque was built in 1812 by the Ottoman governor of Gaza and Jaffa, Muhammad Abu-Nabbut. The main courtyard, located in the western part of the mosque, with its arcades and large rectangular prayer hall covered by two big shallow domes, and with its slender minaret are accredited to him. Traces of earlier construction are hardly noticeable, but research contends that Abu-Nabbut's mosque was built on the foundations of a smaller mosque that belonged to the Bibi family of Jaffa. The building reuses Roman columns from Caesarea and Ashkelon.