The historical significance of mosques across the UK is the subject of of a new book.
The British Mosque is published by Historic England and presents the first ever overview and explanation of Islamic architecture in Britain, from the earliest examples in the late 19th century, to the mosques being built today.
The Aziziye Mosque London (All pictures courtesy: The British Mosque)
The interior of the 2001 main men’s prayer hall, showing the mihrab, which is a moveable screen. A projecting bay in which the mihrab is placed receives daylight from high-level win.
Masjid-e-Shah Jalal, Leeds, a local landmark that ends a terrace of back-to-back housing
The author Shahed Saleem, architect, lecturer and researcher at the University of Westminster London, chronicles the architectural and social history of the British Mosque, and so encapsulates Britain’s Muslim history as told through its buildings.
The main entrance of Glasgow Central Mosque,an ambitious interpretation of traditional mosque architecture.
The Shah Jahan Mosque,Woking, was commissioned by Dr Gottlieb Leitner, designed by William Isaac Chambers and completed in 1889
The interior of the Baitul Futuh Mosque is restrained and simple, with a large central dome and fl oor-toceiling windows
The British Mosque shows, for the first time, how the mosque as a building type in Britain has emerged and developed over more than a century of rapid social change.
It presents an engaging narrative and statistical analysis of the different types of mosques, estimated to total 1500 across the country, and in doing so it illustrates the diversity of the nation’s Muslim population.
The arched doorway of the Jame Mosque, Leicester
The book charts a course from the earliest mosques formed from the conversion of houses, to other large scale conversions through to purpose built mosques and with these the emergence of an Islamic architectural expression in Britain.
It features 350 striking new interior and exterior photographs of mosques across Britain, archive material, drawings and a foreword by prominent architectural critic and writer Jonathan Glancey.
The British Mosque reveals how mosques are deeply integrated within the historic fabric of the communities they serve and thus socially and culturally important to the nation.
The British Mosque: An Architectural and Social History by Shahed Saleem is published by Historic England. It is priced £60.
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