Babban Masallacin Juma'a (Kano Central Mosque)

Babban Masallacin Juma'a — the "Great Friday Mosque" — better known internationally as Kano Central Mosque, is the principal congregational mosque of the historic city of Kano in northern Nigeria and one of the most architecturally significant mosques in West Africa. The original mosque on this site dates from the early sixteenth century during the reign of the Hausa Sarkin Kano Muhammadu Rumfa, who is credited with the formal establishment of Islam as the state religion of the Kano Emirate. That early structure was a relatively modest mud-and-thatch building in the regional Hausa architectural tradition. The current mosque, in pink marble with two large central domes flanked by four corner minarets each rising over forty metres, was constructed in the 1950s during the late colonial and early post-independence period under the patronage of the Northern Region government and the Emir of Kano. The mosque accommodates approximately fifty thousand worshippers across the main prayer hall, the women's gallery and the surrounding courtyards during Friday prayers and the two Eid celebrations. The mosque sits at the centre of the walled old city of Kano directly opposite the Emir's Palace, the two buildings together forming the religious and political heart of the historic emirate that has been the largest urban centre of the Hausa Muslim world for over six centuries. The mosque is the central institution of the Kano Sunni Muslim community.