Jamia Mosque

Jamia Mosque in central Nairobi is the largest mosque in Kenya and the principal congregational mosque of the Kenyan Muslim community. The mosque was originally established in 1902 by Muslim traders and labourers — many of them descendants of South Asian Muslims who had been brought to East Africa by the British to construct the Uganda Railway — at a time when central Nairobi was still a small colonial railway settlement. The current building, completed in 1933 and substantially expanded in subsequent decades, is built in a distinctive Indo-Saracenic architectural style with three large white domes, two slender minarets and an exterior in white marble that recalls the Mughal mosque tradition of South Asia rather than the Swahili-coastal Islamic architecture more typical of Kenya. The mosque accommodates approximately five thousand worshippers across the main prayer hall and the women's gallery, with capacity for several thousand more in the surrounding courtyards during Friday prayers and the major Islamic festivals. Jamia Mosque sits on Banda Street in the heart of the Nairobi central business district and serves a remarkably diverse Muslim congregation drawn from across East Africa and the wider Indian Ocean: Kenyan Swahili, Somali, Ethiopian, Sudanese, Pakistani, Indian, Yemeni and converted African Muslims of many different ethnic backgrounds. The mosque also houses the secretariat of the Jamia Mosque Committee, a major Islamic religious institution active throughout Kenya.