Sunday Mosque

Here are a couple pictures of what the director of the museum in Pemba called the Sunday Mosque.  They are ruins that stretch back around five hundred years, although I need to do more research on them because things were a bit chaotic at the moment and I didn't have as much time there as I wanted.  The story that the director told was heavy on intrigue, deceit and murder in the local royal family, focusing on two wives and their favorite mosques.  As nearly as I could tell the family was of Persian origin so I asked if that meant that the mosque was initially Shia, but the director said no, which is not implausible because Persia/Iran didn't go officially Shia until around the same time period.  Either way, I need to look into it more.  It was a lovely spot, and I wanted to spend a couple hours there.  When everybody was heading to the bus I asked for a couple minutes to go back.  This allowed me to grab a quick prayer inside the ruins.  When I'm overseas I try and wander into different mosques at various times during the day to pray, but this trip was so packed/stressful that my only other option was at the Istanbul airport both ways.  So, praying at the Sunday Mosque was very meaningful to me.

The outside of the ruins. You can get a sense of the rural nature of Pemba, and the ocean was only a couple hundred yards away.

Again, I needed more time there.  You can clearly see the mihrab, which marks the qiblah (the direction) towards Mecca for prayer, that one finds in every mosque.  The rectangular niches on either side of the mirhab interested me, and the director said it was to hold copies of the Qur'an, which would make sense in a modern mosque, but I somehow think there was more going on there.  We'll build in more time next visit.