Great Mosque of Gaza

Great Mosque of Gaza
Great Omari Mosque
Great Mosque of Gaza ; Great Omari Mosque
	Great Mosque of Gaza in 2022
Religion
Affiliation	Islam
District	Gaza Governorate
Province	Gaza Strip
Region	Levant
Location
Location	Omar Mukhtar Street, al-Daraj, Gaza Strip
Country	State of Palestine
	Location within Gaza
Geographic coordinates	31°30′15.13″N 34°27′52.08″E / 31.5042028°N 34.4644667°E
Architecture
Type	Mosque
Style	Mamluk, Italian Gothic
Completed	7th century (original); 1340 (rebuilt); c.1650 (restored)
Demolished	By Israel on December 7, 2023 (Israel-Hamas war)
Specifications
Minaret(s)	1
Materials	Sandstone (exterior structure), marble and plaster tiles (entrance and interior structure), olive wood
Website
	Official website

The Great Mosque of Gaza,^[a] also known as the Great Omari Mosque,^[b] was the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, located in Gaza City.

Believed to stand on the site of an ancient Philistine temple, the site was used by the Byzantines to erect a church in the 5th century. After the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, it was transformed into a mosque. Described as "beautiful" by Ibn Battuta, an Arab geographer in the 14th century, the Great Mosque's minaret was toppled in an earthquake in 1033. In 1149, the Crusaders built a large church. It was mostly destroyed by the Ayyubids in 1187, and then rebuilt as a mosque by the Mamluks in the early 13th century.

It was destroyed by the Mongols in 1260, then soon restored. It was destroyed by an earthquake at the end of the century. The Great Mosque was restored again by the Ottomans roughly 300 years later. Severely damaged after British bombardment during World War I, the mosque was restored in 1925 by the Supreme Muslim Council. It was destroyed again by an Israeli airstrike on 7 December 2023, leaving most of the structure collapsed and the minaret partially destroyed.^[5]

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^ "Images show major damage to Gaza's oldest mosque". BBC. 2023-12-08. Retrieved 2023-12-09.

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[7] "Images show major damage to Gaza's oldest mosque". BBC. 2023-12-08. Retrieved 2023-12-09.

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