Mansur Mosque

Mosque Name: Mosque of Manṣūr

Country: Iraq

City: Baghdad

Year of construction (AH): 145 AH

Year of construction (AD): 762 AD

GPS: unknown location

ArchNet: http://archnet.org/sites/5374

Gibson Classification: Between

For a Link to the Qibla Tool Click Here

Description:

All traces of this mosque have disappeared. However, descriptions of the mosque exist. In 754, al-Manṣūr became the Abbasid Caliph, succeeding his brother Saffah as ruler. By 762 he commissioned the construction of a new eastern capital, choosing Baghdad as his site. The new circular city was designed with ash drawings onto the ground for al-Manṣūr to view prior to construction, which began that same year. By its completion in 767 the Round City measured 2000 meters in diameter. It featured four main gates equally distant from each other: the southwest gate was the Kufa Gate; the southeast was Basra; the Khurasan Gate extended to the northeast and the Damascus Gate to the northwest. The walls were constructed out of mud brick with reed supports, while the domes and vaults were composed of baked brick. The main mosque of the city (see diagram below) was about 100 meters by 200 meters with columns used to support the ceiling around the edges of the mosque. There was no miḥrāb, so one wall was used as the qibla wall.

Jacob of Edessa claimed the qibla for al-ʿIrāq was towards the west. Indeed, Petra is 201 degrees, making west and some south. If this was the case, then Petra could have been the original qibla direction. But there are no archaeological remains that we can go to.

However, Al-Ṭabarī gives us a clue:

“[al-Manṣūr] built this palace in the middle of the city and the congregational mosque next to it the palace. It is said that al-Ḥajjāj ibn ʿArṭāt was the man who laid out the plan of the congregational mosque on the orders of Abū Jaʿfar and laid its foundations. It is said that its qibla was not in the right direction and that anyone praying in it had to turn a little toward the Baṣra Gate and that the qibla of the mosque of al-Ruṣāfa [which faced Mecca] was more correct than the qibla of the mosque of the city because the mosque of the city was built onto (ʿalā) the palace, while the mosque of al-Ruṣāfa was built before the palace and the palace was built onto it and it happened because of that …”

History of Baghdad by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (1002- 1071) tell us: Ibn ʿArabī says: the qibla needed turning slightly towards the Baṣra Gate, certainly the qibla of (the mosque of) Ruṣāfa … is more accurate that this. (The architect was al-Ḥajjāj ibn ʿArḳṭāt). Source: al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī 1904: 10, 59-61, cited in Di Cesare, pp. 57-58:

Di Cesare concludes that the qibla of this mosque must have been similar to that of Ḥajjāj’s mosque at Wasit. Dan Gibson agrees: The mosque of Resafa in Syria faced Mecca which everyone took as being correct at the time Ṭabarī wrote. Ṭabarī ’s description the mosque of Mansur faced the Between qibla, and one would have to turn 34 degrees to the left to have faced Mecca.