A decade ago my friend Paul and I stepped out of my battered blue Ford Focus in the town of Woking and instantly stopped talking. We stared in silence at the magnificent sight before us: a large, iridescent green onion-dome, evoking Mogul India, flanked by a quartet of elegant, snow-white, faux minarets, each with its own mini green onion-dome, topped with ornate gilded points shimmering in the early spring sunshine.
Beneath them a dizzying array of vegetal patterns, also gold and green, decorated the mosque’s arabesque arch above its majestic entrance. And in front a symmetrical garden of roses and neatly trimmed lawns was centred on a small fountain.
“Where the hell are we?” Paul eventually blurted.
“We’re in the ‘Orient’ . . . just in Surrey!” I replied.
In a way we literally were: the Shah Jahan Mosque’s address is 149 Oriental Road.
For the remainder of our time, Paul kept asking why neither of us knew anything about such a spectacular place on our doorsteps. It was criminal, he said — and he was right. The first purpose-built mosque in the UK and northern Europe had been sitting in the town of Woking, just southwest of London, for nearly 130 years.
This is why my latest work for the travel publisher Lonely Planet, a chapter called Hidden Muslim Britain in the new book Experience Great Britain, is so significant. While the chapter — the first for a mainstream guidebook — offers readers the opportunity to get out and explore Britain’s fascinating and long Muslim heritage, it raises the question: why hasn’t it happened before?
So, to whet your appetite here are five British-Muslim sites you might have been missing out on.
The Peace Garden, Surrey
ALAMY
1. Shah Jahan Mosque and Peace Garden, Surrey
Completed in 1889, this white Woking mosque was initiated by the Hungarian-Jewish academic Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner as part of a grand oriental institute and then nearly demolished ten years later upon his death. Luckily, an Indian lawyer named Khwaja Kamal ud-Din, aided by influential converted British nobles, reinvigorated it to become a flourishing centre of Islamic activity. The neo-Mughal style structure still functions as a mosque today, and is also open to all visitors (free; tours by arrangement; shahjahanmosque.org.uk). The nearby Woking Muslim Military Cemetery, where some Muslims who died fighting for the British Empire during both world wars were laid to rest, is now a serene landscaped Islamic garden known as the Peace Garden (woking.gov.uk).
Royal Pavilion Brighton
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2. Royal Pavilion Brighton
There are two reasons to visit the jaw-dropping Royal Pavilion, with its Indian-inspired domes and minarets, in Brighton. Firstly, it was here that Sake Dean Mahomed, a pioneering 19th-century Bengali-Muslim, would arrive to serve as the royal shampooist of King George IV and King William IV. Later, this was where the Empire’s Muslim, Hindu and Sikh soldiers injured in World War I were treated. The Indian Hospital Gallery inside tells that story, and of how this space was used to help in their treatment by the Raj. It also reveals that there were two other hospitals nearby where Indian patients endured more harrowing experiences (£17, including gardens; brightonmuseums.org.uk).
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The Arab Room, Cardiff
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3. The Arab Room, Cardiff
Part of Cardiff Castle, the Arab Room exemplifies the British aristocracy’s longstanding love for Islamic art and architecture. It dates to 1881, and its ceiling is covered in the classical Islamic architectural design known as muqarnas, commonly seen on Ottoman-era mehrabs (prayer niches) or minarets. This dizzying example is covered in 22-carat gold leaf and integrates Islamic geometric motifs as well as stained glass, beneath which are large mashrabiya-style windows. The room’s marriage of classical Islamic designs with northern European iconography evokes the mudejar aesthetic once adopted by Christians and Jews in post-Muslim Iberia (£14.50pp; cardiffcastle.com)
Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, Liverpool
4. Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, Liverpool
Founded in 1887 as the Liverpool Muslim Institute, this was the UK’s first mosque, where our earliest organised community of almost exclusively local, white, converted Muslims came to pray. It is named after the founder, Abdullah Quilliam, also a local convert and Britain’s inaugural Sheikh-ul-Islam.
Anyone is welcome to visit what’s now a heritage centre that’s being renovated to resemble that late 19th-century mosque. Do so to hear the story of Britain’s white Victorian Muslims, plus see replicas of items once kept in the mosque, including a press like the one used to print Britain’s first two Islamic journals, The Crescent and The Islamic World (phone in advance for free tours; abdullahquilliam.org).
5. Muslim Burial Plot 1, Surrey
Britain’s oldest Muslim cemetery was founded in 1884, also by Leitner. Originally called the Muhammadan Cemetery, it’s now the Muslim Burial Plot 1 or simply M1, as Muhammadan is considered an offensive word. Leitner established the site just west of Woking, close to his college at the time, in order to bury any Muslim students who passed away there. Shortly after, it became the final resting place of several high-profile Muslims, including Britain’s greatest Quran translator Marmaduke Pickthall, the royal Muslim convert Sir Archibald Hamilton and even a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad — all of whom you can find on the Muslim Cemetery Walk, using a free walking map available at the cemetery offices (free; brookwoodcemetery.com).
The Gold Dinar of King Offa
THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
And an honourable mention…
. . . for one tiny object on display in the British Museum: the Gold Dinar of King Offa. It’s Britain’s earliest indigenous Islamic artefact. Minted in about 774AD for King Offa of Mercia, this Anglo Saxon gold coin displays part of the shahadah (Islamic declaration of faith) and an Arabic homage to the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, one of the builders of Baghdad, alongside the Latin inscription Offa Rex (free; britishmuseum.org).
Experience Great Britain (£16.99; Lonely Planet) is available now, as is Tharik Hussain’s book Minarets in the Mountains: a Journey into Muslim Europe (£9.99; Bradt)