Shah Jahan Mosque

The Shah Jahan Mosque stands in Woking, thirty miles southwest of London, on Oriental Road. Built in 1889, it is the first purpose-built mosque in the United Kingdom and a Grade I listed building. The mosque was partly funded by Nawab Shah Jahan Begum of Bhopal to serve students at the Oriental Institute. Architect William Isaac Chambers designed it in late Mughal style, with a dome, minarets and a courtyard. The alignment with Mecca was set by a ship’s captain brought in to take bearings. The Pevsner Architectural Guides called the building ‘extraordinarily dignified’. The mosque has played a key role in British Islamic history since it opened. Queen Victoria’s Indian secretary Abdul Karim and British Indian employees used it when the Queen visited Windsor. Afghan prince Nasrullah Khan prayed Eid here in 1895 and donated £492. In 1912 the London Mosque Fund took over the building and appointed Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din as imam. During the First World War the imam successfully petitioned for land to bury British Indian Muslim soldiers who had died at Brighton Pavilion. In 1922 the mosque hosted what is thought to be the first public Eid al-Fitr celebration in the UK. Visitors find a dignified late Mughal building of Bath and Bargate stone. The prayer hall sits beneath a central dome, with flanking minarets rising above the courtyard. The surrounding burial ground, designed by T Herbert Winney, holds nineteen graves of soldiers from the Brighton Pavilion hospital. The mosque once published The Islamic Review and hosted figures such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Haile Selassie. After flood damage in 2016, restoration returned the mosque to use. Its quiet setting on Oriental Road remains a place where history and faith meet.