Shah Jahan Mosque, Woking

File:Mosques in Great Britain- Islamic Architecture in the UK, c 1945 D24079.jpg

File:Woking Mosque - Building News and Engineering Journal - 2 August 1889.jpg

The Shah Jahan Mosque was built in 1889 by Hungarian-British Orientalist Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner. It was partly funded by Nawab Shah Jahan Begum of Bhopal, as a place for students at the Oriental Institute in Woking to worship. The mosque was designed by architect William Isaac Chambers (1847–1924) and built in Bath and Bargate stone. It was designed in a late Mughal style, and has a dome, minarets, and a courtyard.{{Cite web|url=http://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/diversity/shah_jahan_mosque_woking/|title=Shah Jahan Mosque, Woking|website=Exploring Surrey's Past|access-date=17 December 2016}} The architecture was described by Pevsner Architectural Guides as "extraordinarily dignified".{{Cite web|url=https://www.woking.gov.uk/woking/heritage/mosque|title=Shah Jahan Mosque|website=Woking Borough Council|access-date=17 December 2016}} The alignment with Mecca was established by a ship's captain, brought in to take bearings.

The Oriental Institute, for the students of which the mosque was constructed, was founded by Leitner in 1881. He had purchased the former Royal Dramatic College building in Woking and established the Institute in order to promote oriental literature. It awarded degrees from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan.

The mosque became the first formal place of Islamic worship in England. Queen Victoria's British Indian employees and her British Indian secretary, Abdul Karim, used the mosque when the Queen visited Windsor Castle. A small number of dignitaries, students, and guests used the mosque until Leitner's death in 1899, following which the mosque closed.

During his 1895 visit of England, Afghan prince Nasrullah Khan prayed Eid al-Adha prayers at the mosque and made a donation of £492 on the behalf of his father Emir Abdur Rahman.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UhMoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA181 |title=The Asiatic Quarterly Review |date=1895 |publisher=Swan Sonnenshein & Company |language=en}}

The mosque fell into disuse between Leitner's death and 1913.{{cite web |title=Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din first visit to the mosque |url=http://www.wokingmuslim.org/history/woking.htm}} The London Mosque fund (which was founded in 1910) created the Woking Mosque Trust on Wednesday 17 April 1912.{{cite web |title=Creation Woking mosque trust |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/royal-historical-society-camden-fifth-series/article/london-mosque-fund/800E27BBC9A990B01C1AB43B7515A079#sec12}} During that meeting it was agreed by all members that they were to take over the title deeds. It was also unanimously agreed by the committee members that Leitner's son should be elected to the Woking mosque trust committee. The Woking Mosque, the Memorial House and related property was passed into the ownership of the Woking Mosque Trust by a document of Indenture dated 12 April 1915{{cite web |title=Indenture document text |url=http://www.wokingmuslim.org/history/indenture.pdf}}

Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din's son Khwaja Nazir Ahmad gave credit to Mirza Sir Abbas Ali Baig for saving the mosque from being sold by the Leitner family for the purposes of a private factory.

{{Blockquote|text="It is, however, with his services to the cause of Islam that we of the Woking Muslim Mission are chiefly concerned. It was Sir Abbas Ali Baig who saved from the hands of the Leitner family the Shah Jehan Mosque and Sir Salar Jung Memorial House at Woking and thus rescued them from the fate of being converted into a private factory. He subsequently founded the Woking Mosque Trust and raised funds for its maintenance."{{cite web |title=Sir Abbas Ali Baig |url=https://www.wokingmuslim.org/pers/aabaig.htm |website=Woking Muslim Mission |access-date=3 April 2022}}}} Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, a prominent Kashmiri lawyer was invited to become the Imam and help maintain the mosque.{{cite web |title=Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din invited to become Imam of the mosque |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/royal-historical-society-camden-fifth-series/article/london-mosque-fund/800E27BBC9A990B01C1AB43B7515A079}}

It attracted royal visitors and famous British converts, such as Lord Headley and Marmaduke Pickthall. During the First World War, the incumbent imam, Sadr-Ud-Din, petitioned the UK government to grant nearby land to the mosque as a burial ground for British Indian Muslim soldiers. By 1917, this burial ground, designed by T Herbert Winney and now Grade II listed,{{NHLE|grade=II|desc=Muslim Burial Ground|num=1236560|date=6 January 1984}} had been constructed and received the bodies of 19 soldiers from the hospital for British Indian soldiers at Brighton Pavilion.

On 28 May 1922, the mosque held a celebration of Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan, thought to have been the first time such public celebration had taken place in the United Kingdom. It was at this celebration that Kamal-ud-Din announced that the mosque would be named Shah Jehan, after its benefactress.

Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din died in 1932, and in 1935, due to increasing pressure from Sunnis, the mosque officially broke ties with Ahmadi movement and returned to being a Sunni mosque.{{Cite book |last=Hewer |first=Chris |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nGWmDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22woking%22+%22mosque%22+%221935%22&pg=PA190 |title=Understanding Islam: The First Ten Steps |date=2014-07-28 |publisher=SCM Press |isbn=978-0-334-05233-3 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Otterbeck |first=Jonas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VackDQAAQBAJ&dq=%22woking%22+%22mosque%22+%221932%22&pg=PA5 |title=Muslims in Western Europe |date=2015-11-12 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-1-4744-0934-6 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Ahmed |first=Akbar S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZA6MDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA176 |title=Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World |date=1998-12-31 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-0-85771-380-3 |language=en}}{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Pv7EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA60 |title=Muslims in Interwar Europe: A Transcultural Historical Perspective |date=2015-10-05 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-30197-9 |language=en}}

Until the arrival of Pakistani immigrants in the UK in the 1960s, the Shah Jahan Mosque was the centre of Islam in Britain. It was from the mosque that The Islamic Review was published, as well as Maulana Muhammad Ali's popular English translations of the Quran. It has also been claimed as the location at which the name 'Pakistan' was coined.{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/jun/17/artsfeatures.religion|title=The ideal dome show|last=Glancey|first=Jonathan|date=17 June 2002|work=The Guardian|access-date=17 December 2016}} Among those that visited the mosque in this time were Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Haile Selassie, Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Aga Khan III, and Tunku Abdul Rahman.{{Cite web|url=http://www.islaminbritishstone.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77&Itemid=71|title=The History of the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking|website=Islam in British Stone|access-date=17 December 2016}}

It was badly damaged in June 2016, after floods swamped homes in the surrounding area.{{Cite news|url=http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/incoming/wokings-shah-jahan-mosque-damaged-11319097|title=Woking's Shah Jahan Mosque damaged in flooding|date=11 May 2016|work=getSurrey|access-date=17 December 2016}}

Chapter IX of HG Wells's The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, contains a description of the Mosque being damaged:{{Cite web |date=2004-06-25 |title=Iain Sinclair on HG Wells's The War of the Worlds |url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/classics.hgwells |access-date=2022-05-27 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}

About six in the evening, as I sat at tea with my wife in the summerhouse talking vigorously about the battle that was lowering upon us, I heard a muffled detonation from the common, and immediately after a gust of firing. Close on the heels of that came a violent rattling crash, quite close to us, that shook the ground; and, starting out upon the lawn, I saw the tops of the trees about the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruin. The pinnacle of the mosque had vanished, and the roof line of the college itself looked as if a hundred-ton gun had been at work upon it.

• Woking Muslim Mission
• Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din
• Muslim Burial Ground, Horsell Common
• Mosque of the Bois de Vincennes

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• Website: [http://www.shahjahanmosque.org.uk Shah Jahan Mosque]
• AAIIL: [http://www.wokingmuslim.org Woking Mosque and the Woking Muslim Mission]
• BBC: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/southerncounties/content/articles/2007/01/22/forty_eight_woking_mosque_feature.shtml Forty Eight Hours – Tour: Woking Mosque] (Photo of the Mosque in the 1900s)
• [http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/bmh/BMH-IRO-london_mosques.htm British Muslim Heritage – London’s Mosques]
• {{NHLE |num=1264438 |desc=the mosque}}
• {{NHLE |num=1236747 |desc=the entrance walls}}

{{Mosques in the United Kingdom}}

{{Woking}}

{{Surrey places of worship}}

Category:1889 establishments in England

Category:Grade I listed buildings in Surrey

Category:Grade I listed religious buildings and structures

Category:Indo-Islamic mosques

Category:Mosques in England

Category:Religious buildings and structures in Surrey

Category:Religion in Surrey

Category:Mosque buildings with domes in the United Kingdom

Category:Mosques completed in the 1880s

Category:Religious buildings and structures completed in 1889

Category:Woking

Category:Mosque buildings with minarets in the United Kingdom