SULTAN MOSQUE, Sultan Mosque

Hi, my name’s Scott, and I’m your personal guide. Along with MyWoWo, I’d like to welcome you to one of the Wonders of the World: the Sultan Mosque.

The Sultan Mosque is the most important Islamic place of worship in Singapore.  

With its enormous golden domes, Saracenic-style decorative elements, minarets and pointed-arch windows, the Sultan Mosque looks just like something out of the stories of A Thousand and One Nights, doesn’t it?

This mosque was actually erected on the site of an earlier one, built between 1824 and 1826 with funds from Sir Stamford Raffles and the East India Company. When the British took control of Singapore in 1819, the reigning Sultan, Hussain Shah, was not sent away, and was indeed granted an annual salary and the opportunity to establish his residence here in the Kampong Glam neighborhood. The Sultan built his palace here, and had a mosque built next to it, thus attracting Malay and Indonesian Muslim immigrants to settle in the neighborhood.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, Singapore had become an important Islamic trading center, and the old mosque – which had fallen into a state of complete disrepair – was too small for the flourishing community. In 1924, the year of the mosque’s centenary, the decision was taken to repair and expand it. Funds were raised among Singapore’s Muslim population, and the work was entrusted to the architect of Irish origin, Denis Santry, who chose to renovate the mosque in the Saracenic style that was very much in fashion at the time, incorporating the minarets. The mosque you can see today was completed in 1928, after four years of work. In 1975 it became a national monument, and it is one of the most important religious buildings in Singapore.

Entrance into the magnificent prayer hall is reserved for Muslims only, though anyone may visit the courtyard.

Let me leave you with an interesting fact: if you look very carefully at the onion-shaped domes, you’ll see that each base is decorated with glass bottle ends. The bottles were collected and donated by poor Muslims from the neighborhood so that everyone – not only the rich – could make a contribution to the construction of the Mosque.