Kuba Camii

Kuba Camii bears the name of the Masjid Qubāʾ, the first mosque built in the history of Islam, founded by the Prophet صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم on the outskirts of Medina at the time of his Hijra from Mecca. The original Qubāʾ Mosque remains a beloved site of pilgrimage to the present day, and the Prophet is reported to have said that to pray two rakʿāt in it is equivalent in reward to an ʿumra. To give a mosque the name Kuba is therefore to invoke directly the foundational moment of the Islamic community and to express a hope that the new mosque will participate, however modestly, in the blessedness of its prototype. The Ankara mosque bearing this name is a neighbourhood structure of careful construction, with a single minaret, a central dome, and a well-kept forecourt. Inside, the prayer hall is carpeted in warm tones, and the mihrab is finished with Kütahya tile. The walls carry calligraphic panels including inscriptions relating to the historical Qubāʾ Mosque. The imam's Friday sermons often return to the themes evoked by the name — the beginnings of the Muslim community, the hospitality of the Medinan helpers, the virtue of building and maintaining places of worship. Women pray in an upper gallery, and Qur'an classes for children run throughout the year. Ablution facilities are clean and heated. During Ramadan the mosque runs a full programme of tarawih and community iftars. The mosque keeps a small supply of blessed water from the well of Zamzam, brought back by members of the congregation who have performed the pilgrimage, and distributes tiny bottles of it on particular occasions to worshippers who are sick or travelling — a small but very characteristic Turkish gesture of material participation in the baraka of the great sanctuaries. For Muslim visitors to central Ankara, Kuba Camii is a welcoming place to pray, and the very act of stepping beneath the name inscribed above its entrance carries, for the attentive worshipper, a small echo of that first walk across the palm groves of Medina when the Prophet صلى الله عليه وآله وسلم laid the first foundation stone of a mosque in the history of the religion.