সাহেববাড়ি জামে মসজিদ সোনাউল্লাহ তালুকদার ওয়াকফে স্টেট

Held in endowed trust under the Sonaullah Talukdar waqf estate, the Sahebbari Jame Mosque of Mathba village in Bangladesh's Barisal division preserves a generations old tradition of Bengali Muslim family waqf endowments dedicated to the service of God and neighbour. The word sahebbari, meaning the great house in Bengali, refers to the ancestral home of a respected family, and the addition of Jame Mosque indicates that this is the village's main Friday mosque. Barisal, sometimes called the Venice of the East because of its dense network of rivers, lakes, and canals, is a region of fertile alluvial plains, rice fields, and floating markets where community life is deeply shaped by the monsoon rhythms of the delta. Mathba is one of the many small villages scattered across the district, its houses raised on earthen plinths to resist the seasonal floods, its fields yielding rice, jute, mustard, and vegetables. The mosque follows the classical Bangladeshi vernacular, with plastered brick walls painted pale yellow, a central dome crowned with a brass finial, four smaller corner domes, a short minaret fitted with loudspeakers, and a shaded veranda extending the capacity during Friday prayers. Inside, the prayer hall is covered with woven jute mats beneath donated carpets, the mihrab is finished in carved plaster bearing verses from Surah al Fatihah, and a carved wooden minbar stands beside it. Daily prayers gather farmers, fishermen, madrasah teachers, and elders, while Jumu'ah fills the hall and extends into the veranda. The khutbah is delivered in Bengali and Arabic, touching on ethics, family life, and charity. Ramadan is warmly observed, with nightly taraweeh, Qur'an completion ceremonies, and iftars of dates, halim, fruit, muri, and pakora shared across the village. Eid prayers spill into the surrounding lanes. The mosque's waqf also supports Qur'an memorisation classes, burial services for poor families, and charitable distributions during the lean months of the year. Respectful dress, quiet entry, and a small contribution to the endowment box remain the customary etiquette for visitors arriving from outside. An annual waaz gathering during the cooler months draws scholars from Dhaka, Sylhet, and Chittagong, and the waqf committee coordinates free medical camps, winter blanket distributions, and rice relief during the lean months before the monsoon harvest, while the mosque's records include a carefully preserved ledger of charitable distributions made by the founding family across many decades in the Barisal countryside.