Jawatha Mosque
old mosque northeast of Hofuf, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia
The Jawatha Mosque (Arabic: مَسْجِد جَوَاثَا, romanized: Masjid Jawāthā), also incorrectly spelled Al-Jawan, is a Sunni Islam mosque, located in the historic Jawatha area, about 12 km (7.5 miles) northeast of Hofuf, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. It was the earliest known mosque built in eastern Arabia. Most of the original structure fell into ruins. However, it was restored in 2007 by the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, using a design similar to that of Masmak Fort in Riyadh.
Construction
Sources give the date of the mosque's original construction as either 7 AH (628/629 CE) or 16 AH (637/638 CE). It was built by the Bani Abd al-Qays tribe, which lived there before and during the early Islamic period. This mosque is believed to be the first mosque built in Eastern Province and where the second Friday congregation prayer in Islam was offered, the first being held in the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. According to legend, when the Hajr Al-Aswad (Black Stone) was stolen from Mecca by the Qarmatians, it was kept in this mosque for nearly 22 years.
Before the 2007 restoration, most of the mosque's original structure had fallen apart, with only a small number of its arches surviving. These remains include two pointed keel arches from one arcade of the mosque and a part of the qibla wall consisting of three keel-arch niches, and probably dated to the 9th century CE. The central niche of the qibla wall is larger than the other two and acts as the mihrab, which projects from the outer side of the wall.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4022355. VIAF identifies the subject as 128074348. The Library of Congress control number is n2009050198. Authority coordinates are 25.470, 49.679. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jawatha Mosque” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.