Lalla Ghriba Mosque, Tlemcen
Mosque in Tlemcen, Algeria
The Lalla Ghriba Mosque (Arabic: مسجد لالة غريبة), also known as the Mosque of El-Korran, is a small mosque in the medina of Tlemcen, Algeria. It is located in Derb Es-Sbabet ('Alley of Shoes') in the El Korran neighborhood. The history of this building is not well known.
History
Lalla Ghriba
In Maghrebi popular culture, Lalla Ghriba ('Strange Lady') is a legend and a myth about a woman who was a saint. Her devotions touched the Divine so much that she was gifted with miracles. It is said that she could perform wonders and was buried near this mosque in Tlemcen. According to tradition, she appears at night in the El Korran neighborhood, her white ghost moving between houses, prophesying misfortunes to come for their inhabitants. Another mosque in Fes, Morocco, and a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, also bear the name of this mythical figure.
Endowment
Charles Brosselard, a French researcher, mentioned the existence of a plaque written in Maghrebi script, composed of 32 lines, describing all the properties and endowments (waqf) such as houses, shops, and books allocated to the mosque to provide services or revenues. Brosselard estimated that the plaque was at least two centuries old.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lalla Ghriba Mosque, Tlemcen” 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.