Masjid al-Qiblatayn, Zeila
mosque in Zeila, Awdal, Somaliland
The Masjid al-Qiblatayn (Somali: Masjidka Labada Qibla, lit. 'Mosque of the two Qiblas'; Arabic: مَـسْـجِـد الْـقِـبْـلَـتَـيْـن) is a former mosque, in a partial ruinous state, located in Zeila, in the western Awdal region of Somaliland, in northern Somalia. The name of the mosque reflects the belief that it was once aligned to both Mecca and Jerusalem.
Date
The oldest remains on site are undated and further archeological investigation is needed to understand them. According to local tradition, Muhammad's family migrated to Abyssinia in the early seventh century and constructed the mosque thereafter.
At present, scholarly dates for the Islamicization of the region are uncertain and may be as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though others suggest a possibly earlier but unknown date.
Description
The mosque's name means 'mosque of the two qiblahs', referring to its two mihrabs. According to tradition, one of the mihrabs was oriented north toward Mecca and the other northwest toward Jerusalem.
The building is largely in ruins. This is due to repeated diggings as well as exposure of the foundations of the structure, without any conservation efforts protecting the site. In 2007, George Abungu produced a report of the site as part of a UNESCO assessment mission.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Masjid al-Qiblatayn, Zeila” is mosque in Zeila, Awdal, Somaliland. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Masjid, al-Qiblatayn and Zeila, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17009591. Authority coordinates are 11.354, 43.474. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Masjid al-Qiblatayn, Zeila” 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.