Al-Arba'een Mosque
Al-Arba'een Mosque before the destruction by ISIL in 2014.
Religion
Affiliation	Sunni Islam
Ecclesiastical or organisational status	Mosque
Patron	Amr ibn Jundab Al-Ghafari
Status	Under reconstruction work
Location
Location	Tikrit, Iraq
Geographic coordinates	34°35′56″N 43°40′34″E / 34.59889°N 43.67611°E / 34.59889; 43.67611
Architecture
Type	Islamic architecture
Demolished	2014
Specifications
Minaret(s)	0
Shrine(s)	2

Al-Arba'een Mosque (Arabic: جامع الأربعين شهيداً) was a historic mosque in the city of Tikrit, Iraq. It contained a shrine for Amr ibn Jundab Al-Ghafari, and another shrine for Sitt Nafisa.^[1]

History

Al-Arba'een Mosque before the destruction in 2014. The minaret of the Great Mosque of Tikrit is visible in the background.

The building dates back to the 5th century AH.^[2] The name of the mosque, "Al-Arba'een" (The Forty), is derived^[3] from a belief that forty martyrs killed during an Islamic conquest of Tikrit^[4] were buried under the mosque, although this claim is contested as reports of the forty graves are weak.^[5]

The building was used as an Islamic university in 1262 AD.^[6]

Construction

The mosque building was a square shape, with five domes. Each side was approximately forty-seven meters long.^[7] Its dimensions are 36.5 x 35.5 meters.^[8] Gravel and plaster were mostly used to construct the building^[9] and the two venerated rooms are ten meters tall.^[10]

One of these venerated rooms was a shrine that contained a tomb of Amr ibn Jundab Al-Ghafari,^[11] a companion of the Rashidun caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab. There was also a cellar in the building which is believed by locals to house the resting place of a female saint, Sitt Nafisa.^[12]

Demolition

The mosque was destroyed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2014 by explosives.^[13] The explosion completely destroyed the shrines but did not damage the rest of the mosque. The surrounding cemetery was damaged.

References