Small mosques may have been built in America in the 16th century, but these structures constructed later persist to this day.
BY: THARIK HUSSAIN
PUBLISHED: APRIL 5, 2023
There are almost 3,000 mosques spread out across the United States, and while the vast majority have been built by communities since the mid- to late 20th century, mosques are not new to the American landscape.
There are some suggestions that small mosques may have been built by Muslims who arrived with the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, and slave narratives, like the one written by Job Ben Soloman, reveal that enslaved Muslims continued to observe their religion in secret and may well have congregated in small groups to pray, which is essentially the makings of a mosque—a place where Muslims congregate to pray.
However, the oldest American mosque structures still around today were mostly built by Muslim communities that came over as part of the mass immigration of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some are the result of Muslim missionary work, and others are the products of emancipated Black Americans rediscovering their ancestral Islamic roots. While there is still debate over which one is the oldest, due to a paucity of work on this area, the earliest available written accounts and documents suggest the following mosques might be the seven oldest in America today.
