Jami' Mustafa Pasha

Zabid, Yemen

The Complex of Mustafa Pasha, built in 1554, is located approximately half a kilometer outside of Zabid. Once part of the main settlement, it stands alone today. It was commissioned by Mustafa Pasha, the first Ottoman governor in the Tihama region of Yemen following the Ottoman conquest in 1539-40. The mosque is Ottoman in style with a main domed section and a multiple-domed portico; this form differed from local mosques.

The Mustafa Pasha Mosque has twelve domes including a large central dome that sits on an octagonal drum and surmounts the main prayer hall. A five-bay, multiple-domed portico precedes the prayer hall to the south. A high courtyard wall enclosing a minaret with a wide base completes the mosque complex.

Sources:

Finster, Barbara. "An Outline of the History of Islamic Religious Architecture in Yemen." In Muqarnas IX: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Ann Oleg Grabar, 142-144. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992.

Hämäläinen, Pertti, and Françoise Fauchet. Yémen: guide de voyage, 134. Paris: Lonely planet publications, 1988.

Petersen, Andrew. Dictionary of Islamic architecture, 312. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.

Wald, Peter. Yemen, translated by Sebastian Wormell, 136. London: Pallas Athene, 1996.