Tag : Spirituality

Mumbai: In an epochal development, the tiny Dawoodi Bohra community has got a swank and glittering, eco-friendly mosque, the biggest in the city and among the largest of the clan in the country, an official said here on Tuesday. The place of worship is the iconic ‘Saifee Masjid’, which was first built in 1923, and after a century of prayers, now redeveloped in 2023, in the heart of south Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar area. The community’s spiritual head Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin inaugurated the Saifee Masjid on Monday night at a formal ceremony in the presence of a large number of joyous Dawoodi Bohras. This is the same venue where the mosque was first inaugurated by the late Syedna Taher Saifuddin (51st Syedna) in 1926, and where his son the late Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (52nd Syedna) regularly led prayer congregations for decades till his passing in Jan. 2014 – they were the father and grandfather, respectively of the present 53rd Syedna. “The old Saifee Masjid building was constructed between 1923-1926 but had passed its utility and was dilapidated after serving the community for nearly a century. It was demolished in 2018 and another replica of the earlier mosque, with certain modern innovations, was constructed here in the past five years,” said an official from the Syedna’s team. The new mosque measures 34.5 metres long, 26.7 metres wide and 15.1 metres high, and can accommodate 5,000 community members on the ground plus two floors, the upper floors reserved for women devotees. The external complex can accommodate another more than 15,000 people making it a convenient venue for large gatherings like Ramzan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Eid Milad-un-Nabi, Muharram congregations, and other special events round the year. The rebuilt Saifee Masji ...