From the Topfoto collection

An article appeared on the website of the UK national newspaper Daily Mail (Mail Online) on 24 September 2018 under the heading Britain’s first mosque: Built by a Hungarian Jew, the house of worship which became a High Society attraction… It displayed several photographs of functions at the Woking Mosque, mostly from 1916 to the 1930s, which have not been seen or published elsewhere. The photographs in that article are from the collections at the historical photograph website www.topfoto.co.uk.

Here is the link to the article on the Mail Online website.

Note: The first photograph in the above article, the caption to which says that it shows Lord Allenby and his wife “during a visit to the mosque”, does not, in fact, relate to the Woking Mosque. It is the Fazl Mosque at Southfields, inaugurated in 1926, which for long was also called the London Mosque. There is another photograph of the same visit further down in the above article, where again it is incorrectly stated that it is the Shah Jahan Mosque.

In some of these photographs, well-known Imams of the Woking Mosque can be seen but their names are not given in the captions. In such cases, we are showing the photo below (for reference) and adding the name of the Imam and other relevant information and links.

The Imam above is Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, who is wearing a turban and seated on the left side of the table in 3rd position as we look down the table. It is the Eid-ul-Adha occasion of 8 October 1916. Further details are reported in The Islamic Review, November 1916 issue, available at this link of this website. See also this link within our photographic archive section for more on this occasion.

This is the same event as above on 8 October 1916. The speaker above is Maulana Sadr-ud-Din who was also an Imam at the Woking Mosque. Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din had just arrived back in England from India for his second visit and led the prayers and delivered the khutba at this Eid-ul-Adha.

More photographs from Eid-ul-Adha, 8 October 1916, are at the website of the Topfoto collection, and viewable at this link.

The Imam above is Maulana Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad, who is wearing a turban and is to the left next to Haille Selassie. A newsreel film clip of this visit by Haille Selassie is at this link on Youtube. Further details of this visit, which took place on 25 August 1936, are reported in The Islamic Review, November–December 1936 issue, available at this link of this website.

The Imam above is Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din, who is wearing a turban, 4th from the right, next to the veiled Begum of Bhopal, Sultan Jehan, daughter and successor of Shah Jehan, Begum of Bhopal, who had funded the construction of the Woking Mosque. This visit was on 9 October 1925. A newsreel film clip of this visit is at this link on Youtube. Further details are reported in The Islamic Review, December 1925 issue, available at this link of this website.

This is a photograph of the same event as above from 9 October 1925. Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din is 2nd from right, just behind the Begum of Bhopal.

More photographs from the Topfoto collection

The Topfoto collection can be searched for photographs relating to the Woking Mosque using the search feature on their website. For convenience, below we have created links for certain specific searches on their website:

This website is created and published by the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore (U.K.), Wembley, London,
the successor of the Woking Muslim Mission.