Gallery
Description
Property Name: Great Mosque of Beersheba, Beersheba
Inventory No: 972-2-27
Date of infill of the inventory form: 2020-08-21
Country (State party): Palestine
Province: Beersheba
Town: Old Town
Geographic coordinates: 31°14’29.74″N
34°47’18.27″E
Historic Period: Ottoman
Year of Construction: 1900
Style: Ottoman
Original Use: Mosque
Current Use: Jewish Museum
Architect: Unknown
Significance
It is the first mosque in the Negev. It was built in 1900 with the construction of the city, which is considered the capital of southern Palestine, by the Ottomans, to mediate the road between Gaza and Hebron. The mosque offered the city’s Muslim residents and visitors to pray until the occupation of the city in 1948.
Selection Criteria
ii. to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design
iii. to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared
vi. to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance
State of Preservation
After the Nakba of 1948, the mosque was turned into a detention centre, then to the Israeli police headquarters. Later to a courtroom until 1953, when it was transformed into the “Negev Museum” until 1991, then it was closed and the museum exhibits were removed from it. In September 2012 the municipality opened an annual wine exhibition in Al-Masjid Square.
References
Yusuf, Faraj Allah Ahmad. 2011. Mosques of Palestine: under the Zionist occupation. Dar Al-Qalam, 2011.
Web sources