Auwal Mosque

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The Auwal Mosque (South Africa's oldest) was established in 1798 by Iman Abdullah Kadi Salaam. Once an Indonesian prince, he was banished to Robben Island for conspiring with the English against the Dutch. During his incarceration he was said to have written out several copies of the Koran from memory, and upon his release in 1793, he established a madrasa (Islamic school) in Dorp Stree. Five years later one of his students, Achmat van Bengalen, gave one of his properties to him, which became the Auwal Mosque. Today the building looks very different to what it did at its inception, with only two of the original walls having remained intact after it collapsed back in the 1930s.