page_title: Great Mosque of Gaza
section_title: After 1948
hierarchical_section_title: Great Mosque of Gaza / History / After 1948
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Southern Palestine, Hebron, Beersheba and Gaza area. Gaza, central section Abstract/medium: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection Physical description: 1 slide&#160;:
context_page_description: The Great Mosque of Gaza also known as the Great Omari Mosque is the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip, located in Gaza's old city.
  Believed to stand on the site of an ancient Philistine temple, the site was used by the Byzantines to erect a church in the 5th century, but after the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, it was transformed into a mosque. Described as "beautiful" by an Arab geographer in the 10th century, the Great Mosque's minaret was toppled in an earthquake in 1033. In 1149, the Crusaders built a large church, but it was mostly destroyed by the Ayyubids in 1187, and then rebuilt as a mosque by the Mamluks in the early 13th century. It was destroyed by the Mongols in 1260, then soon restored only for it to be destroyed by an earthquake at the end of the century. The Great Mosque was restored again by the Ottomans roughly 300 years later. Severely damaged after British bombardment during World War I, the mosque was restored in 1925 by the Supreme Muslim Council.
context_section_description: The ancient inscriptions and bas-relief of Jewish religious symbols were allegedly chiseled away intentionally at some stage between 1987 and 1993. During the Battle of Gaza between the Palestinian organizations of Hamas and Fatah, the mosque's pro-Hamas imam Mohammed al-Rafati was shot dead by Fatah gunmen on June 12, 2007, in retaliation for the killing of an official of Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard by Hamas earlier that day. The mosque is still active and serves as an emotional and physical support base for Gaza's residents and a focal point of Palestinian pride.
caption: The mosque in the 1950s or 1960s.
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