Today is the start of the three day religious festival of
Eid al-
Adha (the
Festival of Sacrifice). It marks the end of the Hajj, the
annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which was attended by well over 3 million pilgrims this year, including two
Capetonians who
cycled all the way.
My photo today was taken this morning at the cemetery of the Constantia Mosque on
Spaanschemat River Road. On the first day of
Eid al-
Adha, Muslims attend morning prayers at their local mosque before going on to join family and friends for celebrations.
This area of Constantia has an interesting history in that the original farm was apparently bought at an auction on the Parade in 1902 by the Solomons family who lived in the large Victorian house on the farm until the dark, shameful days of apartheid when they were evicted from their land in 1966 because it had been zoned for “whites” only under the infamous Group Areas Act and they happened to be classified as “coloured”. Their houses were demolished, but their
cemetery and mosque were spared and continued to be used by the families who were scattered far and wide.
With the dawn of the new South Africa in the 1990s, the families lodged a land claim, and the process has now drawn to a conclusion with the restitution of what remains of their once extensive land to the families.
Eid Mubarak to all!
For more posts around the world today, go to
ABC Wednesday.
A window into the Noor el Hamedia Mosque, on the corner of Dorp and Long Streets in Cape Town. The mosque was built in the 1880s in memory of Abu Bakr Effendi, a Turkish Islamic scholar, who was one of the first people who wrote down Afrikaans, phonetically in Arabic script; thus providing a unique chance to work out how it must have sounded in mid-nineteenth century Cape Town.
Today is the start of the three day religious festival of Eid al-Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice). It marks the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which was attended by well over 3 million pilgrims this year, including two Capetonians who cycled all the way.
This handsome mosque, Quawatul Islam Mosque, in Loop Street, Cape Town, was established in 1892. It was mainly for the Indian Muslims who came to Cape Town at that time.
Cape Town Time