KARACHI: If you see the structure from afar, it looks like a giant boat anchored in the middle of the busy road in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi.

But once you move closer and two large minarets and a green-colored dome appear in sight, it becomes clear that this is a mosque. 

This is the historic Kutchi Jama Masjid, or ‘Kishti Wali Masjid,’ in Karachi’s Dhobi Ghat area, which has become a popular landmark and beloved space for worshippers to visit for prayers and community. 

The mosque traces its origins to some 130 years ago, when British forces mobilized Muslim laborers to fortify the banks of the Lyari river. The workers erected a makeshift mosque on the site, according to Gul Muhammad Attari, the current president of the Kutchi Jama Masjid. 

Decades later, when members of the Kutchi Memon community migrated to Karachi in the 1920s, they constructed a concrete mosque in the same place with four minarets. 

Since then, the building has been demolished and reconstructed multiple times due to road building and expansion works as well as development projects in the area. In 2005, to save the mosque from future demolitions, the Kutchi community came up with the idea of turning the mosque into a landmark — a space that was a mosque but also had cultural and tourist value. 

The design came from Abdul Qadir, an architect from the Kutchi community, and the mosque was built over seven years. In its present form, it has three floors and can accommodate up to 1,000 worshippers.

“When people see this mosque from afar, they are amazed that there is a boat standing in the middle of the road,” Attari told Arab News. 

“When they come closer and see the dome and minarets, they are pleasantly surprised that, ‘Wow, this is a mosque, Mashallah!’ They are really happily surprised.”

“WORLD FAMOUS”

The boat had almost been moved from its coveted spot on the edge of the river once. 

Attari recalled a proposal by then mayor of Karachi Dr. Farooq Sattar in the 1980s to relocate the mosque closer to the river to make space for a dual carriageway, but residents of the area said they would give up the space of their houses rather than let the building be moved. 

“If people hadn’t sacrificed their homes, it wouldn’t have taken the shape of a boat like this later,” Attari said.

Noor Muhammad, a community elder and a regular worshiper at the mosque for the last five decades, said its design had garnered worldwide fame to the extent that many were now unfamiliar with its original name.

“People don’t know, most of them don’t know what the name of the mosque is,” he told Arab News, saying worshippers only identified it as the boat-shaped mosque and came from far and wide to witness the “architectural marvel.”

“People come from Islamabad, people come from Lahore, and say ‘We have come just to see this mosque’,” Muhammad said. 

“When that mosque was [last] demolished, people thought they wouldn’t find the tranquillity of the original mosque again,” Attari added. 

“But now, Mashallah, when this mosque was built, it became so famous worldwide that people now come here and pray and feel proud that they are praying in the ‘Kishti Wali Masjid’.”