History
Masjid Abdul Gaffoor is located in the area known as Kampong Kapor, which was an active business hub for Indian merchants and for those who worked at the old race course at Farrer Park. The mosque on this site was originally a building with timber partitions and a tiled roof known as Masjid Al-Abrar, built in 1846 to serve the religious needs of the South Indian Muslim merchants and Baweanese syces and horse trainers residing in Kampog Kapor.
In 1881, a deed of assignment dated 14 November, 1881 created the Dunlop Street Mosque Endowment or wakaf. The two trustees were Ismail Mansor and Shaik Abdul Gaffoor bin Shaik Hydert. Abdul Gaffoor was chief clerk at a legal firm. The wakaf was created for the building of a mosque for the Muslim community in Singapore. The deed of assignment also placed in trust several other properties including a Muslim burial ground and a house in Race Course Road. The burial ground was closed in 1921.
In 1887, as mosque trustee, Shaik Abdul Gaffoor applied to construct shophouses and sheds on the land around the original mosque. More shophouses were added in 1903. The rental of these buildings generated income which then went towards building the new mosque.
Building began in 1907 and it appeared to have taken quite a few years for the mosque to be completed because its completion date is not known. In 1910, when the new mosque was partially completed, the old mosque was demolished. When Shaik Gaffoor died in 1919, it was apparently still not completed. After his death, his son took over the management of the mosque and the wakaf properties. In 1927, the Dunlop Street Endowment was taken over by the Muslim and Hindu Endowments Board. The building was presumably complete then.
Today, the mosque stands facing a row of shophouses that are now used for Qur'an classes and other subjects, as well as for communal activities.
Masjid Abdul Gaffoor was gazetted as a national monument on 13 July 1979.
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