site.btaHistorical Mosque in Thessaloniki Opens for Prayers for First Time after 102 Years

More than 100 Muslims celebrated the festival of Eid al-Fitr on April 10 at a historical mosque in Thessaloniki, which opened as a house of worship for the first time after 102 years, the Kathimerini newspaper and other media reported. The festival marks the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan. Prayers were held under tight security.

The decision to open the Yeni Mosque in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, for prayers was recently announced by the General Secretariat of Religious Affairs. The imam leading the prayers, Egyptian Taha Abdelgaglil, a Greek national and a member of the religious committee of the Mosque of Athens, was selected by the Greek authorities.

The Yeni Mosque was designed by Italian architect Vitaliano Poselli in 1902. It was initially constructed for the city’s Donmeh community, who were crypto-Jewish converts to Islam. The two-story building is a mix of Islamic tradition and elements of the architectural style of the 20th century.

Following the departure of the Donmeh during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the building was repurposed as the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in 1925. Today, it serves as an exhibition centre. In 2013, it was made available for midday prayers for religion students.

The population of Greece is predominantly Orthodox Christian. Until recently, the Muslim community in the country had no official place of worship, except in the northeastern region, which is home to Muslims of Turkish origin whose predecessors were left out of the population exchange in 1923.

It was not until 2020 that the first mosque of the post-Ottoman era in Greece opened officially in the capital Athens. It was built mainly to serve the Muslim refugees and migrants who have come to Greece over the last few decades.