Mosque History
The Omari Mosque is considered one of the monuments of the Islamic conquests at the dawn of the first hejri century – Beirut was conquered in 14 HY / 635 AD – and is, without doubt, one of the biggest and oldest Mosques in the city.
It was dubbed Omari as a tribute to the 2nd Caliph Omar Ibn Al-Khattab; it was also named Al-Tawba (repentance) Mosque and Prophet Yahia’s (John the Baptist’s) Mosque, since various people say that some of Prophet Yahia’s body parts had been placed inside the Mosque; where an iron cage was placed above them by Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1305 HY / 1887 AD, and still exists to our present day.
Under the crusaders’ dominion, it was transformed into a church and, in 583 HY / 1187 AD, the Sultan Saladin liberated the city of Beirut and brought back the Omari Mosque to life. A decade later, the Mosque was reconverted into a cathedral by the crusaders who invaded the city, and it was finally conquered for the last time by Muslims, at the time of Mameluks on 22 Rajab HY / July 21st 1291 AD, who introduced to it some modifications.
Moreover, the Omari Mosque was modified several times over the centuries; the last modification took place on June 4th 2004 when the Mosque was inaugurated in the presence of the Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Mohamed Ragheb Rachid Kabbani.
For a certain period of time, the Omari Mosque was honored by the presence of some of Prophet Mohamed’s (peace and blessings be upon Him) hair locks which, presented in a chest, were placed in a dome-covered room which was later called “The Room of the Hair Lock”. Beirut’s inhabitants became accustomed to taking blessings from this sacred relic, until the chest disappeared during the Lebanese civil war in 1975.