Mesquita Brasil

This guide to Mesquita Brasil traces how a Palestinian mutual-aid society meeting in a rented room on Rua da Mooca in 1927 became Brazil's first mosque. Its founders, Hosni Adura and Darwich Gazal, had fled the turmoil after the First World War and needed a place to bury their dead, marry their children and pray. Two years in, Syrian and Lebanese newcomers began joining the same meetings, forcing a quiet decision about who the growing community would open its doors to. Buying the land on Avenida do Estado alone took another decade of saved wages.