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Historical perspectives on race
Historical perspectives on race

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Session 4: Yemeni Muslim sailors in Cardiff

1 Introduction

This session was written by Dr Sinead McEneaney

A black-and-white photograph of a procession.
Figure 1 Procession to celebrate the opening of the new mosque, Butetown, Cardiff, Wales in 1943.

Butetown, a district and community in southern Cardiff in Wales, has one of the longest established Muslim communities in the UK. The opening of the West Bute dock in 1839 increased international trade connections, especially with shipping routed through Singapore, India, Suez and the Mediterranean. Groups of Yemeni and Somali seafarers made their home in Butetown, which became an important local centre of Muslim culture. By the late 1930s, an Islamic cultural and worship centre was established on Peel Street, and on 11 November 1938, approval was given to build the first purpose-built mosque in Wales. Despite some setbacks during the Second World War, the new Noor el-Islam mosque was opened in a temporary structure in July 1943 to much celebration (see Figure 1 above) and was developed into a permanent site several years later.

This session will focus on the origins and community of Muslims in Cardiff. The importance of these Muslim communities is an aspect of Cardiff’s history, and Welsh history, that rarely appears in general histories of Wales, although they feature in recent histories such as Mohammed Siddique Seddon’s Last of the Lascars (2014) and Humayun Ansari’s TheInfidel Within: Muslims in Britain since 1800 (2018).