Palayam Juma Masjid

Palayam Juma Masjid, officially the Masjid-i Jahan-Numa, is the leading mosque of Thiruvananthapuram. It began in 1813 as a small military mosque, or pattalappalli, for soldiers of a British Indian regiment stationed at Palayam, and successive regiments added land, a gate and improvements over the following decades.

In the 1960s local businessmen and officials funded the present building, which President Zakir Hussain inaugurated in 1967. Its first imam, the scholar and freedom fighter Sheikh Abul Hassan Ali Al-Noori, served from 1959 to 1979. A Hindu temple and a Catholic church stand right beside the mosque, and the poet Kamala Surayya was buried in its graveyard in 2009. A madrasa operates within the grounds.