Abdul Gaffoor Mosque, Little India, Singapore Singapore

Abdul Gaffoor Mosque is located at 41 Dunlop Street in the Little India conservation district. Named after Shaik Abdul Gaffoor bin Shaik Hyder, it is also known as the Dunlop Street Mosque and Indian Mosque. It was built in the early twentieth century to replace the nearby Al-Abrar Mosque. Abdul Gaffoor Mosque was gazetted as a national monument in 1979.

Background
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Kampong Kapor area was an active business hub for Indian merchants and for those who worked at the old Race Course at Farrer Park. Kampong Kapor thus became a natural enclave for South Indian Muslim merchants and Bawanese syces and horse trainers. To serve the religious needs of the community, the first mosque was built in 1846 at a site near the present Abdul Gaffoor Mosque. Named Masjid Al-Abrar or Al-Abrar Mosque, this was a simple wooden structure with a tiled roof. In 1881, the Dunlop Street Mosque wakaf or endowment fund was established, and Ismail Mansor and Abdul Gaffoor were appointed trustees of the mosque. It was hoped that the dilapidated building would be renewed and its used revived.

Abdul Gaffoor, a Muslim Tamil, was the chief clerk with a firm of advocates and solicitors at the time. As a mosque trustee, Abdul Gaffoor obtained a permit to construct shophouses around the mosque. Eight shophouses and nine sheds were constructed in 1887, followed by another set of shophouses in 1903. Some of these shophouses and terraces on Dunlop Street and Mayo Street remain standing today as properties of the mosque. As income from these shophouses accumulated, the construction of a new mosque to replace the nearby wooden Al-Abrar Mosque began in 1907. When the new mosque was almost completed in 1910, the Al-Abrar Mosque was demolished.

By 1918, Abdul Gaffoor was the only surviving trustee of the mosque and its properties. He died in 1919 before the construction of the new mosque was completed, but in his will, he made provisions for the completion of the mosque's construction as well as for some rituals to be conducted in the mosque in honour of the Prophet Mohamed. Completed around 1927, the mosque was named after Abdul Gaffoor.

Abdul Gaffoor's will listed the wakaf's properties as the mosque, the nearby shophouses, a Muslim burial ground, and a house at Race Course Road. Unfortunately, his son mismanaged the properties, resulting in a large part of the attendant properties being taken over by the Muhammedan and Hindu Endowment Board in 1927. The mosque, currently owned by Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, was designated a national monument on 5 July 1979.