The 900-year-old mosque is still being used by prayers and many tourists visit the religious monument each year.
The Kizimkazi Mosque is a mosque situated on the southern tip of the island of Zanzibar in Tanzania and is one of the oldest Islamic buildings on the East African coast.
Morteza Rezvanfar, an academic with the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism in Iran, said on Tuesday that according to information written on altar inscription of the mosque, the Kizimkazi Mosque had been built in 500 AH (over 940 years ago).
This kind of three-dimensional design at alters was also used in some mosques in Tanzania and Kenya by Shirazi, Baluchi, Shushtari, Kazerouni and Omani people, Rezvanfar said, adding that for instance, Shushtaris' mosque in Zanzibar or Baluchis' mosque in Kaule, both cities in Tanzania.
The academic went on to say that David White House (1941-2013), a British archaeologist, who studied in Iran and Africa, believed that Kufic inscription at Kizimkazi Mosque is similar to inscriptions in Siraf Port in southern Iran.
According to Rezvanfar, residents living in Makunduchi village, Zanzibar, where the Kizimkazi Mosque is located near the village, introduce themselves with Shirazi background and they hold Nowruz in Persian month of Mordad (July 23 to August 22), which is concurrent with Maritime Nowruz in Iran.
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