Discovery area — in progress
Islam in Wales
Islam in Wales did not begin recently. It began in a dockside boarding house in Cardiff in the 1860s, and it has been here ever since.
Eleven moments, one hundred and sixty years
Cardiff Docks
The first arrivals
Yemeni, Somali and Malay sailors working the coal routes out of Cardiff begin settling around the docks. Boarding houses in Butetown become the first places in Wales where the daily prayers are prayed in congregation, in rooms that were never built for it.
In the discovery area
Objects, photographs, recordings and the families who lived it — being assembled now.
The timeline above is the spine. The discovery area, now being prepared, will put flesh on it — shipping papers, prayer mats carried across three continents, oral histories recorded with people who grew up in Tiger Bay, and a wall where visitors leave the questions they could not ask out loud.
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Britain's first purpose-built mosque opened in Cardiff
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Muslims in Wales, spread across every local authority
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Years of continuous Muslim presence in Cardiff
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Oral histories recorded for the exhibition so far
Help us build it
If your family was part of this, we would like to hear from you.
We are still collecting photographs, documents and recollections — particularly from the docklands generation and their children. Nothing has to leave your hands: we can scan and return the same day.