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Abu Hanifa Mosque

Also known as the Grand Imam Mosque. is one of the most prominent Sunni mosques in Baghdad, Iraq. It is built around the tomb of Abu Hanifah an-Nu'man, the founder of the Hanafi Madhhab or school of Islamic religious jurisprudence. It is in the al-Adhamiyah district of northern Baghdad, which is named after Abu Hanifa's reverential epithet ("The Great Leader"). 

Abu Hanifa was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, ascetic, and eponym of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, which remains the most widely practiced to this day. His school predominates in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Turkey, the Balkans, Russia, Circassia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and some parts of the Arab world. Born to a Muslim family in Kufa, Abu Hanifa travelled to the Hejaz region of Arabia in his youth, where he studied in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He was named by al-Dhahabi as "one of the geniuses of the sons of Adam" who "combined jurisprudence, worship, and generosity".

On 15 Rajab 150, (15 August 767) Abu Hanifa died in prison. Many years later, the Abu Hanifa Mosque was built in the Adhamiyah neighbourhood of Baghdad. The structures of the tombs of Abu Hanifa and Abdul Qadir Gilani were destroyed by Shah Ismail of the Safavid Empire in 1508.

The Ottomans invaded Baghdad in 1534, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered to rebuild it and recover all the damages. Along with recovering the mosque, they also added new features to it, like a minaret, a hall, a bathroom, from 50 to 140 shops and the dome that they rebuilt was a dome that was never seen like it before. They also built a square fortress around the mosque and a watchtower. The fortress was at that time was armed with 150 soldiers with different military equipment.