Contact Artefacts
please if you have any comments or more information regarding this record.
MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | KARIM, JamaloodeenBorn: c1881Architect | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Jamaloodeen KARIM, also known as Chacha Jamooldeen, arrived in Natal from Mumbai in 1894. He was thirteen years old and came from a family of builders in the city "where all mosques are white". He had, apparently, been bluffed by a company to "visit a nice place" and was shocked to find himself employed on a sugar estate.1 He resolved to find his own way and started executing small building projects for the company, outbuildings and eventually a whole compound, after which he was released from his labour contract. He arrived in Northern Natal in 1911 and gradually built up reputation of a builder with decorative plastering his forte. Besides numerous commercial and housing projects he designed the old mosque in Ladysmith as well as mosques in Dannhauser, Dundee, Glencoe, Newcastle and Charlestown. The climax to his building career is the Soofie Sahib Mosque in Ladysmith. The outlines of the Ladysmith mosque were literally drawn on the site from which Mr Ismail, his son-in-law, built walls or cut hardboard templates to execute the building. The edifice took three years to complete, built entirely of brick laid off gumpole scaffolds. The 2.5/1 sand-cement plaster was then applied using a variety of tools including brass instruments which he brought with him from India. Mouldings were fashioned with hardboard and sheet iron templates, made on site. Furthermore, broken glazed tiles, grille blocks and a whole range of standard items such as plastic mixing bowl moulds, jam tin forms and precast concrete bric-a-brac were ingeniously used to create this fantasy. It has been reported that the builder demolished a whole elevation because it didn't look suitable. Plans were submitted to the municipality as a concession to the twentieth century. There are many other examples of this superb craftsman's work in Northern Natal.2 He most probably was also the designer and builder of the mosque in Weenen.3
[Schalk LE ROUX, October 2010] All truncated references not fully cited in 'References' are those of Joanna Walker's original text and cited in full in the 'Bibliography' entry of the Lexicon. List of projects With photographs With notes
| |||||||||||||||||||||||