The Attar Mosque resides in the suqs of the old part of Tripoli, and is one of the most important active mosques in the city. Its origin holds a lot of controversy as to whether the building was originally a crusader church or was directly built as a mosque. The scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi was the first scholar to mention a connection between the Attar Mosque and a church; stating a rumor that mentions a perfume merchant secretly paying to have the church converted into a mosque. Thus, the name ‘Al-Attar’.
The mosque consists of a prayer hall, a vestibule in the east, and a minaret. The prayer hall is rectangular and situated longitudinally from south to north, covered by a simple long vault. The dome has a central octagonal opening, with eight windows set in double frames; this transition area rests on four plain pendentives placed between the vaulted areas. To the north, west, and east of the area of the dome are the three entrances to the mosque. The Aṭṭār Mosque lies north of the citadel of Tripoli on the left bank of the Abū ʿAlī River.
