Sea Mosque, Ottoman mosque near Sea of Galilee, Tiberias, Israel

The Sea Mosque in Tiberias is a mosque built in 1702 on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, then the city's only mosque. It stands near the former Fishermen's Gate, and fishermen tied their boats to the vaulted Crusader structure just north of it. After the 1934 flood and the creation of the promenade, it no longer borders the waterline.

Built in 1702, the Sea Mosque was then the only mosque in Tiberias. In the 1740s Haji Yusuf, brother of the Galilee ruler Daher al-Omar, renovated and enlarged it while the az-Zidani Mosque was being built. After the 1948 war the mosque was left abandoned; in 1953 it opened as a museum of Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Arab finds, and it closed in 1979.

The name Al-Bahr, "Sea Mosque", comes from its position by the Sea of Galilee; it was also called Al-Raml, Al-Sha'abi and Al-Bahri. It mainly served the city's fishermen, who tied their boats to the flooded Crusader vault just north of it. Today the building stands deserted and is not used for prayer.

You can easily reach the structure by walking along Tiberias's waterfront promenade, which leads directly to the harbor and water's edge. The well-developed pathways along the shore make it simple to access from different parts of the city.

The mosque's other names — Al-Raml, Al-Sha'abi and Al-Bahri — recall its setting by the water. Fishermen once tied their boats to the flooded Crusader vault just north of it, near the Fishermen's Gate. Since the 1934 flood and the clearing of the ruins toward the lake, the promenade has separated it from the shoreline.