Embroidered tapestry cloth of the Kaaba. Tiles from a mosque in Uzbekistan. A golden dome built to look like a medieval Syrian bathhouse. These were not museum acquisitions – they belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier convicted of sex crimes, who used some of Islam’s most sacred objects to decorate a building on his private Caribbean island.
Millions of pages of records released by the US Justice Department in January this year tell the full story. The New York Times, which reviewed the documents, reported that the trail leads from Mecca’s holiest shrine straight to a man who was later arrested on sex trafficking charges.
For years, nobody quite knew what the blue-and-white striped building with a golden dome on Epstein’s island of Little Saint James actually was. Some called it a music room, while others called it a chapel. A few described it as an occult temple.
The records show Epstein called it his mosque.
As early as 2003, he boasted to Vanity Fair magazine that he owned “the largest Persian rug in any private home,” which he said was so large, it must have come from a mosque.
According to the NYT, the island project began while Epstein was serving time in a Florida county jail after pleading guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution. At the time, he was commissioning architects to build a Turkish bathhouse surrounded by “Islamic gardening.” That plan was scrapped, but the idea behind it was not.
By 2011, he was writing to a contact in Uzbekistan for authentic mosque tiles. “It will be for the inside walls, like a mosque,” he wrote plainly.
Ion Nicola, a Romanian artist hired to work on the building, told the NYT in March that Epstein regularly called it his mosque. The records show that in 2013, Epstein sent Nicola a photograph of the Yalbugah Hammam, a 15th-century bathhouse in Aleppo, Syria, with a golden dome and striped walls, and asked him to create something similar.
In one email, Epstein asked for the Arabic word for God to be replaced with his own initials. “Instead of allah, i thought j’s and e’s,” he wrote, in the misspelling-heavy style typical of his messages.
The Kiswa is the embroidered cloth that covers the exterior of the holy Kaaba each year, the most revered structure for Muslims. It is made by hundreds of artisans in a royal workshop in Makkah, costs around USD 5 million to produce and uses roughly 1,500 pounds of raw silk and 250 pounds of gold and silver thread. When it is replaced during Haj, sections are given to institutions, dignitaries and charities.
Three pieces ended up with Epstein.
NYT reported that this was made possible through a chain of contacts reaching into the Saudi royal court. Around 2010, Epstein became close to Terje Rod-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat, who introduced him to Raafat Al-Sabbagh, a consultant to the royal court, and Al-Sabbagh’s aide Aziza Al Ahmadi.
In early 2017, while Al Ahmadi and Epstein were meeting in New York, their assistants were arranging shipments from Saudi Arabia to his island. A representative confirmed that items were being sent “for the mosque.” Epstein’s assistant told a customs broker, “We are receiving three pieces from the Kaaba.”
Documents described what they were. One was a tapestry used inside the Kaaba, one fragment of the Kiswa that had covered the shrine’s exterior and a third piece from the Makkah workshop where the Kiswa is made each year.
Al Ahmadi told Epstein in an email what the cloth meant. “The black piece was touched by minimum 10 million Muslims of different denominations, Sunni, Shia and others,” she wrote. “They walk around the Kaaba seven rounds then every one tries as much as they can to touch it and they kept their prayers, wishes, tears and hopes on this piece.”
How she came to possess the tapestries is not known.
By 2016, Epstein wanted to become the financial adviser to Mohammed bin Salman, who was then the Deputy Crown Prince, as the Kingdom prepared to list the state oil company Aramco on international markets.
Rod-Larsen made the introductions. Epstein pushed hard for a direct meeting with the prince, pitching what he called “radical ideas,” including a proposal for a new currency called “the shariah” to be used across Muslim countries, the NYT reported.
The meeting did take place. Epstein later emailed Rod-Larsen two photographs of himself with Mohammed bin Salman, one of which he displayed at his New York home.
The relationship, however, went nowhere. Mohammed bin Salman became Crown Prince and moved on without him. Epstein texted Rod-Larsen his frustration. “The kingdom needs lots of expensive help now as they did not follow the jew directions,” which was apparently a reference to himself.
A Justice Department photograph from 2014 shows Epstein standing beside Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a senior Emirati executive, looking down at one of the Kaaba tapestries spread across the floor of Epstein’s New York townhouse. Bin Sulayem was forced to resign as head of the Dubai ports company DP World earlier this year, with his association with Epstein a factor in the circumstances around his departure.
Hurricane Maria struck in 2017, damaging items inside the island building. Bigger storms were coming. After journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, and allegations surfaced that Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the murder, Epstein wrote to Rod-Larsen about the cloud gathering over the prince. “Dark cloud over his head,” the diplomat replied. “And it won’t go away.”
The same was about to be true of Epstein. Within weeks, a Miami Herald investigation tore open his 2008 plea deal, which was a sweetheart arrangement that had protected him from far more serious federal charges. He was arrested in July 2019 and transferred ownership of Little Saint James to a private trust the following month. Two days later, he was found dead in a Manhattan federal jail.
The building he called his mosque still stands on the island.
This post was last modified on May 1, 2026 5:25 pm