[1] The mosque was located along Baghdad Street near the main western entrance of the Shuja'iyya district in Gaza City, Palestine.

Birdibak was highly religious and convened an annual conference to discuss the hadith of the 9th-century Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari.

The Mahkamah Mosque was originally part of a madrasa ("religious school"), and education served as the building's principal function.

[3] In the late 19th-century, Swiss scholar Max van Berchem found a Kufic inscription fixed over the mihrab ("pulpit") of the mosque that belonged to the tombstone of Muhammad ibn al-Abbas al-Hashimi,[4] a member of the Hashemite family who had died in Gaza in the late-9th century.

[6] During the British Mandate period following World War I it served as a boys' religious school under the name Madrasa al-Shuja‘iyya al-Amiriyya.

In particular, the niches of the northern facade strongly resemble the architectural elements of Ayyubid structures in Egypt and Syria.

The sides of the base contain niches that "alleviate the austerity of the structure" according to Islamic art researcher Mu'en Sadeq.

The embrasures allow light and ventilation into the interior spiral staircase that leads to the muezzin's gallery which rests on stone muqarnas.