The sandstone Hassan Bek Mosque is one of two surviving buildings of Jaffa's former Manshieh Quarter. During the 1948 war, Arabs regularly used its minaret for sniping into adjacent Tel Aviv. The mosque was the last building in the quarter to be taken by the Jewish Irgun military group. The buildings around it were destroyed in the mid-1970s to make way for hotels and offices. The mosque narrowly avoided the same fate when the brother of Shimon Peres gained a permit to convert it into a nightclub, though he was later prevented from doing so by a law enforcing respect for religious buildings.

In 1981, Arab residents of Jaffa began restoring the mosque with financial backing from Palestinian sources. However, soon after work began, an explosion destroyed the minaret, halting restoration, which resumed in 1985, largely with funding from foreign Arab sources. Today the mosque is a tourist attraction and center of Islamic activity.