The dispute between the mosque and the landlord is based on more than back rent. Mosque leaders contend that the city’s rent-control or rent-stabilization laws protect them from onerous rent increases. In the housing court filing, the landlord argued that those laws do not apply to the mosque, because the property was not rented for residential purposes.

The imam, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, leads the first of the five daily Muslim prayers. The sermons are delivered in French, Arabic and English. During Jumu’ah last Friday, a half-dozen men prayed on rugs laid on the sidewalk, outside the overcrowded mosque.

The masjid also serves as a makeshift community center, where any number of issues are handled: health insurance bills, unemployment problems, marital tiffs. “Before the establishment of the mosque,” said Bamba Inssa, who lives a short walk from the Masjid Aqsa, “our community wasn’t tied together. Now, whenever we have differences, we come to the imam, and he solves the problem.”

What, if anything, will replace the mosque remains to be seen. The telephone numbers listed for the property owner, which also owns the parcels at 2132 and 2134, are not in service. And the company’s lawyer, Michael S. Winokur, whose office is in Flushing, Queens, did not return calls seeking comment.

According to public records, the landlord acquired the properties in 2007 from Homeside Development Corp., which shares its same office suite in New Hyde Park on Long Island. Homeside Development Corp. bought the properties in 2006 for $3.65 million from Amin Ijbara Equity Corp., which bought them at a public auction in 1988 for $500,000, borrowing $325,000 of it from the city.

The properties had a tumultuous history even before that: the city had come into possession of the parcels in 1985, after the United States District Court in Manhattan seized them, along with interests that included 19 automobiles, racehorses, and a diamond mine in Zimbabwe, in a drug indictment involving the previous owner.