The mosque was built in 1893 with donations from the Muslims of the city. From the very first day after its construction, the mosque had two names, the official one is the Cathedral Mosque of the city of Kustanay and the unofficial one is Ak Mosque — this name was given to it by ordinary believers of the city.
According to Zufar Makhmutov, researcher of the Tatar ethnos and culture in Kazakhstan, the wooden mosque was built by Tatar merchants in 1893. The beginning of the construction of a stone mosque or Ak-mosque was in 1908.
The Yaushev merchants donated about 60 thousand rubles for the construction of the Kostanay mosque. Abduali Yaushev controlled the entire construction process.
By its architecture, the cathedral mosque of Kustanay conformed to the traditional Tatar style: it consisted of a number of longitudinally axial dimensions, in the north-eastern part of which were multi-tiered hexagonal minarets with a tent-shaped roof, in the opposite – a dome over the mihrab. The minaret was located above the main wall separating the prayer hall and a relatively small entrance hall.
The Kustanay Mosque was built according to the project of the second Moscow Cathedral mosque.
The 6-meter-high mosque building was divided into two tiers.
According to the architectural plans, the mosque building has the following parameters: the mosque area is 844.3 square meters, the height is 4,510 meters, the dome height is 18,890 meters, the minaret height is 22.745 meters. The total capacity of the mosque is over 1000 people.

In 1931, the building was transferred to the cinema club. During the war, an evacuation point was located in the building. After the war, the mosque became a cinema for young viewers, in the 80s it was a concert Philharmonic Hall. In 1991, the building was transferred to the religious society of Muslims. In 2002, the building was named in honor of Maral Ishan Kurmanuly, the religious scientist. Services stopped being held here in 2016 — after the construction of a new mosque. In 2020, the reconstruction of the Maral Ishan Mosque was completed. It is located in the city center, at the intersection of two avenues – al Farabi and Abay (address: 42, Al Farabi Avenue). The historical appearance of the mosque has been restored: the facade has been repainted white by analogy with the established original name, minarets and domes have acquired their original appearance.