The Most Beautiful Mosques in Asia
44 places in 18 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful mosques in Asia are Hagia Sophia (Turkey), Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkey) and Faisal Mosque (Pakistan). The list covers 44 mosques in 18 countries. Iran has the most, with 8. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Islamic architecture spread across Asia from Arabia within a century of the Prophet, and each region it reached gave the mosque a new body. Syria inherited Roman and Byzantine masonry, Persia brought the iwan and the glazed-tile dome, the Ottomans built on the lesson of Hagia Sophia's great dome, the Mughals worked in red sandstone and white marble, and Chinese Muslims adopted courtyards and curved roofs. The common elements, a prayer hall facing Mecca, a mihrab and often a minaret, take very different forms from Istanbul to Xi'an.
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was built in the sixth century as a cathedral and became a mosque after 1453; across the square, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque answers it with six minarets and an interior of blue Iznik tile. The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is the late masterpiece of the architect Sinan. In Jerusalem the Dome of the Rock, completed at the end of the seventh century, is one of the earliest surviving Islamic monuments, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus followed soon after.
Isfahan contributes the Shah Mosque and the domed Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque, facing each other across the same royal square. Lahore's Badshahi Mosque is a monument of Mughal red sandstone, the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad a modern tent of concrete at the foot of the Margalla Hills, the Great Mosque of Xi'an a mosque in the form of a Chinese temple, and the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi a contemporary field of white marble domes.
In this list
01 Hagia Sophia
Ayasofya
Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by edibejko from Pixabay The dome proved as fragile as it was bold. The original collapsed after an earthquake in 558, and Isidore the Younger rebuilt it about six metres higher and ribbed, so that its thrust would fall more steeply into the walls; later partial collapses were repaired in turn. The forty windows around its base make the dome seem to hover on a ring of light while also lightening its load. The interior is a layering of eras: marble revetment and columns of the sixth century, Byzantine gold mosaics of emperors, empresses, Christ and the Virgin, and the Ottoman fittings added after 1453, when Mehmed II converted the church into a mosque.
Did you know? In 1054 a papal legate laid a bull excommunicating Patriarch Michael Cerularius on the altar here, a moment usually taken as the start of the East–West Schism.
02 Sultan Ahmed Mosque
Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.977° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OWPictures from Pixabay Its architect, Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, had spent twenty years as a mother-of-pearl craftsman before training under the great Mimar Sinan and turning to building design. His mosque became the first in the world raised with six minarets — a number that, until then, had been reserved for the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. The perceived overreach caused enough controversy that the Ottomans are said to have funded a seventh minaret for Mecca's mosque to restore its precedence, though historians still dispute exactly when that seventh minaret was actually added.
Did you know? The interior holds 21,043 tiles in more than fifty designs; the finest line the upper gallery's north wall, out of reach of most visitors.
03 Faisal Mosque
Pakistan · 6 km from Islamabad33.730° N 73.037° E
Image by IdeasLeader from Pixabay The setting is part of the design. The mosque stands at the northern end of the city, at the foot of the Margalla Hills, and its white form stands against the green slopes. Inside, the main hall is lined with white marble and lit by a huge chandelier in the Turkish style. The west wall carries a mosaic by the Pakistani artist Sadequain: the declaration of faith written in early Kufic script and repeated in mirror image, a geometric pattern made from text.
Did you know? Dalokay explained that the tips of the four minarets mark the upper corners of an invisible cube, an abstract echo of the Kaaba in Mecca.
04 Dome of the Rock
Palestine · 2.7 km from Jerusalem31.778° N 35.235° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by best-biketours from Pixabay The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik had it built in 691–692, and its plan owes much to Byzantine churches and palaces. A dome about 20 metres across rests on a drum carried by four piers and twelve columns; around it an octagonal arcade forms two concentric walkways that allowed pilgrims to circle the rock. The inscriptions inside, among the earliest to proclaim Islam in monumental form, carry the date 72 AH; the name of the builder was later chiselled out and replaced with that of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, but the original date was left in place. The Crusaders turned the building into a church, and Saladin reconsecrated it in 1187.
Did you know? According to early accounts, 100,000 gold dinars were left over when the work was finished, and the caliph had the coins turned into golden plates for the building.
05 Shah Mosque
Iran · 5.6 km from Isfahan32.655° N 51.678° E
Citypeek · CC BY-SA 2.5 The building also solves a real geometric problem in a way worth noticing. The square itself is laid out on one axis, but Mecca lies in another direction entirely. Rather than break the plaza's symmetry, the architects built an entrance portal aligned with the square, then angled the mosque's main body roughly 45 degrees behind it so the prayer hall faces the correct direction. The shift is invisible from outside and only becomes obvious once you walk through the entrance corridor and feel the building turn under you.
Did you know? Its main dome rises to about 52 metres outside, but it is a double shell, with roughly 14 metres of empty space between the outer and inner domes.
06 Badshahi Mosque
Pakistan · 4.7 km from Lahore31.588° N 74.309° E
Image by tayyab3425 from Pixabay Aurangzeb broke with Lahore's own tradition of mosques clad in glazed Persian-style tilework, such as the nearby Wazir Khan Mosque. Instead he followed the model of his father's Jama Masjid in Delhi on a larger scale: red sandstone carved and inlaid with white marble. A flight of 22 steps leads to a two-storey gateway decorated with carved panels and a muqarnas vault, with the emperor's full name inlaid in marble above the arch. Beyond it opens a sandstone-paved courtyard of about 25,600 square metres, which can take some 100,000 worshippers.
Did you know? During the 1974 Islamic Summit in Lahore, thirty-nine heads of Muslim states, including King Faisal, Muammar Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat, prayed here together on Friday.
07 Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque
Iran · 5.3 km from Isfahan32.657° N 51.679° E
Image by engelbachm from Pixabay It was built between about 1603 and 1619 for Shah Abbas I, as one of the monuments framing the great square. The mosque is named after Sheikh Lotfollah al-Maysi al-Amili, a Lebanese-born religious scholar and the shah's father-in-law, and the builder's name, Muhammad Reza son of Husayn, an Isfahan master, is recorded in the inscription of the mihrab. Unlike the great congregational Shah Mosque on the same square, it was a royal oratory rather than a public mosque; tradition holds that it served the women of the court. The calligraphic bands, with Quranic verses and poetry, were designed by the court calligrapher Ali Reza Abbasi.
Did you know? Shah Abbas reportedly had a passage built beneath the square from the Ali Qapu palace to the mosque, so the royal household could cross unseen.
08 Great Mosque of Xi'an
People's Republic of China · 4.3 km from Xi'an34.263° N 108.937° E
Zossolino · CC BY-SA 4.0 Tradition dates the mosque's foundation to around 742, when the Tang capital Chang'an, as Xi'an was then called, was one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world, home to merchants and craftsmen from West Asia. Little of the early buildings survived the fall of the Tang and later dynasties; the mosque was rebuilt in the Yuan period and given essentially its present form in 1392, under the Ming emperor Hongwu, with further additions such as the front gate under the Qing. Stone tablets set up in 1606 and 1768 record imperial support for repairs. In the 20th century the complex was protected first at provincial level in 1956 and then as a major national heritage site in 1988.
Did you know? Under the Yuan dynasty the mosque was rebuilt around the 1260s under the name Huihui Wanshansi.
09 Umayyad Mosque
Syria · 1.3 km from Damascus33.511° N 36.307° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by SLPix from Pixabay Al-Walid's mosque was new in every way. Instead of the plain pillared halls of earlier mosques, it had a prayer hall of three long aisles on Corinthian columns, cut across by a high transept leading to one of the first concave mihrabs. A vast courtyard surrounded by arcades fills the northern part of the complex. The walls were clad in marble panelling and covered with gold-ground mosaics over perhaps 4,000 square metres, likely the largest area of gold mosaic in the world at the time. The best preserved survive around the courtyard: landscapes of rivers, trees and palaces without a single human figure, which have been read as a picture of paradise or of the cities of the world.
Did you know? To pay for it, the 45,000-strong army of Damascus is recorded as having a quarter of its pay withheld for nine years.
10 Selimiye Mosque
Turkey · 1.2 km from Edirne41.678° N 26.559° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Mozder from Pixabay Sinan's aim was to match the dome of Hagia Sophia, and here he finally did: the hemispherical dome spans about 31 metres and rises some 42 metres, carried on eight massive piers that are partly merged into the outer walls. Because the thrust is hidden in buttresses, the walls between could be opened with row upon row of windows, and the prayer hall is flooded with light. At its centre, directly beneath the dome, stands the muezzins' platform, raised on low arches — an unusual placement that Sinan never repeated, making the dome the undisputed focus of the space.
Did you know? Sinan's biographer records his boast that this dome stands six cubits higher and four cubits wider than that of Hagia Sophia.
11 Sheikh Zayed Mosque
United Arab Emirates · 12.5 km from Abu Dhabi24.412° N 54.474° E
Image by Mariakray from Pixabay The numbers back up the ambition: 82 domes of varying sizes, four minarets each 106 metres tall, and a prayer-hall carpet — hand-knotted, 5,700 square metres, the largest of its kind anywhere — that took two years to complete. The mosque covers 12 hectares and can hold more than 40,000 people at once, putting it among the largest mosques on the planet by capacity alone.
Did you know? The courtyard's floral design is by the British artist Kevin Dean, who chose flowers of the Middle East such as tulips, lilies and irises.
12 Imam Husayn Mausoleum
Iraq · 0.8 km from Karbala32.616° N 44.032° E
User:HerbertReichart germany · Public domain The first marker over the grave was a simple structure of brick and plaster, attributed either to the Banu Asad tribe or to the rebel leader al-Mukhtar. Over the following two centuries the site was repeatedly built up and torn down. Abbasid caliphs alternately tolerated and suppressed it: under al-Mutawakkil in the 9th century the shrine was demolished and the ground ploughed and flooded in an attempt to erase the grave altogether, only for his son al-Muntasir to allow its rebuilding. The structure that forms the core of today's shrine was raised under the Buyid ruler Adud al-Dawla, completed in 371 AH (981–982), who also built markets and houses around it and enclosed Karbala with a wall.
Did you know? That enclosure was crafted in Qom, Iran, using Burmese teak alongside copper and brass, and covers about 34 square metres with 20 windows.
13 Kalta Minor
Uzbekistan · 1.4 km from Khiva41.378° N 60.358° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The minaret was commissioned by Muhammad Amin Khan, ruler of the Khanate of Khiva, alongside the large madrasa that bears his name, and it is sometimes treated as part of that complex. The khan's ambition was to raise the tallest minaret in the Muslim world: the plans called for a height of 70 to 80 metres, and some sources speak of even more, with a base 14.2 metres across that would taper sharply as it rose. Work began in 1852, but in 1855, when the tower had reached about 29 metres, the khan was killed in battle near Sarakhs during a campaign against the Turkmens, and construction stopped for good. The stump that remained became, almost by accident, one of the defining images of the city.
Did you know? Another version of the story claims the architect escaped from the tower by rope or on specially built wings.
14 Al-Masjid Al-Haram
Saudi Arabia · 1.3 km from Mecca21.422° N 39.826° E
Saudipics.com · CC BY-SA 4.0 The mosque has been expanded repeatedly since, most dramatically during 20th- and 21st-century Saudi projects that multiplied its prayer space many times over to keep pace with a Hajj that now draws several million pilgrims within the same few days each year, on top of a much larger year-round flow of Umrah visitors. By covered floor area it is, without real competition, the largest mosque on Earth. Within its precinct sit the Black Stone set into the Kaaba's corner, the Zamzam well, and the Maqam Ibrahim, a stone said to preserve Abraham's footprint.
Did you know? In 2013 an Austrian firm supplied some 4,700 chandeliers and fittings in 26 sizes for the northern extension; the largest gilded pieces cost about a million euros each.
15 Prophet's Mosque
Saudi Arabia · 5 km from Medina24.468° N 39.611° E
Image by ebrahim from Pixabay Every ruler of the Islamic world who held Medina left a mark. The Umayyad caliph al-Walid I rebuilt it in the early eighth century with mosaics described by later travellers as landscapes of trees, and with four corner towers that may have been among the first minarets anywhere. His enlargement took in the house of Aisha, where Muhammad and the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar, are buried. Above those graves rises the Green Dome, first raised in wood by the Mamluk sultan Qalawun in 1279, rebuilt in stone under Qaitbay, renewed under the Ottomans and painted green in 1837. On the southeast side lies the Rawdah, "the Noble Garden", completed in its present form in 1817.
Did you know? The Prophet first preached from a simple block of date-palm wood, later replaced by a small tamarisk pulpit of about 50 by 125 centimetres.
16 Friday Mosque of Herat
Afghanistan · 2.8 km from Herat34.343° N 62.196° E
Todd Huffman · CC BY 2.0 The site was sacred long before the present mosque: a building used for worship was converted into a mosque in the 7th century, enlarged under the Ghaznavids, and rebuilt after an earthquake in 1102 and later a fire. In about 1200 the Ghurid sultan Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad laid the foundations of a new brick mosque on a four-iwan plan; he was buried in a mausoleum within it in 1203, and his son completed the work, with a madrasa, by 1210. 74 metres across, commissioned for the mosque in 1375 and still in place.
Did you know? The bronze basin cast in 1375 for the last Kart ruler has outlived every later demolition and earthquake with nothing worse than minor scratches.
17 Jameh Mosque of Isfahan
Iran · 3.8 km from Isfahan32.670° N 51.685° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Hamidespanani · CC BY-SA 4.0 The decisive changes came under the Seljuks, who made Isfahan their capital in the 11th century. In 1086–87 the vizier Nizam al-Mulk replaced the columns in front of the mihrab with a great brick dome, the largest masonry dome in the Islamic world at the time. Two years later his rival Taj al-Mulk built a smaller domed chamber at the northern end of the axis, whose interlaced ribs, pentagons and five-pointed stars make it one of the masterpieces of medieval Persian architecture. By the early 13th century the builders had added four monumental iwans facing a central courtyard — the four-iwan plan that became the model for mosques across Iran and beyond.
Did you know? In 840–841 it was replaced by a larger mosque of about 88 by 128 metres, with a hypostyle hall of baked-brick pillars.
18 Great Mosque of Samarra
Iraq · 1.4 km from Samarra34.206° N 43.880° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Chris Hoare · CC BY 2.0 The roof and pillars are long gone — the mosque was ruined in the 13th century after the Mongol invasion — but the immense outer wall of fired brick still stands, and so does the building everyone comes to see: the Malwiya, the spiral minaret. It rises 52 metres from a base 33 metres wide, and a ramp winds around the outside of the tapering cone, so the tower looks less like a minaret than a great brick screw turning into the sky. Nothing quite like it had been built before. Some writers have linked its shape to the ancient ziggurats of Mesopotamia, an idea modern scholars treat with caution; what is certain is that the design travelled: the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo shows its influence.
Did you know? The minaret was originally joined to the mosque by a bridge, and stands apart on the north side of the enclosure.
19 Bolo Haouz Mosque
Uzbekistan · 1.9 km from Bukhara39.778° N 64.407° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay Bukhara, an oasis city on the old caravan routes of Central Asia, has kept its historic centre, which is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The mosque was built in 1712, funded by the mother of Abulfayz Khan, the ruler of the time, together with the octagonal pool, or hauz, that gives it its name — "the mosque by the pool". Such reservoirs once supplied the city's neighbourhoods with water. The building follows the type of a large neighbourhood mosque: a winter prayer hall with four columns and several entrances, wrapped on three sides by an open summer hall in the form of an iwan.
Did you know? The patron who funded the mosque in 1712 was Sitora-i Mohi Khosa, mother of Abulfayz Khan.
20 Süleymaniye Mosque
Turkey · 0.9 km from Istanbul41.016° N 28.964° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by fotos1992 from Pixabay 5 m across — exactly half its height. Walls of windows light it evenly; the decoration is restrained, which makes the few rich accents count: İznik tiles only around the mihrab, with blue, turquoise and red flowers on white and large calligraphic roundels, and stained-glass windows in the qibla wall usually attributed to Sarhoş İbrahim, spelling the names of God, the Prophet and the first four caliphs. Four huge porphyry columns were cut to size for the interior, and marble was brought from the ancient Hippodrome and other sites. The courtyard is one of the grandest in Ottoman architecture, its colonnade on columns of marble, granite and porphyry with muqarnas capitals.
Did you know? The four granite columns carrying the dome are traditionally said to have come from Alexandria, Baalbek and two ancient sites in Istanbul itself.
21 Bibi-Khanym Mosque
Uzbekistan · 3.2 km from Samarkand39.661° N 66.980° E
Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay The scale is still overwhelming. The walls enclose a rectangle about 167 by 109 metres, oriented towards Mecca, and you enter through a portal some 35 metres high into a vast courtyard. Opposite rises the main sanctuary, its great dome about 40 metres high, hidden from the courtyard behind the huge framed arch of its iwan; two smaller domed halls face each other across the long sides, completing the classic four-iwan plan. The domes use a double shell, a lower inner vault shaped for the prayer hall and a taller outer dome built for effect, and the side domes are melon-shaped and ribbed. In the middle of the courtyard stands a giant marble Quran stand from Timur's time.
Did you know? Many of its builders were craftsmen from Persia and India, lands Timur had just conquered, brought to Samarkand to serve his new capital.
22 Blue Mosque, Mazar-i-Sharif
Afghanistan · 1.4 km from Mazar-i-Sharif36.709° N 67.111° E
Françoise Foliot · CC BY-SA 4.0 Its history is one of repeated loss and return. A first shrine was raised in 1136 by the Seljuk sultan Ahmad Sanjar; the Mongols destroyed it in 1220, reportedly believing treasure lay beneath. The present sanctuary goes back to 1480–81, when the Timurid ruler Sultan Husayn Bayqara, with his minister, the poet Ali Shir Nava'i, raised the sanctuary that stands today. Later rulers added domes and decoration over the centuries, and the emir Sher Ali Khan and members of his family are buried within the complex.
Did you know? The earliest surviving written mention of Ali's burial near Balkh comes from the Andalusian traveller Abu Hamid al-Gharnati, who died in 1170.
23 Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
Oman · 1.1 km from Muscat23.584° N 58.389° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Its courtyards, paved in cream marble, and its gardens are as much part of the experience as the interior. The open vaulted arcades, or riwaqs, that flank the main buildings are lined with tiled niches, each representing a different period or region of the Islamic world, from Spain to Central Asia, so a walk along them becomes a lesson in ornament. The mosque can hold around 20,000 worshippers in total, with some 6,500 in the main prayer hall, a smaller hall for women and thousands more in the courtyards.
Did you know? Around 300,000 tons of sandstone were imported from India for the building.
24 Po-i-Kalyan
Uzbekistan · 1.4 km from Bukhara39.776° N 64.414° E
Официальный веб-сайт Агентства культурного наследия Республики Узбекистан · CC BY 4.0 The minaret's beauty is all in its brick. Its builders laid the bricks in a series of narrow horizontal bands, some straight, some diagonal, mixed with geometric patterns and Kufic lettering, so that the shaft is wrapped in texture that changes with the angle of the sun; only one frieze carries blue glaze. At the top, a cylindrical lantern opens in sixteen arches beneath a stalactite cornice. Tradition tells that about a century after it was built, Genghis Khan was so impressed by the minaret that he ordered it spared while his men destroyed everything around it; whatever the truth, the tower survived, and the mosque of its time did not.
Did you know? The minaret was long known as the Tower of Death, because condemned criminals were thrown from its lantern gallery into the early twentieth century.
25 Wazir Khan Mosque
Pakistan · 3.3 km from Lahore31.583° N 74.323° E
Shahbaz Aslam · CC BY-SA 4.0 What sets it apart is surface. Almost every face is covered with kashi-kari, the Punjabi mosaic of glazed tile, in blues, yellows, greens and ochres, forming flowering vines, cypresses and bands of Arabic and Persian calligraphy. Indoors the walls and vaults carry painted frescoes that fuse imperial Mughal motifs with local Punjabi taste, and the building contains early examples of muqarnas vaulting in the Mughal repertoire. Four minarets about 107 feet high mark the corners of the courtyard, which is lined with 32 small cells once used for study, while the prayer hall is crowned by five domes.
Did you know? Wazir Khan came from Chiniot, a town famed for wood and stone carving, and artisans from there were brought to work on the mosque.
26 Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque
Brunei · 0.9 km from Bandar Seri Begawan4.890° N 114.939° E
Image by AdamHillTravel from Pixabay The materials read like an inventory of the world's workshops: marble from Italy, granite from Shanghai, chandeliers from England, stained glass, and a dome surface laid with gold leaf over a mosaic of more than three million pieces of Venetian glass. The dome stands about 52 metres high, and the main minaret, around 166 feet tall, is the tallest minaret in the country. Five minarets in all frame a prayer hall built for some 3,000 worshippers, yet the building never feels massive — it is slender, pale and lifted, more like a jewel box than a fortress.
Did you know? Around 1,500 tons of concrete and 700 tons of steel went into the building, which rests on piles driven 80 to 120 feet into the ground.
27 Putra Mosque
Malaysia · 0.8 km from Putrajaya2.936° N 101.689° E
Azuladnan · CC BY-SA 4.0 The design draws on the Persian architecture of the Safavid era, blended with modern construction. Visitors enter through a monumental gateway in the manner of Isfahan into a broad sahn, an open courtyard with flowing water and palms that slopes gently towards the prayer hall, so that rows of worshippers can extend from inside to out; the courtyard alone holds about 5,000 people and the whole complex around 15,000. Beside the gate rises the 116-metre minaret, built on an eight-pointed-star plan and divided into five tiers that stand for the five pillars of Islam.
Did you know? The dome's surface pattern is an arabesque of plant motifs, modelled on the decorated domes of mosques in Egypt.
28 Sixty Dome Mosque
Bangladesh · 26.5 km from Khulna22.674° N 89.742° E
মোয়ায মাহমুদ · CC BY-SA 4.0 The mosque was the work of Khan Jahan Ali, a saint and general who in the mid-fifteenth century founded a Muslim settlement on the edge of the Sundarbans mangrove forest, during the reign of Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah. The city he created, then called Khalifatabad, was furnished with more than a dozen mosques, and their remains lie scattered through the countryside around present-day Bagerhat, a district town in Khulna Division in the southwest of the country. This great mosque served not only for prayer but also as a madrasa and a hall of assembly.
Did you know? Khan Jahan Ali is believed to have been of Turkic origin, a former noble of the Tughlaq court who moved to Bengal after Timur sacked Delhi in 1398.
29 Baiturrahman Grand Mosque
Indonesia · 0.5 km from Banda Aceh5.554° N 95.317° E
Image by ZULMAHDI from Pixabay A royal mosque has stood here since at least the reign of Sultan Iskandar Muda, who is said to have built one in 1612; some accounts place the first mosque as early as 1292. That building had the multi-tiered thatched roof typical of Acehnese architecture. In April 1873, during the first Dutch expedition against the Sultanate of Aceh, Acehnese fighters used the mosque as a stronghold, and it burned when flares set the thatch alight. To ease the anger this caused, the Dutch commander promised to rebuild it. The first stone was laid in 1879 and the new mosque was completed on 27 December 1881, under the last sultan of Aceh, Muhammad Daud Syah.
Did you know? After the old mosque burned in 1873, Friday prayers moved to the Baiturrahim Mosque in Ulee Lheue, by the coast.
30 Shah Cheragh shrine
Iran · 3.4 km from Shiraz29.610° N 52.543° E
Mohamed sadegh golbadi · CC BY-SA 4.0 The shrine honours Ahmad ibn Musa, a son of the seventh Shia imam Musa al-Kazim, who died in Shiraz in the ninth century; his brother Muhammad is also buried here. The name, meaning "King of the Light", comes from a story told in Shiraz that a mysterious light once revealed the grave. A first domed mausoleum rose under the Salghurids in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth century the Injuid queen Tashi Khatun enlarged it with a mosque and a college. Safavid builders renovated the complex, an eighteenth-century earthquake damaged it badly, and the Qajars restored it in the nineteenth century and enclosed the grave in a silver screen.
Did you know? An 18th-century earthquake brought down the dome and destroyed a golden chandelier that had been donated by Nader Shah.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful mosques in Asia?
- On our list, Hagia Sophia (Turkey) ranks first, followed by Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkey) and Faisal Mosque (Pakistan).
- Which country has the most mosques in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Iran (8), Turkey (8) and Uzbekistan (6).
- Was Hagia Sophia always a mosque?
- No. Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 under Emperor Justinian as the cathedral of Constantinople. After the Ottoman conquest of 1453 it was converted into a mosque, and the minarets were added in the following decades.
- Is the Dome of the Rock a mosque?
- Strictly speaking it is a shrine built over a sacred rock rather than a congregational mosque. The al-Aqsa Mosque stands on the same platform nearby.
- Why is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque called the Blue Mosque?
- The name comes from the many thousands of blue-toned Iznik tiles that line its interior. The mosque was built in Istanbul in the early seventeenth century.
- How many mosques are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 44 mosques in 18 countries. Iran has the most, with 8.