Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
Interesting facts
- The mosque was inaugurated on 4 May 2001 to mark thirty years of Sultan Qaboos's reign, after a design competition held in 1993.
- Around 300,000 tons of sandstone were imported from India for the building.
- Its prayer carpet held the record as the world's largest single-piece hand-woven carpet until it was surpassed by the one in Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.
- The carpet's design draws on three classical Persian traditions, those of Tabriz, Kashan and Isfahan.
- The main chandelier, made by the Italian firm Faustig, weighs about eight tonnes and was once the largest in the world.
- The great chandelier carries 1,122 halogen bulbs on a dimming system and has its own internal staircase for maintenance.
- Thirty-four smaller chandeliers of the same design hang elsewhere in the building.
- The complex stands on a site of about 416,000 square metres in Bawshar, while the buildings themselves cover more than 40,000 square metres.
- The outer courtyard alone can hold some 8,000 worshippers, and the women's prayer hall takes about 750.
Why it is worth it
In 1992 Sultan Qaboos directed that Oman should have a grand mosque, and it was built at Bawshar in greater Muscat in just under seven years: work began in December 1994 and the mosque was inaugurated on 4 May 2001. The design, by Quad Design with the architect Mohamed Makiya, avoids the flash one might expect of a Gulf landmark. Pale sandstone shipped from India, white marble and long shaded arcades give it a calm, almost monastic exterior, and the five minarets — a main tower of about 90 metres and four of about 45 metres at the corners — are slim and restrained.
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.
The main prayer hall is where the mosque becomes extraordinary. Its floor is covered by a single hand-knotted carpet of roughly 70 by 60 metres, made by the Iran Carpet Company: some 600 weavers worked on it for about four years, tying around 1.7 million knots in 28 colours of mostly natural dye, and it weighs about 21 tonnes. Overhead, a dome rises some 50 metres above the floor, and from it hangs a gilded chandelier around 14 metres tall, made in Italy and set with roughly 600,000 crystals. The inside of the dome is richly decorated, and the walls below are panelled in grey and white marble inscribed with verses of the Quran.
Getting there
The mosque is in Bawshar, a district of greater Muscat, about 1 km from its centre; central Muscat and Muttrah are a short drive east along Sultan Qaboos Street. Muscat International Airport (MCT) is about 11 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is a Friday mosque located in Muscat, the capital city of the Sultanate of Oman. Completed in 2001 in a contemporary Islamic style, it is the largest mosque in the country and can accommodate 20,000 worshipers.
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