Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque (Template:Langx) is the largest mosque in Oman, located in the capital city of Muscat.

Construction

In 1992, the then Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said Al Said, directed that his country should have a Grand Mosque. In 1993, a competition for the design of the proposed mosque took place. The building contract was awarded to Carillion Alawi LLC. Construction commenced in December 1994, after a site was chosen at Bausher, and it took six years and seven months to build the mosque.

The mosque is made of different type of stones, with doors, windows and embellishments made of wood and glass. Around 300,000 tons of Indian sandstone was imported for the building. Five minarets have been built around the premises of the mosque: the main minaret () in height, and the four flanking minarets () are the mosque’s chief visual features from the exterior. In the interior, the main musalla is the focus of both prayer and tourism. The prayer hall is square in shape and has a central dome rising to a height of above the floor. The dome is embellished spectacularly from the inside and it is a major tourist attraction in itself. The main musalla can hold over 6500 worshippers, while the women's musalla can accommodate 750 worshipers. The outer paved ground can hold 8000 worshipers and there is additional space available in the interior courtyard and the passageways, making a total capacity of up to 20,000 worshipers.

The mosque is built on a site occupying Template:Cvt, and the complex extends to cover an area of Template:Cvt. The newly built Grand Mosque was inaugurated by Sultan of Oman on May 4, 2001 to celebrate 30 years of his reign.

Interior

File:Oman3-011 (8481240348).jpg

The chandelier in the praying hall

A major feature of the design of the interior is the prayer carpet which covers the floor of the prayer hall. It contains, 1,700,000,000 knots, weighs 21 tonnes and took four years to produce with over 600 workers and handmade , and brings together the classical Persian Tabriz, Kashan and Isfahan design traditions. 28 colors in varying shades were used, the majority obtained from traditional vegetable dyes. It used to be the largest single-piece carpet in the world, but is now the second after the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the UAE. This hand-woven carpet was produced by Iran Carpet Company (ICC) at the order of the Diwan of the Royal Court of Sultanate. The carpet measures over , and covers the Template:Cvt area of the praying hall.

The chandelier above the praying hall is tall and was manufactured by the Italian company Faustig. Since the mosque is high, the chandelier looks proportional, but it used to be the world's largest chandelier, before again being replaced in this respect by the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It weighs 8.5 tons, includes 600,000 crystals, 1,122 halogen bulbs complete with a dimming system, and includes a staircase for maintenance within the chandelier. Thirty-four smaller chandeliers of the same design are hung in other parts of the building.

Gallery

• View of the minaret from the entrance
  View of the minaret from the entrance
• The mihrab
  The mihrab
• The chandelier in the main prayer hall
  The chandelier in the main prayer hall
• Corridor
  Corridor
• Carpet
  Carpet
• Electric lighting
  Electric lighting
• Window design
  Window design
• Detail of the inner dome
  Detail of the inner dome

See also

• Middle East
  • Arabian Peninsula

External links

• In Arabic
• Biggest Chandelier in the World
• Official Panoramic virtual tour of the Grand Mosque by the Diwan of Royal Court