Namazgah Mosque
The Namazgah Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Tirana, is a Sunni mosque, located in Tirana, Albania. With a capacity of 10,000 worshippers, it is the largest mosque in the Balkans.
History
Even after the fall of communism in Albania, in 1991, Muslim Albanians often complained about being discriminated against. While an Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic cathedrals were built, Albanian Muslims had no central mosque and had to pray in the streets until 2016. In 1992, the then president, Sali Berisha, laid the first stone of the mosque to be constructed near Namazgah Square, close to the Albanian parliament. Construction was delayed after the speaker of parliament, Pjetër Arbnori, a Catholic, contested the plans.The decision to build the mosque was taken in 2010, by the mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, and the mosque was considered necessary because there were only eight mosques in the city, down from 28 in 1967, due to destruction during the People's [Socialist Republic of Albania|communist era]. During Islamic holidays, the Skanderbeg Square was filled with Muslim worshipers, because the Ottoman-era Et'hem Bey Mosque, at the time Tirana's principal mosque, had a capacity of only 60 persons. Rain made Friday sermons impossible.
Construction of the new mosque was launched in 2015 with the financing of 30 million euros partly coming from the Diyanet of Turkey. In 2015, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Albania for the inauguration ceremony of the mosque.
The mosque was officially opened on October 10, 2024, in a ceremony at which Erdoğan and the former mayor, then Albanian prime minister, Rama, delivered speeches. It was expected that the new mosque would increase tourism and the new mosque replaced the Et'hem Bey Mosque as the main mosque for the city.