Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
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.
Architecture
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. Approximately of Indian sandstone was imported for the building. Five minarets were built around the premises of the mosque: the main minaret is high, and the four flanking minarets are high. Together, they 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 square prayer hall has a central dome that is above the floor. The dome is embellished spectacularly from the inside and it is a major tourist attraction. The main musalla can hold over 6,500 worshippers, while the women's musalla can accommodate 750 worshipers. The outer sahn can hold 8,000 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, and the complex extends to cover an area of more than. The Grand Mosque was inaugurated by Sultan of Oman on May 4, 2001 to celebrate 30 years of his reign.
Interior
A major feature of the design of the interior is the prayer carpet which covers the floor of the prayer hall. It contains 1.7 million knots, weighs and took four years to produce with over 600 workers. The carpet 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 was the largest single-piece carpet in the world, until 2018, when the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the UAE was completed. This Muscat hand-woven carpet was produced by Iran Carpet Company at the order of the Diwan of the Royal Court of Sultanate. The carpet measures over, and covers the floor of the prayer hall.The chandelier was manufactured by the Italian company Faustig. Since the mosque is high, the chandelier looks proportional, and it was the world's largest chandelier, prior to the 2018 completion of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. The Muscat chandelier weighs, 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.