Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is the main mosque in the Sultanate of Oman, located in the capital city of Muscat. A competition for its design took place in 1993 and after a site was chosen at Bausher construction commenced in December 1994. The mosque is built from 300,000 tonnes of Indian sandstone. The main musalla or prayer hall is square and 74.4 by 74.4 metres with a central dome rising to a height of 50 metres above the floor. The dome and the main minaret and four flanking minarets are the mosque’s chief visual features. 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 416,000 square meter and the complex extends to cover an area of 40,000 square meter. The newly built Grand Mosque was inaugurated by Sultan of Oman on May 4, 2001 to celebrate 30 years of his reign. 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, 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.
- Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
- Location: Muscat
- Country: Oman
- Area: 40,000 square meters
