One morning I had the opportunity to visit the Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Muscat. For a non-muslim it is already a privilege to be able to enter a mosque, but then to be able to walk around on the grounds of the mosque and to take pictures of this magnificent building, was breathtaking. What an experience! Here is a collection of my pictures. Enjoy!

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is the main Mosque in the Sultanate of Oman. In 1992 Sultan Qaboos directed that his country of Oman should have a Grand Mosque. A competition for its design took place in 1993 and after a site was chosen at Bausher, construction commenced in 1995 and took six years and four months.

The Mosque is built from 300,000 tonnes of Indian sandstone. The main musalla (prayer hall) is square with a central dome rising to a height of fifty metres. The dome and the main minaret (90 metres) and four flanking minarets (45.5 metres) are the mosque’s chief visual features. The main musalla can hold over 6,500 worshippers, while the women’s musalla can accommodate 750 worshipers. The outer paved ground 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.
?A major feature of the design of the interior is the prayer carpet of the men’s musalla, which covers the floor of the prayer hall. It contains, 1,700,000 knots, weighs 21 tonnes and took four years to produce. It is the second largest single piece carpet in the world. This hand-woven carpet covers the entire floor of the main praying hall of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat. The carpet measures over 70 ? 60 meters, and covers the 4,343 square meter area of the praying hall, all in a single piece. The chandelier above the praying hall is 14 meters tall. The newly built Grand Mosque was inaugurated by Sultan of Oman on May 4, 2001.