Exploring the Grand Mosque

Did you know a Mosque is an Muslim church? We visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi which was built from 1996 to 2007.

Culture
We had to wear head scarfs because any girl 12 years and older has to cover their hair. It is also required that women cover their legs and arms. Unfortunately, we had no long sleeve shirts or pants to wear except a fleece and jeans so we were dressed for winter on a 36° day. Men can wear whatever they want but it is respectful to dress modestly.

Features
The Mosque was very beautiful and was inspired by the Taj Mahal using some of the same architecture styles. Some of the features were:

• The whole thing was made of pure white marble
  • Represents  purity, virtue, and peace, it was also Sheikh Zayed’s favorite color
  • Marble reflects light keeping it cooler unlike some materials that absorb heat
• There are ten pools around the Mosque so that when there is wind the pools blow cool wind into the area
  • The pools take up nearly 7,000 square meters!
• The main prayer hall homes the world’s largest hand knotted carpet
  • It took 8 months of designing and 12 months of knotting
  • 1,200 artisans were involved in its creation
  • It is in the Guinness book of world records for the largest hand knotted carpet.
  • The carpet weighed 48 tons before shaving, about 14 full grown elephants!
    • 13 tons of its original weight was lost to create lines for people to know where to stand for prayers

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan
It took approximately 6-8 years of architectural planning before the construction started, the Mosque was named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. He was the first President of UAE and was in one of the seven ruling families, his family is in charge of Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Zayed is known as the father of the nation because he brought the seven areas together into one country, he also had a big part in the planning of the grand mosque.

Architecture
Mosques have one or more domes that represent the vault of heaven. There are 82 domes in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque the biggest one being in the center where the prayer hall is. Each dome had Arabic calligraphy around the rim there were three different types of calligraphy. I noticed there were many columns around the Mosque that looked like they had flowers painted on them. Our tour guide informed us that they were all inlaid with semi-precious stones like lapis lazuli, amethyst and also mother of pearl that formed amazing floral patterns. At the top of the columns there were gold colored palm leaves so they looked like palm trees. Before entering the mosque we had to remove our shoes and than we entered the north prayer room.

Decorations
On the north side of the Mosque the walls were inlaid with semi-precious stones creating flowers you can find in the northern hemisphere. In the main hall you could find Middle Eastern flowers and in the south hall there are flowers from the southern hemisphere. There was a magnificent chandelier that our guide told us was made of stainless steel coated with 24-carat gold plates and inlaid with green, red, and yellow Swarovski crystals. It was huge but, when we entered the main prayer hall there were three more and the center one was even bigger! We learned that there were seven chandeliers in total but we only got to see four, the largest one weighs 12 tons, which is the weight of almost two full grown elephants! All of the chandeliers were made in Munich, Germany and were designed to look like date palm trees representing hospitality.

We did not get to see the south prayer hall or other parts of it but the parts we did see were gorgeous.