Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the founder's vision taken to another level
Hello travelers
In our vacation that we had in Dubai we chose through an agency to visit the most beautiful sights in Abu Dhabi (the capital of the United Arab Emirates) this is the reason why I chose to share with you these sights that I considered the most beautiful so I linked the two palaces Qasr Al Hosn (you can see the blog here), Qasr Al Watan (you can see the blog here) and for today's blog I chose to make a visit to the Grand Mosque Sheikh Zayed.
I have never touched a topic until now whenever I have written about Dubai or Abu Dhabi, these Arab places don't have a very old history, everything started not very long ago, and so did these places that I am presenting to you.
As for the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, its construction began in 1996 and was completed 11 years later, everything you can see here represents the vision of the best ruler of these places, Sheikh Zayed (this man is also the Founder of the UAE) who unfortunately never got to see his creation completed, he died before the Mosque was completed.
And at this objective as you already know we arrived by bus that dropped us at a point and to get to the access to the entrance of the mosque we had to go through a mall.
Throughout our visits through Abu Dhabi we had a nice guide who helped us with valuable information, with the help of this information we were able to save time in sightseeing.
The same here, even when we were in the bus he came to each of the passengers and told us if our dress code was in order to visit the mosque.
Where appropriate, the guide advised tourists to change their clothes if they wanted to enter, which saved time.
As I wrote above the entrance to the mosque is through a mall, when we got here the mall was full, but we didn't stand in queues but we went directly to the access of organized groups.
The mosque can be visited for free, the only thing you need to do is to register your visit here and, of course, to find free seats when you schedule your visit.
After registration you will receive a QR code, with it you will be able to enter the mosque, as in other cases and here you will go through a control just like at the airport.
Even though we were well in front of us there were some stubborn tourists who didn't want to respect the compulsory clothing and so we couldn't get through, it was a tense situation, it took about 10 minutes until the situation was back to normal.
We got over it, the driveway to the entrance seemed endless (we saw here electric cars transporting elderly or disabled tourists), on the side walls we could see photos of the founder and not only that, but also photos of the different stages of construction.
And all of a sudden we found ourselves right in front of the mosque, it's something that cannot be expressed in words (you have to see it with your own eyes to understand), that's why I leave you below some curiosities about the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque that I found.
The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque covers a land area of about 12ha. The building alone covers an area of 290m by 420m. It is the third largest mosque in the world after the Grand Mosque of Mecca, (Saudi Arabia) and the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi Mosque (Saudi Arabia) and the largest mosque in the United Arab Emirates.
It can accommodate a large number of worshippers. The main hall alone can accommodate up to 40,000 worshippers, and another 7,000 can be accommodated in the intermediate spaces.
The construction cost 2 billion dirhams or 545 million dollars. But it was worth it. The final product is beautiful and impressive, isn't it?
38 contractors and over 3000 workers worked together to build the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Construction began in 1996 and was completed in 2007, after a total of 11 years!
The color used to make the mosque more beautiful is the white Macedonian marble of incredible quality.
It has the largest hand-knotted carpet in the world. It took about 8 months to design, a year to knot (over 39 million knots) and 2 months to move and put it in place before it was sewn piece by piece. About 1,200 workers worked on the carpet, which is about 5,700 m2 and weighs 35 tons. Impressive, isn't it?
The design is a symphony of artistic and architectural styles. The four minarets have different geometric shapes, each representing a different style.
In the large prayer hall there is a huge chandelier, the third largest in the world, imported from Germany (Munich) and containing thousands of Swarovski crystals.
Our visit here lasted until after dark, so come and see it lit up.
My dear visitors, my blog today has reached its final point, I hope I have touched the most important points about visiting this amazing architectural creation and I hope maybe I have given you some advice that will be helpful.
THE END!
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P.S. The attached picture you have just seen are taken by me with my mobile phone(Samsung Galaxy S21), and the text is also designed by me.
