Praying Facing East: The Variety of Mosques Part 3

This post and its companions (Praying Facing West and Praying Facing South) have been developed from the November 2011 post ‘Three Favourite Mosques’. The world has many fine mosques we have yet to visit, but we have now seen more than enough to make ‘Three Favourites’ a very limited ambition – indeed the 'favourites' now fill three post.

Islam is the world’s second largest religion with 1.9 billion adherents. It is the majority religion in 49 countries, centred on the middle east but with a wide geographical spread. In 2005 we visited The Great Mosque in Xi’an in China. Some distance away an English-speaking person with an overloud voice (his nationality was immediately obvious) was giving his Chinese guide the benefit of his knowledge of Islam. ‘They have to pray facing East,’ he announced.

This map comes from Wikipedia. It is the work of Tracey M Hunter, the figures are from Pew Research Centre
It is reproduced un changed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike

Muslims, of course, pray facing Mecca, the city, now in Saudi Arabia, that was home to the Prophet Muhammed. To make sense of my collection of mosques I have split it into three, depending of the (rough) direction of Mecca. The mosques I have selected are old or beautiful or quirky or have an interesting history, or any combination of those four.

I should also point out I am not a believer, in Islam or any other religion, but I do like religious buildings.

For ease of access and because I have occasionally broken my own rules, countries are allocated as follows

Facing East	Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Libya, Portugal	Arab Countries (with one obvious exception!)
Facing South	Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina	Countries wholly or partly in Europe
Facing West	Iran, India, China, Malaysia	An ethnic mixed bag

9 of the 18 are Muslim Majority countries, the others have or had an indigenous Muslim population.

Oman

I shall start this section with the Kingdom of Oman, if only to pass quickly over my apparent error. Muscat, the Omani capital is almost due east across the Arabian Peninsula from Mecca. Worshippers in Muscat, thus face west and those in Mirbat, where my second Omani mosque is situated face north-west. My excuse? Part 2, Praying Facing West was overlong, this one a bit shorter, so I cheated. Sorry.

The Arabian Peninsula with Mecca, Muscat and the much smaller town of Mirbat ringed in red

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, Muscat

Sultan Qaboos came to the throne in 1970 in a bloodless coup against his father. Oman was then a British protectorate and his coup had British support. Far more liberal and progressive than his father, Qaboos ruled for 50 years as an absolute monarch, albeit a benevolent one (provided you did not cross him).

Oman’s oil money made him immensely rich, but he ensured the people also saw the benefits, providing vast numbers of new homes. He paid for the mosque (built between 1994 and 2001) from his own purse.

The complex is too large for a single photograph, so here is a model.

The Qaboos Grand Mosque, Muscat (model in Salalah museum)

The reality involves acres of gleaming marble…

Gleaming marble, Sultan Qaboos Mosque, Muscat

….and manicured gardens.

A small part of the manicured gardens, Sultan Qaboos Mosque, Muscat

There is a women’s prayer hall that can accommodate 750….

Lynne, in the women's Prayer Hall, Sultan Qaboos Mosque, Muscat

….while the men’s prayer hall has space for 6,500 (progressive but not that progressive!) It has an ornate mihrab…

Mihrab, Sultan Qaboos mosque, Muscat

….intricately designed squinches (the devices that allow circular domes to sit on rectangular bases)….

Squinch, Sultan Qaboos Mosque, Muscat

….and a breathtakingly huge dome and chandelier.

Dome and chandelier, Sultan Qaboos Mosque, Muscat

All the lines are elegant, the colours muted and calm. The mosque is grand without being grandiose, elaborate without being fussy. Designed by British-Iraqi architect Mohammed Saleh Makiya it is the most beautiful modern mosque (maybe modern building) we have seen.

We visited on the 14th of November 2018, just before the Sultan’s 78th birthday. He died without issue in January 2020 and was succeeded by his cousin, Sultan Haitham.

The Tomb of Mohammed Bin Ali, Mirbat

Sultan Qaboos was born in the southern city of Salalah. Once his mosque in Muscat was completed, he started another in his hometown. It is very fine, but not a patch on his mosque in Muscat.

Mirbat, a small town 70km along the coast from Salalah has a nice new mosque in the centre…

New mosque where the largely abandoned old town abuts the shiny new town, Mirbat

…but on the edge of town is a little gem, a tiny mosque almost filled by the tomb of Mohammed Bin Ali.

Nobody knows who Mohammed Bin Ali was. Some say he was a descendant of The Prophet who brought Islam to the area, others that he was a saint who founded a madrassa and died in 1160 CE (long after the arrival of Islam). No matter, his memory is respected, whatever he did. Photographs were not allowed inside, so here is one of Lynne outside.

The tomb of Mohammed Bin Ali, Mirbat

Muslims are buried on their sides with their faces toward Mecca, the orientation of some of the surrounding graves suggests they are pre-Islamic and so over 1,500 years old.

See Salalah and the South Coast (Nov 2018)

Jordan

Jordan is welcoming to foreign tourists, but the same is not true of its mosques. Few are of particular architectural interest, and the locals prefer to go about the serious business of prayer and worship without unnecessary interruptions. The major exception is the King Abdullah I Mosque, where foreigners are warmly welcomed – provided they are properly dressed.

Lynne properly dressed. The 'brown gown' was supplied by the mosque. Her own headscarf was tied by the attendant

King Abdullah I Mosque, Amman

The mosque was built 1982-9 during the reign of King Hussein and named after his father.

Amman is hilly, and the mosque sits on a platform surrounded by a wall, several metres above street level, making it impossible to photograph from outside. Once inside you are too close, but I did my best. A blue-domed circular prayer hall accommodating 3,000 worshippers sits in the centre of a courtyard, with minarets at its four corners.

King Abdullah I Mosque, Amman

The interior is a huge, calm space with subdued lighting and the underside of the dome, if not quite as breath-taking as the Sultan Qaboos Mosque, is impressive.

Inside the prayer hall, King Abdullah I Mosque, Amman

We had been warned we might need to hurry as prayer time was approaching. The days when the muezzin climbed the minaret to give the call to prayer are long gone, and I had assumed that his job now is just to flick a switch and start a recording. Maybe in some places it is, but not here. The dark-robed man standing with his back to us between mihrab and minbar had a microphone in his hand and was singing the call to prayer live.

The call to prayer live, King Abdullah I Mosque, Amman

We were ready to go as the faithful flocked in, but they didn’t. Only three answered the call; at 11.20 on a working day few can make it to the mosque, but many will find a quiet corner to pray.

see Amman (Nov 2019)

Egypt

Cairo

Cairo

With over 20 million citizens, Cairo is the biggest city in Africa and in the Muslim world. Known as the ‘City of a Thousand Minarets’, it has an ample supply of mosques.

Muhammed Ali Mosque, Cairo Citadel

The rocky outcrop of Cairo’s citadel might not dominate as it once did, but it can be seen from all over this otherwise flat city by the Nile.The profile of the Muhammed Ali Mosque, built on its highest point, is familiar to every visitor and appears on the city flag.

The Muhammed Ali Mosque from the Gayer-Anderson Roof Terrace

Muhammad Ali Pasha, became Ottoman governor of Egypt in 1805. He rebelled, twice invading the Ottoman heartland and in 1842 could have taken Istanbul had the European powers not brokered a peace. The peace granted him and his descendants rule over Egypt in perpetuity. Perpetuity lasted until 1952 when King Farouk was deposed.

The Mohammed Ali Mosque, Cairo Citadel

Work on the mosque started in 1830 and was completed by Muhammed Ali’s son in 1857.

The Muhammed Ali Mosque

The mosque is open to tourists, and is usually crowded (at least it was in pre-Covid days).

Inside the Mohammed Ali Mosque, Cairo Citadel

In 1980, Lynne and I stood with my sister, then a local resident, in the courtyard outside the mosque and looked across Cairo. We could make out the Pyramids some 14 km away, just beyond the city’s eastern boundary. We tried again in 2010 and all we could see was smog. Perhaps it was the weather, but maybe it was more significant. We contented ourselves looking down rather than across at two more large mosques and two smaller ones a little closer to.

Looking down from the citadel at the Sultan Hassan and Al Rifa'i mosques, Cairo

The Ibn Tulun Mosque, Cairo

The Muhammed Ali Mosque is fairly recent, as these things go, but the citadel’s first fortification was started by Saladin in 1176. The Ibn Tulun Mosque, barely a kilometre from the foot of the rocky outcrop, was three centuries old before Saladin began building.

Ibn Tulun was appointed ruler in Egypt by the Caliph of Baghdad in 868 CE. He promptly declared independence and founded his own dynasty, which ruled until 905. His mosque, built in the ninth and tenth centuries, is massive and plain. Its open courtyard 'has the grandeur of the desert where all of Allah's worshippers are prostrated equally beneath the sun' (The Rough Guide to Egypt). It was extremely hot the day we were there and we had the place to ourselves. The simplicity and quietness were impressive - few places in Cairo are ever quiet - but I would have thought that worshipping in the open courtyard was a recipe for sunstroke (maybe I have spent too much of my life in the chilly north).

The Ibn Tulun Mosque, Cairo

The unusual minaret with an external spiral staircase is traditionally said to have been the result of Ibn Tulun  absent-mindedly twisting a scrap of paper and then justified his fiddling by presenting it as a design for the minaret.

Around the arcade is a sycamore frieze. It is over 2 km long and bears a fifth of the Koran in Kufic script. That must have a taken a dedicated person a long time.

The arcade, Ibn Tulun Mosque

Ibn Tulun was one of the ‘three favourites’ in the 2011 post this series has grown from. The others, the Emin Mosque in Turpan, China and the Sheik Lotfollah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran are in Praying Facing West. All three would still be contenders were I now to pick a single favourite.

The Cairo Mosques appear in Cairo Before the Revolution (which might as well have never happened) Feb 2011

Dakhla Oasis

The vast majority of the 100 million Egyptians live either in the Nile Valley or on the coast. Most tourists can be found there too, but it is possible to travel across desert Egypt.

In 2009 (pre-blog) we followed the well-maintained road from Luxor west and north through the oases of the New Valley Project (Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra and Bahariya) and then to Siwa. The map below shows a Bahariya – Siwa road, but in 2009 that was a drive across the desert.

From Luxor on the Nile we travelled west to Kharga and Dakhl, then South to Bahariya and west to Siwa

An oasis is not a pool with a couple of palm trees, it is a depression in the desert where the surface drops close enough to underground aquifers to allow cultivation. The oases cover substantial areas and each has Roman and/or Pharaonic sites, many of them hardly touched by archaeologists.

Kharga is the largest of the New Valley Oases with a population of 70,000. Dakhla is smaller, approximately 80 km long and 25 km wide and consists of four contiguous small towns surrounded by cultivated fields.

Nasr El-Din Mosque, El-Qasr

We spent two nights at the eco-lodge on the ridge above El-Qasr the semi-fortified easternmost town of the Dakhla oasis.

The 12th century Nasr El-Din Mosque with its pepper pot minaret is typical of Ayyubid Architecture (The Ayyubid dynasty, founded by Saladin, ruled a big chunk of the Middle East from 1171 to 1260).

Mosque of Nasr El-DIn, El-Qasr, Dakhla Oasis

Inside is the tomb of Nasr El-Din. Arab history is replete with Nasr El-Dins, and I have no idea who this one was.

Tomb of Nasr El-Din, El-Qasr, Dakhla Oasis

Mut

The citizens of El-Qasr have largely forsaken the old town. The new town has new mosques and Nasr El-Din is now only a historical monument. The day before in Mut, at the other end of the oasis we came across a very basic, and maybe very old, mosque that was still in use. There is no decoration, the room is purely functional, but has all that is needed, a mihrab to show the direction of Mecca, and a clock so prayers can be held at the proper times.

Mosque in Mut, Dakhla Oasis

Libya

We visited Libya in 2006 during a brief thaw in Anglo-Libyan relations. It was an edgy experience; in some towns you could feel the tension in the air. We quickly discovered that Colonel Gaddafi was no longer respected, and if we could discover that, it meant he was no longer feared, either. Five years later he was shot dead while hiding in a drain.

Gamal Abdul Nasser Mosque, Tripoli

The Jamal Abdul Nasser Mosque in Algeria Square is so white it could be made of icing sugar.

Gamal Abdul Nasser Mosque, Algeria Square, Tripoli

As Tripoli cathedral in 1960
Public domain, Sourced from Wikipedia

Built as Tripoli’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in the 1920s when Libya was an Italian colony, it was converted into a mosque in 1970 after Colonel Gaddafi came to power. It retains its basic Romanesque design and basilica shape, though the façade has been modified in line with Islamic taste.

Square minarets are common in Morocco if unusual elsewhere. This square minaret, though, is in Venetian not Moroccan style.

Mosques Visits in Libya

The highlights of our trip were the well-preserved Roman cities of Leptis Magna and Sabratha near Tripoli and the Greek cities of Apollonia and Cyrene near Benghazi.

Libya (My thanks to Lonely Planet)

We did visit two mosques. The 19th century Gurgi Mosque in the old city of Tripoli considers itself a tourist attraction and was welcoming…

Inside the Gurgi Mosque, Tripoli

….but the Atiq Mosque in the distinctly tense city of Benghazi would rather have done without us.

Atiq Mosque, Benghazi

The Imam wanted to know why Massoud (our guide, red cap) had brought in these infidels. Our driver Shaqiri listens somewhat bemused. Lynne smiles ruefully.

Ghadames

The vast majority of Libya’s 7 million people live along the coast. We ventured as far south as Ghadames, a border town for both Tunisia and Algeria. The new town looks prosperous and has the sort of mosques one might expect.

Mosque in Ghadames new town

The deserted old town is preserved as a museum with a fine old mosque.

Mosque, Ghadames old town

I do not know how modern Ghadames makes its living, but old Ghadames grew rich on the slave trade. 2,500 enslaved people, mainly from Niger, passed through each year in the 1830s. The trade was officially abolished in 1853, but Ghadames market continued until the 1890s supplying slaves to major markets in Alexandria and Constantinople. Weekly slave markets were reportedly being held in Khufra in southeast Libya into the 1930s.

Standing in what was once Ghadames slave market

Portugal

Portugal today is home to around 65,000 Muslims, mainly immigrants from former Portuguese possessions in Africa and India.

Portugal is not a Muslim country, and has not been since 1139 when Afonso Henriques was proclaimed the first King of Portugal after the Battle of Ourique. Another hundred years were required to remove the Moors from the Algarve, but since then Portugal has been solidly Roman Catholic.

For 500 years before the Battle of Ourique, most of the region that would become Portugal was governed by a series of Moorish Caliphates. The Church of Haghia Sophia in Istanbul became a mosque (and then a museum and then, this year, a mosque again) – see Praying facing South – and this post features the Gamal Abdul Nasser Mosque, formerly Tripoli Cathedral. I know of only one building that has moved the other way….

The Church of Nossa Senhora da Anunciação, Mértola

Mértola is a small town on the Guadiana river near the Spanish Border. Its was important during the decades of the Reconquista when its originally Moorish castle became a Christian castle, but since then life has been much more peaceful and its importance has waned considerably.

Portugal with Mértola ringed in red (Thanks to Worldometers.org)

The castle sits on a commanding height with the mosque just below its entrance. Long after it became a church the main door was remodelled in Renaissance style, but its position at the south means the church is much wider than it is long – an arrangement common in mosques but rare in churches.

The remodelled south entrance, Nossa Senhora da Anunciação,Mértola

The altar and statue of the Virgin and Child stand in front of the niche that was once the mihrab - the directions of Mecca and Jerusalem being indistinguishable from western Europe.

Altar, Statue of Virgin and Child and Mihrab, Nossa Senhora da Anunciação, Mértola

Several side chapels entrances are also of Arabic design, but this may be a later whimsy.

Arabic styled doorway Nossa Senhora da Anunciação,Mértola

See Mértola and Alcoutim: Strongholds by the Guadiana River(Sept 2017)

oo00o00oo

So ends my three-part trip around the best and/or most interesting mosques we have encountered. We have been fortunate to have visited some incredible places and have (almost always) been made welcome.

Which leaves the preachy bit:

I have not introduced the churches that have become mosques and mosques that have become churches to sow dissension. Christianity and Islam are monotheistic religions, so if there is one God, they must, in their different ways worship the same God. And their ways are not that different, worship God and be considerate to each other pretty well covers both. Lynne occasionally, quite rightly, takes offence at attitudes to women, but that is more cultural than religious and is changing (though with glacial slowness). Most of the people we have dealt with on our travels have been decent, honest people who have welcomed us to their countries.

And if Christianity and Islam are alike in their good points they are also alike in their aberrations. Men who believed themselves to be true Muslims and men who believed themselves to be true Christians were both capable of enslaving other men and women for profit. Shame on all of us.