Faisal Mosque is the largest mosque in Pakistan, located in the national capital city of Islamabad. Completed in 1986, it was designed by Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay to be shaped like a desert Bedouin's tent.
It is situated at the north end of Faisal Avenue, putting it at the northernmost end of the city and at the foot of Margalla Hills, the westernmost foothills of the Himalayas.
It is located on an elevated area of land against a picturesque
backdrop of the Margalla Hills. This enviable location represents the
mosque's great importance and allows it to be seen from miles around day
and night.
The Faisal Mosque is conceived as the National Mosque of Pakistan and named after the late King Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, who supported and financed the project.
The largest mosque in South Asia, the Faisal Mosque was the largest mosque in the world from 1986 until 1993, when it was overtaken in size by the newly completed Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, Morocco. Subsequent expansions of the Masjid al-Haram (Grand Mosque) of Mecca and the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (Prophet's Mosque) in Medina, Saudi Arabia, during the 1990s relegated Faisal Mosque to fourth place in terms of size.
The mosque's unusual design is a departure from the long history of South Asian Islamic architecture, fusing contemporary lines with the more traditional look of an Arab Bedouin's tent, with its large triangular prayer hall and four minarets.
However, unlike traditional masjid design, it lacks a dome. The
minarets borrow their design from Turkish tradition and are thin and
pencil like.
The shape of the Faisal Mosque is an eight-sided concrete shell inspired by a desert Beduoin's tent and the cubic Kaaba
in Mecca, flanked by four unusual minarets inspired by Turkish
architecture. The architect later explained his thinking to design
school students:
"I tried to
capture the spirit, proportion and geometry of Kaaba in a purely
abstract manner. Imagine the apex of each of the four minaret as a
scaled explosion of four highest corners of Kaaba – thus an unseen Kaaba
form is bounded by the minarets at the four corners in a proportion of
height to base. Shah Faisal Mosque akin to Kaaba.
Now, if you join the apex of each minaret to the base of the minaret
diagonally opposite to it correspondingly, a four-sided pyramid shall be
bound by these lines at the base side within that invisible cube. That
lower level pyramid is treated as a solid body while four minarets with
their apex complete the imaginary cube of Kaaba." |
