Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is nothing but impressive!!!!

The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque located in Abu Dhabi was incredible. When I saw the building I was awe struck, it is truly an architectural wonder. When arriving at the mosque Kellee and I and the girls were herded over to put on an Abaya and head dress. Funny enough we had dressed in long paints so we were dress appropriately as you may have guessed we were roasting under all of those layers. A women must be covered fully to be in a mosque. The tour was fantastic and I learned lots of interesting facts about both the Mosque and the practice of the Islamic religion. The Mosque site is equivalent to around the size of five football fields, and can accommodate over 40,000 worshippers, roughly 7,000 in the main prayer hall with room in the open pray hall and the courtyard that can hold over 22,000 people.

Kellee and I loving the Abaya and Headdress

The domes throughout the mosque are amazing both inside and out. The role of the dome is to increase the projection of sound during call to prayer. The mosque has beautiful inlaid marble throughout as well as many other precious stones.

Beautiful precious stones throughout

The marble floors were amazing

The main prayer hall features the world’s largest chandelier under the main dome – being 10 metres in diameter, 15 metres in height and weighing over nine tonnes. Thought the tour we kept seeing chandeliers and we were told they were small. After seeing the largest one I now understand. The Mosque has seven gold-coloured chandeliers which include both thousands of Swarovski crystals from Austria and some glasswork from Italy.

Smallest Chandelier

Pictures does not do it justice

Very intricate

Hoping the chandileie does not fall on me

One of the features I found most interesting was the carpet in the main prayer hall which is the world’s largest hand-knotted carpet. The carpet was hand crafted by 1,200 artisans in small villages in Iran. The artisans were flown to Abu Dhabi to stitch the carpet pieces together for the final fitting. The carpet has 2,268,000 knots, the Mosque’s carpet is estimated to be valued at US$8.2 million.

It was so detailed and elaborate

Can you believe this was all hand knotted

The carpet went on forever

View from the outside