Our last stop on our Oman Stopover was to visit the most famous landmark in the city – the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque.

Opened in 2000, after six years of construction the Grand Mosque really deserves it’s title. It occupies the same square meterage of nearly 59 football pitches (416000 sq metres), contains over 300,000 of imported Indian pink sandstone and the carpet that covers the main prayer hall weighs 21 tons.

Capacity wise it can hold up to 20,000 worshippers between the halls and interior courtyard.

We had learned our lesson from visiting the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, so Karen wore light clothes as she would need to wear a long shawl to cover up as we entered.

The Exterior

The mosque is surrounded by well maintained gardens with tree lined boulevards and a number of gates and structures containing 5 minarets – representing the 5 pillars of Islam. A trifecta of materials was used in it’s construction – pink sandstone from India as well as Omani granite and white marble.

The Interior

The main (mens) prayer hall contains, in it’s center, the largest chandelier in the world. It is 14 metres tall and weighs 8,500kg. Around 600,000 Swarovski crystals with 24 carat gold plating provide illumination. It was manufactured in Italy (where we had just come from).

Directly below is the world’s second largest carpet containing 1,700 million knots and is 60×70 metres in size. It brings together elements from Perisan, Isfahan (floral patterns) and Kashan (medallion and corner patterns) traditional designs and was woven by hand over a period of four years by 600 Iranian carpet weavers.