On a day trip out of Abu Dhabi, our guide Zaid took us to the first mini stop where women in Western-style clothing (like me) were handed an abaya. An abaya is the traditional robe-like dress that covers the whole body save for your hands and feet. There’s also a veil to cover the head, so as to comply with the proper dress code required by the mosque.
Black is the traditional color of the abaya, although in the shops I passed on the way to the mosque, there were many colorful and fancier ones on display. I guess it is now acceptable to deviate from the norm.
It is easy to wear the robe because you just slip it on, but the veil was a struggle for me because it kept sliding off. Every now and then, Filipino security personnel would approach me politely, reminding me to keep my hair hidden.
The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is the largest museum in the UAE. Completed in 2007 at the cost of $545 million, it welcomes an average of seven million visitors a year. It has 82 domes of seven different sizes and has four minarets. It can accommodate 40,000 worshippers all at once. The main axis of the building is rotated to face the Kaaba in Mecca.
It is named after Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first president of the UAE.
Sheikh Zayed established this structure as a symbol of unity. When he died in 2004, he was buried in the courtyard of this mosque. The attention to details is mind boggling—our guide pointed out that in the tiles on the floor, there is a part that is cool (the white plain portion) to provide a bit of comfort during the blazing summer months and the part where there are designs/etchings are warmer for the colder days.
I did try stepping on both areas in my bare feet and indeed, it was true. Ninety-six columns of marble and inlaid with Mother-of-Pearl fill up the Prayer Halls adding to the overall effect of grandeur.
The carpet in the main hall is the world’s largest carpet. It was made and designed in Iran. It is made of 38 tons of New Zealand and Iranian wool, and has 2,268,000,000 knots! It took 1,200 weavers from Iran’s Khorasan Province two years to finish and it had to be divided into nine parts when shipped and restitched upon arrival. Primarily green and cream in color, an Architectural Digest article mentions another spectacular detail—that in the shaving process, the Iranian weavers marked subtle raised lines into its surface to guide worshippers into neat rows during prayer.
The blindingly beautiful seven chandeliers come from Munich and are incorporated with innumerable Swarovski crystals, 24 carat gold plates and stainless steel. I was staring at the biggest one in awe and wondering if that alone could pay a small nation’s national debt. They are designed to resemble upturned palm trees and a special task force was created to make sure all seven are always in excellent condition.
To sum up this day, I think I will never see another Mosque grander than this. Relatively new, it will be unfair to compare it with the magnificence of the Taj Mahal (which is not a mosque) but somehow like the Taj, it will forever be one of those landmarks that transcends generations. I am just so ecstatic to have had the chance to check this off my bucket list and be able to say that it truly exceeded my expectations.