Hazrat Sultan Mosque

Hazrat Sultan Mosque in Astana (formerly Nur-Sultan) is the largest mosque in Central Asia and the principal congregational mosque of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The mosque was inaugurated in 2012 as part of the dramatic capital-city construction programme initiated by the founding Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev after the relocation of the national capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997. The mosque is named in honour of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (the "Hazrat Sultan" or "Holy Sultan"), the twelfth-century Sufi mystic and poet whose tomb in southern Kazakhstan is one of the most important religious sites in Turkestan and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The architectural design follows the classical Ottoman-Timurid synthesis: a large central dome, four cascading half-domes around it, four corner minarets each rising seventy-seven metres, and a vast walled outer courtyard. The mosque sits in a landscaped religious-civic precinct on the left bank of the Ishim River alongside the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation and the other monumental buildings of the modern capital. The main prayer hall accommodates approximately five thousand worshippers, with capacity for ten thousand more across the women's gallery and the surrounding courtyards. The mosque has rapidly become one of the most recognisable buildings of contemporary Astana and the principal venue for major Kazakh state-religious occasions including the celebrations of the two Eids.