Faisal Masjid

Faisal Mosque in Islamabad is the national mosque of Pakistan and was, for nearly twenty years after its 1986 completion, the largest mosque in the world by total covered area before being surpassed by mosque expansions in Saudi Arabia. The mosque was funded by a personal donation of more than one hundred and twenty million dollars from King Faisal of Saudi Arabia — for whom it is named — following his 1966 visit to Pakistan, and was designed by the Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay, whose unconventional design was selected from forty-three international submissions in a 1969 competition. The most striking feature of the mosque is its complete departure from the traditional dome-and-arch silhouette of South Asian Islamic architecture: the main prayer hall is shaped like a vast eight-faceted Bedouin tent, made of white marble and concrete, framed by four extraordinarily slender minarets each rising over ninety metres at the corners. The unusual design provoked considerable controversy at the time but has since become one of the most recognisable buildings of the Pakistani capital. The main prayer hall accommodates approximately ten thousand worshippers, with capacity for tens of thousands more in the porticoes and the surrounding courtyard. The mosque sits at the foot of the Margalla Hills at the northern edge of Islamabad and is the burial place of the former Pakistani president and military ruler Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.