Hassan II Mosque

Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca is the largest mosque in Africa and one of the most architecturally ambitious Islamic buildings constructed in the modern era. Commissioned by King Hassan II of Morocco and inaugurated on his birthday in August 1993 — after seven years of construction by some six thousand traditional Moroccan craftsmen and ten thousand additional workers — the mosque was funded primarily by public subscription from the Moroccan people and built at a reported cost of over eight hundred million dollars. The minaret, at two hundred and ten metres in height, is the second tallest mosque minaret in the world after the new Djamaa el Djazair in Algiers, and it features a laser beam projected from the top toward Mecca that is visible for tens of kilometres along the Atlantic coast at night. The main prayer hall, with its retractable roof and heated floor, accommodates approximately twenty-five thousand worshippers, with another eighty thousand in the surrounding courtyards and esplanades. The mosque is built partly over the Atlantic Ocean — a deliberate architectural reference to a Qur'anic verse stating that God's throne was upon the water — and the prayer hall floor is partially glazed to reveal the sea below. The mosque is unusual among major Moroccan mosques in welcoming non-Muslim visitors through structured guided tours, and it is the most visited religious building in the country.