Shortly after we arrived back in the UAE, my darling friend Marinda asked if I wanted to visit the Grand Mosque with her ... um DUH!!!!!!! So it was that Marinda, Anel, Lynnie, and I found ourselves visiting the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nayan Mosque. They've been building it for 7 years so the interest in the building, as you can imagine is rather immense. The late Sheikh Zayed, in the spirit of religious tolerance declared that this mosque be open to the public. This is rather a big deal as non-muslims are usually not allowed inside a mosque. The very best part though, you're not only allowed to go inside, they welcome (camera)trigger happy people.
Yes .... it's a bit like heaven to me.
The facts:
The mosque is named after Sheikh Zayed, the founder and first president of the UAE, it's known as the Grand Mosque though.
The Mosque is large enough to accommodate more than 30,000 worshippers.
There are four minarets on the four corners of the mosque which rise about 107 meters in height. There are 57 domes covering the outside yard and the main building as well. The domes are decorated with white marble and the interior decoration is made of marble. The courtyard is paved with floral marble designs and measures about 17,000 square meters.
above info from wikipedia
So, we meet up at the mosque, Marinda, Anel, Lynnie and I and proceed to the entrance, where we get dressed by the ladies at reception in abaya's and sheila's. That would be the long black dress and head scarf. Talk about weird! Though I must say, a sheila would come in most handy on those bad-hair days! We went inside, in search of our tour guide, who were supposed to take us on the 10:00 tour. Looking around we saw no-one that looked like a tour guide or even a group of lost tourists like us ... Marinda went and asked at the reception where we would be able to find our elusive guide .... "No madam, she didn't come to work today", lovely. So we moseyed around on our own, took plenty photo's and made out way out, over the enormous courtyard and caught up with another tour that was in progress. We decided to follow them, went back into the main prayer hall and heard the beginning of the tour as we would have, if our guide decided to actually show up for work. Must admit though, we didn't listen too much to what the guide was saying, me with one eye on Kaydin who was having a total blast on the Dhs2 million carpet and Lynnie watching Layla and Anel shooting pics of us like she's an aspiring paparazzi! It was good fun though.
Here then, are the pictorial of our very memorable visit:
detail on one of the pillars:
A pretty glass door:
detail inside on of the smaller domes:
The carpet inside is the "World's Largest Carpet" made by Iran's Carpet Company and designed by Iranian artist Ali Khaliqi. This carpet measures 5,627 square meters, and was made by around 1,200 weavers, 20 technicians, and 30 workers. The weight of this carpet is 47 tons - 35 tons of wool, and 12 tons of cotton. There are 2,268,000 knots within the carpet. As I mentioned previously, Kaydin thought it was pretty cool too, lol!
This mosque also holds, the largest chandelier. There are seven imported chandeliers from Germany and are copper and gold-plated. The largest chandelier has a 10 meter diameter and a 15 meter height. It is rather impressive, I'll give them that! (this photo is just the bottom half!)
Now, we all know that when the muslims pray, they face towards Mecca, this picture below, is the wall inside the mosque towards which they face whilst praying, on it is the 99 names of Allah, and this one in gold, is his name in Arabic. It's 24 carat gold plated, yes, really.
Beautiful scene, walking out, to the courtyard:
Looking back towards the main prayer hall:
Lynnie and I:
How funny are we? Thanks Anel for the cool pics!
And finally, here we are Umm Kaydin, Umm Luca, Umm Luke and Umm Layla :) In the muslim culture a mother is known as "the mother of" followed by the name of her first born son, if, like Lynnie there isn't a son (yet), you're known by the name of your oldest daughter. That's why Anel is Umm (mother of) Luke, even though her daughter, Lara, is older than Luke. Just and interesting custom, we've off course adopted it, and many a time refer to each other as Umm :)
I'll tell you this though, it was a totally interesting experience, wearing an abaya. There are days where I think it could come in most handy. It does feel a bit as if you disappear and I can just imagine how much more with the sheila covering your face.
Shortly after this I got news that my sister Linda is coming to visit me! Only 4 days, but hey, I'll take what I can get. She's the only of my sisters that haven't been here, to it was very exciting news!
More of her visit in the next post.
And now for the Kaydin Kronikles:
The boy is walking like a champ, as if he's been doing it for years! He's also cool with going down steps now, understands very well about "bum first" and gets up from crawling in a flash!
The other day, he took his sippy cup with water from the kitchen table, took a sip and summarily dropped it on the floor :) we'll teach him to put it back, I was just so chuffed that he's figured out that, that blue bottle is the water bottle and he can help himself!
And this morning, he brought me his bottle with milk :) Too cute! He's also starting to say small words. Most things are "ba", the ball, a book and boxes. "Me", as in how a sheep would make, is milky and mamma :) It is nice to understand a little better what he wants.
And tonight, while rocking him to sleep, I sang an old zulu lullaby, "tula-tula", the line goes something like: "tula, tula baba, tula tula" but before I could get to the second "tula-tula" bit, little bebe pipes up in a sleepy voice "baba" :D It was really difficult not to laugh, too sweet! I'm searching the web for a sample of the song, so that my international friends can hear what it sounds like .... just give me a moment, ok?
Oh and for those that don't know: Zulu is an indigenous language of South Africa and one of the biggest black tribes in the country.
much love to all
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