Baitul Mukaram translates to "The Holy Place". It is Bangaladesh's National Mosque and is regarded as the world's 10th biggest mosque. Though Bangladeshis are quite liberal in terms of non-muslim visitors, I didn't impose myself to set foot inside. It was enough that I could see it from the flyover.
Baitul Mukaram is located at the heart of Dhaka. It is also hard to miss. I would find myself walking around it, navigating towards very congested streets filled with stalls, overflowing with people. It was built in 1967, as designed by architect T Abdul Hussain Thariani, with uncanny semblance to the Ka'abah at Mecca. It was originally designed to accommodate 30,000 people, but it always got filled to capacity thus they had to eventually renovate and extend it to accommodate 40,000, especially during the month of Ramadan.
According to some notes from archnet, the complex comprises a bazaar, offices, a library, an assembly hall, and the mosque of course. The ground level consists of 22 warehouses and 350 shops oriented along north-south arcades. The mosque is entered from an open courtyard flanked on two sides by long wings of ablution rooms. The mosque consists of large prayer halls on the first and second floors, with a mezzanine between them.
The surrounding bazaars make it easy to forget that you're actually navigating around the mosque complex. I would check out the stalls and people would gather around me. They were intently checking me out while I was checking the stalls. And I'm not even Caucasian. LOL
Its present imam is Maulana Salahuddin. I caught the facade at different times of the day, but it got unbelievably crowded much later in the day. No wonder my tour guide didn't recommend even a peep.
This is the Eye in the Sky!
Prayer Hall. This photo only courtesy of www.archnet.org.
Courtyard fountain. Fountains have always been part of a mosque complex. This photo only courtesy of www.archnet.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment