It’s additionally Africa’s largest, however critics view the mosque as a conceit mission for a former president who tried to call it after himself.
Algeria has inaugurated the world’s third-largest and Africa’s largest mosque, which had been delayed for years amid political shifts, forward of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Monday formally inaugurated the Grand Mosque of Algiers on the North African nation’s Mediterranean shoreline.
Identified regionally because the Djamaa El-Djazair, it options the world’s tallest minaret at 265 metres (869 ft), can accommodate 120,000 folks, and is the world’s largest mosque solely after Islam’s holiest websites in Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and Medina.
It was constructed over seven years within the type of a modernist construction extending throughout 27.75 hectares (nearly 70 acres), adorned in wooden and marble and containing Arab and North African prospers. It reportedly has a helicopter touchdown pad and a library able to housing as much as a million books.
The mosque’s official opening permits it to host many public prayers and occasions in the course of the month of Ramadan, which begins round March 10.
However its inauguration occasion was largely ceremonial, because it has been open to worldwide vacationers and state guests to Algeria for about 5 years, and first opened for prayers in October 2020 however with out Tebboune as he was affected by COVID-19.
The huge mosque reportedly price near $900m to construct and was constructed by a Chinese language agency.
Algeria now boasts the biggest mosque outdoors of the holiest websites in Islam, however the mission has been marked by years of delays and value overruns. It has additionally been criticised for allegedly being in-built a seismically dangerous space, however the authorities has denied this.
Critics additionally declare that the mosque was basically a conceit mission for former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was compelled to resign in 2019 after 20 years in energy.
Bouteflika, who needed to step down after fashionable protests and eventual intervention by Algeria’s army, had named the mosque after himself and deliberate to inaugurate it in February 2019 however by no means managed to.
The mosque — together with a significant nationwide freeway and 1,000,000 new housing models — was marred by suspicions of corruption in the course of the Bouteflika period, with suspected kickbacks to state officers paid by the contractors.
