Hassan II Mosque

About

Standing on a promontory between the harbour of Casablanca and the El Hank lighthouse, the Hassan II Mosque was conceived to honour both the faith of the Moroccan people and the country's living traditions of sacred craftsmanship. Its main hall and outer courts can together hold one hundred and five thousand worshippers for the Friday and festival prayers.

The vast prayer hall accommodates twenty-five thousand within, with another eighty thousand on the surrounding esplanade. A 210-metre minaret, sixty storeys high, rises above the complex, its summit bearing a green laser beam directed towards the Kaaba in Mecca to remind those at prayer of the qibla. The retractable roof opens to the sky and the sea air, and the marble walls and zellij tilework are the work of Moroccan maalems gathered from across the kingdom.

A founding inspiration of the mosque is the verse of the Quran reminding the faithful that God's throne is upon the water, which moved King Hassan II to build the prayer hall partly over the ocean itself. Worshippers may pray with the Atlantic visible beyond the colonnades.

The complex also includes a madrasa, hammams, a museum of Moroccan craft and history, conference halls, and one of the most comprehensive Islamic libraries. Forty-one ornamented fountains punctuate the courtyards, and the surrounding gardens are tended as a setting for community life.

History

After the death of King Mohammed V in 1961, his son Hassan II first sought a mausoleum that would honour his father with the country's finest craftsmanship. That mausoleum was ultimately raised in Rabat, but the impulse to commission a great religious monument remained.

In 1980, the king declared his intention to build a mosque on the shore of Casablanca, where the faithful might contemplate both sky and ocean as they remembered the Creator. Designed by Michel Pinseau and built by Bouygues with thousands of Moroccan artisans, construction began on 12 July 1986. The mosque was inaugurated on 30 August 1993, the 11th of Rabi al-Awwal 1414 AH.

The mosque was largely financed by public subscription: twelve million Moroccans contributed, with even the smallest gifts acknowledged.

Significance

The Hassan II Mosque is the most prominent Sunni mosque in Morocco and a focal point of national religious life along the Atlantic coast. Its scale, its meeting of sea and sky, and the participation of millions of ordinary Moroccans in its construction give it a place in modern Islamic memory beyond its architecture alone.