Gulf News takes a cultural tour of one of the UAE capital's most iconic landmarks, the Shaikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
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Read more Shaikh Zayed Grand Mosque stories on gulfnews.com - Shaikh Zayed Grand Mosque among world’s most iconic http://bit.ly/2CNMg5G
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
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NewsTranscript
00:00My name is Muhammad Abdullah Al-Hashmi and I'm proud to be one of the team members of
00:29the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre. I'm a culture guide but at the same time I'm an
00:34electrical engineer. The wonderful thing about my job is that every time and every day I
00:40meet another person. It means another personality. Every day for me is a different experience.
00:47The mosque here is open for Muslims and non-Muslims, offering the people a complimentary tour to
00:54share the experience of being inside the mosque. This is the main entrance and you can see
01:01that all the main entrance here is full with flower illustrations. In the middle of this
01:07main entrance there is a big flower which is the biggest among the flowers on the ground
01:12and the centre of this flower is perpendicular to the centre of the chandelier above. And
01:18the idea is that this flower takes the energy or the photons from the source of light which
01:24is above which is the chandelier and when it comes to it, it grows all over to the walls.
01:33The mosque has ten clocks around it and in different places of the mosque it's made for
01:41helping the worshippers to show them the times of the daily prayers. We are now standing
01:47in the main hall of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and this hall could take around 7,000
01:53worshippers at once. When you come to the mosque you would see that all of the walls
01:59and the ceiling are full with details. Such a kind of design is related to the Moorish
02:05style of the mosque. When you come to the inside part of the main hall you will find
02:12all the repetition of the angles, repetition of the circles and repetition of the flowers
02:18design. The mosque here has 82 domes and in the middle of this room on the top it's the
02:25biggest among the 82 and it is the biggest in the world inside a mosque as well. Under
02:33the dome there is the beautiful chandelier. It's one of the seven chandeliers in the mosque
02:38and it is the largest chandelier in the world inside a mosque, weighing 9.5 tons. All the
02:46chandeliers are made in Germany. The glasswork is all Murano. The crystals used are all Swarovski
02:55crystals that are brought from Austria and the aluminium work is all in golden colour.
03:01When you come to the main hall you will find the relation between the colours on the chandelier
03:06and the colours on the carpet. The carpet that we are standing on here in this main
03:12hall is the largest handmade carpet in the world. This carpet is made in Iran by around
03:201,200 ladies from a city called Mashhad in Iran. It took them around two years to knot
03:27the carpet down. This place is considered to be one of the less places in the world
03:32that you would find marble inlaid with mother of pearl and that's what we can see in the
03:38pillars of the main hall. Under the pillar the outer shape is looking like a leaf of
03:45a tree. The leaf that has been used is the grapes leaf. It's mentioned in our holy book
03:50of Quran that grapes is one of the fruits in heaven and in the middle the beautiful
03:54floral design which is made by mosaic glass to show the grapes itself. On the top of all
04:01of the four pillars there is the palm tree leaves. In Islam the palm tree is mentioned
04:07more than 20 times in more than 20 different subjects in the holy book of Quran. When we
04:13pray in Islam we must face a certain direction which is the direction of Mecca and the direction
04:21from this part of the world is this way. So that's why we call this wall the direction
04:28wall. In the middle of the wall at the top there is a big circle and it's written inside
04:33it the name Allah and it means the God. Distributed all over the wall there are the 99 qualities
04:41of the God. All the calligraphy used on the wall are Kufi style and Kufi is one of the
04:48calligraphy used to write the holy book of Quran. In the middle of the wall there is
04:53a semi-circle shape. That semi-circle shape is where the Imam or the leader of worshippers
04:59will be in while praying on behalf of the worshippers behind. The wooden pulpit in here
05:07is made by sandalwood and it's inlaid with mother of pearl. The daily male's praying
05:15hall has a different type of carpet. The ceiling used is a different kind of a design and the
05:23there are no dawns. The carpet has the sandy colour which we can say is the desert colour.
05:30The flower illustrations on the carpet itself could be the tents that we lived in. It could
05:37also mean the oasis and to go from one tent to another we can say that these lines which
05:45are the white ones are the path. And the last December had around 30,000 visitors in a day.
05:57For the whole month of December we got around 300,000 visitors. Working in here in the Sheikh
06:04Zayed Grand Mosque Centre as a culture guide, it's given me a door to share my life to other
06:11people and also an access to share their lives as well.