Sana'a: The Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Friday officially inaugurated Al Saleh mosque in the presence of religious scholars, thinkers and intellectuals from the Arab and Islamic world.
The estimated cost of the mosque is $60 million (Dh220 million) and the total area is 224,813 square metres, including a Quranic college for Islamic studies and numerous roads, parks.
The Al Saleh mosque, named after the President, can hold about 50,000 people. It was built in Al Sabeen square, the largest parade square in Yemen, and close to the Presidential palace.
State officials, scholars, clerics, and diplomats attended the inauguration ceremony which was held inside the mosque before the Friday sermon.
The Secretary General of the Islamic Conference Organisation, Dr Kamal Al Deen Oghlu, Dr Mohammad Sayed Tantawi, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Sekheeri and Dr Yousuf Al Qaradhawi were among the prominent attendees.
The mosque is 24 metres high with six minarets, each 110 metres high.
The Quran College, which is inside the mosque, consists of three floors and twenty-five classes large enough for six hundred students, in addition to prayer halls, libraries and meeting rooms. The mosque includes three big rooms for women.
Rooms for women
The mosque was built in Yemeni traditional style and architecture especially the minarets and the stones of the facade.
Four kinds of stone were used: black basalt stones and black, white and red limestone.
