The endowment of charitable institutions is an important aspect of Islamic culture, due in part to the third pillar of Islam, which calls for Muslims to donate a portion of their income to the poor.
Hassan II said of the mosque, “I want to build this mosque on the water because God’s throne is on the water.
The direction of Mecca is called the qibla, and so the wall in which the mihrab is set is called the qibla wall. No matter where a mosque is, its mihrab indicates the direction of Mecca (or as near that direction as science and geography were able to place it).
Because it is the directional focus of prayer, the qibla wall, with its mihrab and minbar, is often the most ornately decorated area of a mosque. The rich decoration of the qibla wall is apparent in this image of the mihrab and minbar of the Mosque of Sultan Hasan in Cairo, Egypt (see image higher on the page).
The Great Mosque of Kairouan, in Tunisia (not pictured) has three domes: one atop the minaret, one above the entrance to the prayer hall, and one above the qibla wall.
The Sultan Ahmed Mosque includes six towering minarets, five main domes, and eight smaller domes. Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, the architect of the project, created a combination of traditional Islamic elements and Byzantine inspiration from the Hagia Sophia.
The first mosques — the word comes from the Arabic masjid, meaning “place of worship” — were often simply an allocation of an open space in the center of town where Muslims could congregate and pray. The only consistent defining spatial characteristic of these early mosques was their orientation toward Mecca, the site of the ancient mosque, called Masjid al-Haram, at the center of which stands the holy Kaaba. Additional spatial and architectural conventions began to spring up in response to social and climatic conditions. For example, a covered section was often provided to shelter worshipers from extreme heat along the qibla wall facing Mecca. A prayer niche, or mihrab, would customarily designate this wall so that pilgrims would immediately understand which way to direct their prayers.