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1: Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque 13 secs
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Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
The Mosque is built from 300,000 tonnes of Indian sandstone. The total capacity of the mosque (interior and courtyard) is up to 20,000 worshippers.
What to do with too much money? You hire indentured (modern-day slave) labor from India and flaunt the wealth by building a monument to God....ahem. And the monument happens to have a couple of record breakers (Largest Handwoven carpet and Largest chandelier in the world):
The world's largest hand-woven carpet:
A major feature of the design of the interior is the prayer carpet which covers the floor of the prayer hall. It contains, 1,700 million knots, weighs 21 tonnes and took four years to produce. It is the largest single piece carpet in the world. It covers the entire floor of the main praying hall of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque (SQGM) in Muscat. The carpet measures over 46,750 sq.ft. (1 acre!!) area of the praying hall, all in a single piece!
The largest chandelier in the world:
The largest chandelier in the world is that of Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Oman.It weighs 8.5 tons. The chandelier is made of Swarovski crystal with gold
plated metalwork, and hangs down for a length of 14 meters. It has a diameter of 8m to go with this height, making the size of the chandelier comparable to a five-story apartment block or block of flats. It contains staircases and platforms, necessary for maintenance, and has 1,200 dimmable halogen lamps triggered by more than 36 switching circuits. Given that the height of the ceiling in the main minaret is 90 metres, this huge chandelier is probably actually the most efficient way of lighting up the entire space!
Oman's Flag
Map of Oman