Winner takes it all

My bare feet sank into the plush carpet of the lobby as I took in the swank interior. A fountain in the middle of the carpet! A glittering chandelier hanging over it! Unbelievable that I was inside a mosque. But that is Kazakhstan for you. As the oil riches of Kazakhstan are being pumped further by the discovery of radioactives and other minerals, public buildings have become ostentatious. Across the world, a mosque often serves as a place to meet for a little chat, and Kazakhstan is no exception. So this place did look a bit like a swank hotel lobby.

Khoja Ahmed Yasawi was famous enough that Timur decided to make a greater monument to him to demonstrate how devout he was. Who can beat that? So when Nazarbayev, independent Kazakhstan’s first president, decided to burnish his reputation, he suggested that the new capital, Astana, should have a mosque dedicated to the memory of the same Sufi saint. He is sometimes called Hazrat Sultan, the holy sultan, so the mosque is named the Hazrat Sultan mosque.

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We’d seen the white mosque shining in the sun as we went to the nearby Pyramid. Our taxi driver said “It’s just a small mosque,” but agreed to take us there. It may be small in Astana, but it covers nearly 18,000 square meters and minarets which are 77 meters tall. It was a long walk to the entrance doors (above, at three different distances). The lobby was plush, and the area under the main dome, looking west is what you see in the previous gallery. Quite a beautiful “small” mosque, I would say, even if it is built in a completely traditional style.