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afsaraan-e-aala, apex minarets, arches, architectural icon, ART & AUCTIONS, azaan, bakers, Bedouin tent, broadcast reporters, bureaucrats, café, corners of an imaginary cube, cornucopia of restaurants boutiques, courtyard, cubic, domes, Eat, Eid cakes, Eid day, eight-faced concrete shell, flower shops, foothills of the Margallas, foreign diplomats, Foreign policy, four minarets, General Zia-ul-Haq, Holy Sinner, International Islamic University, Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Islamic, Jinnah Super, judges, Kaaba, King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, lecture hall, library, love, main prayer hall, major markets, mausoleum, military dictator, mithai wallahs, MNAs, mosque, museum, Pakistan, Pakistan’s complex money-as-politics relationship with the oil-rich kingdom, Pakistan’s most famous controversial artist, Parliament, petro dollars, politicians, politics, porticoes, pray, Presidency, Sadequain, Saudi Arabia, Sector E is for the elite, Sector E7, Shah Faisal Mosque, Soha Ahmed, the Supreme Court, top-ranking government officials, Turkish architect, Vedat Dalokay, Zia’s funeral prayers
Each city has an architectural icon: Shah Faisal mosque is Islamabad’s. Featured in almost every televised version of the azaan since 1986, the mosque evokes Islamabad more than the Parliament, the Supreme Court and the Presidency put together. This is also why it is a popular location with broadcast reporters.
A mosque like no other… Nestled in the foothills of the Margallas, the mosque was designed by the Turkish architect, Vedat Dalokay. Strikingly, the mosque lacks the kind of architecture defined as ‘Islamic’: it doesn’t have domes or arches. Instead, the eight-faced concrete shell resembles a Bedouin tent, flanked by four minarets. Dalokay subsequently said that the design was inspired by the cubic Kaaba, whereby the apex of each of the minarets represents the corners of an imaginary cube.
