Islam’s holiest mosques witness largest ever expansion in history

SAUDI ARABIA is celebrating its 85th National Day at a time when the largest ever expansion of the Grand Mosque in Makkah is nearing completion. The Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah is also witnessing a similar expansion. This year, the National Day falls on Arafat Day, when nearly two million pilgrims from all corners of the globe set to converge on the vast plains of Arafat at the climax of the annual pilgrimage of Haj.

The Haj pilgrims are the major beneficiaries of the best ever services and high tech facilities made available by the Saudi authorities in the two holy cities by pumping billions of dollars. The Saudi authorities have given top priority to serving Haj and Umrah pilgrims as well as to develop the two holy mosques ever since the Kingdom was formed. King Abdul Aziz and his successors have made immense contributions to improve the facilities and upgrade the services for pilgrims by spending over SR250 billion.

Pilgrims are taking advantage of the newly expanded Grand Mosque and mataf (circumambulation area around the Holy Kaaba) in their full capacity for the first time for this year’s Haj. Tipped as the ‘Project of the Century’, the King Abdullah Expansion Project, which is part of the third Saudi expansion, has almost been completed. Featuring the best environment-friendly design with high tech safety standards, the expanded Grand Mosque has the capacity to accommodate 1.85 million faithful.

While spending the last days of this year’s holy month of Ramadan in the vicinity of the Holy Kaaba, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman inaugurated on Aug. 11 five giant projects that constitute the lion’s share of the largest ever expansion in history. The projects included the King Abdullah Expansion Structure covering on an area of 320,000 sq. meters with a capacity to accommodate 300,000 worshippers, and courtyards expanded on a total area of 175,000 sq. meters with the capacity to hold 330,000 people.
 

The King also opened five pedestrian tunnels linking the Grand Mosque with Jarwal and Hajoun areas. Four of these tunnels are meant for pilgrims and visitors while the fifth one was for emergency services and security forces. The tunnels have a total length of 5.3 km. The newly opened 4.6 km long first ring road passes through the Central Haram Area. The King also opened buildings for service facilities and that included electricity plants, reserve generators, water refrigeration facilities, disposal of trash, tanks, water pumping facilities and fire extinguishers. According to the latest report of the Ministry of Finance, which is supervising the expansion project, the remaining projects that are yet to open include buildings of the expanded mataf with their facilities, terrace buildings, security buildings, and a hospital.

In the history of the two holy mosques a new era began with the launch of the current massive expansion ordered by the late King Abdullah. Dedicating the new expansion to the Islamic world, King Abdullah laid the foundation stone for the expansion of the Grand Mosque on Aug. 19, 2011. The total area of the old mosque was 356,000 sq. meters accommodating 770,000 worshippers while the new expansion covering an area of 456,000 sq. meters with the capacity to accommodate an additional 1.2 million faithful. Courtyards of the mosque’s new expansion can hold more than 250,000 worshipers.

Dr. Abdurrahman Al-Sudais, president of the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque, said that the total building area of the expanded structure is 1,470,000 square meters with 78 automatic gates on the ground floor surrounding the building. The opening and closing of these doors are remote controlled from an operation room. There is a highly advanced sound system with a total of 4,524 loud speakers, and 6,635 cameras, central vacuum cleaning and fire warning systems. Al-Sudais emphasized that these historic achievements will have great and positive impact to highlight the pioneering role being played by this blessed country in serving the pilgrims, as well as the role of the two holy mosques and their sublime Islamic message in spreading security, moderation, peace, love, tolerance, dialogue and harmony in the world.

Minister of Finance Dr. Ibrahim Al-Assaf said the newly opened King Abdullah Expansion Structure consists of six floors for worshippers. The expanded structure has 680 escalators, 24 lifts for people with special needs, and 21,000 toilets and ablution areas. He said the Third Saudi Expansion came as an extension of the previous historic expansions, started by King Abdulaziz, and followed by his sons —Saud, Faisal, Khaled and Fahd, until the current expansion ordered by the late King Abdullah.

The annex building’s main gate is named after King Abdullah and it has two new minarets, bringing the mosque’s total number of minarets to 11. The SR100 billion expansion project consists of three parts: construction of a new building; expansion and development of courtyards around the mosque, including walkways, tunnels and toilets; and development of service facilities for air-conditioning, electricity and drinking water. The entire roof of the Grand Mosque and mataf will have air-conditioned sunshades.

Mataf expansion complete

The third and final phase of the expansion of mataf has been completed before the start of the annual pilgrimage of Haj. Sultan Al-Qurashi, director of projects management at the Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, said recently announced the opening of the entire expanded mataf to the pilgrims before Haj. He said the upper mataf, with a width of 40-50 meters, has a capacity to hold around 40,000 worshippers an hour.

The mataf expansion works have been completed in three phases over a period of three years. The expansion, which started on Nov. 15, 2012, more than doubled the capacity of mataf from 48,000 to 107,000 pilgrims per hour. Top standards of safety and quality were maintained while implementing the project. A total of 7,000 pilgrims per hour benefitted from the two levels of the temporary circular bridge built for the elderly and disabled pilgrims.

On completion of the Grand Mosque expansion project, mataf on the second and third floors will have cable cars to carry aged and disabled pilgrims and there will be direct access to these floors from outside. The top floor of the mataf will have an automated walkway revolving around the Holy Kaaba. The mataf structure will also be tremor proof. The Abbasid-Ottoman era portico of the Grand Mosque, demolished for the mataf expansion, will be re-installed after refurbishment once the expansion work is over.

Earlier, while launching the Haram expansion in August 2011, King Abdullah also inaugurated the newly expanded masaa (the running area between Safa and Marwa), the King Abdulaziz Endowment Towers including the Makkah Clock Tower, the Jamrat Bridge complex in Mina and the Mashair Railway. As part of the project, expansion of masaa, which is located inside the mosque, was completed earlier, and this increased masaa’s capacity from 44,000 to 118,000 pilgrims per hour. The expansion, which took three years from 2007-09, increased the area from 29,400 to 87,000 sq. meters and the running course has been widened from 20 meters to 40 meters. Now pilgrims can perform the ritual of sa’i very easily and comfortably from all five levels — basement, ground, first, second and third floors and the roof. 
 

The Prophet’s Mosque

In July this year, King Salman has approved the revised designs for the Prophet’s Mosque expansion project, which includes expansion of the mosque, Darb Al-Sunnah project (3km stretch between the Prophet’s Mosque and Quba Mosque and rebuilding of the Quba Mosque). During a visit to Madinah, the King reviewed the proposals and the project’s designs within the scope of the large-scale expansion project of the Prophet’s Mosque and other related projects, which include the Dar Al-Hijra, King Salman Center for Conferences, and development of new central area in Madinah. According to the revised plan, the first phase of development works will be undertaken on the eastern side of the Prophet’s Mosque, followed by development on the western side during the second phase, the Ministry of Finance announced.
 

The year 2014 witnessed the beginning of the largest ever expansion of the Prophet’s Mosque. King Abdullah laid the corner stone for the project during his visit to the holy city on Sept. 24, 2012. Later in March 2013, the King approved the master plan for the mosque’s expansion, after experts made necessary changes to the plan on his instructions. Once the expansion is completed, the mosque will have a total area of 1.1 million square meters with a capacity to accommodate 1.6 million worshippers.

The expansion will feature the rich Islamic heritage of the Prophet’s city and the Islamic architectural designs of the mosque. The surrounding buildings will also be developed on the same pattern. A total of 200,000 pilgrims will benefit from 250 sunshades erected in the courtyards of the mosque. Each sunshade, made of fireproof Teflon, covers an area of 576 square meters and is operated remotely.