IRGC’s construction arm is expanding Tehran’s Mosalla to make it the world’s largest mosque complex.
Tehran’s Grand Mosalla is expanding to become the world’s largest mosque complex, according to a contractor working on the project.
A senior official from the construction arm of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), known as Khatam Headquarters, said on Wednesday that the Grand Mosalla’s area will expand by 200 hectares as a result of the development projects being carried out around the mosque.
“With these dimensions, Mosalla will become the world’s largest religio-cultural complex,” Mohammad Reza Rahmani, who leads Khatam’s transportation and urban development company, told the ILNA news agency.
Rahmani said that Tehran’s Grand Mosalla is being connected to a vast green area in northern Tehran, known as Chahar Bagh, via an access bridge built over the city’s Shahid Soleimani Highway.
He said the connection will expand the accessible area of the Mosque, providing visitors with more facilities, including more parking spaces.
The official said that more lands in Tehran’s Abbas Abad region will be owned by the government to expand Mosalla’s usable area.
Construction of the Grand Mosalla of Tehran began in the early 1980s upon a proposal by senior religious figures to change the venue of Tehran’s Friday Prayers from the University of Tehran to a larger place.
The project later expanded to become a large cultural complex with authorities holding major annual exhibitions and religious ceremonies in the facility.
It features a unique balcony area which experts say is among the most sophisticated architectural structures of its kind in the world.
“It is one of the most unique structures of its kind which has been built relying on a complicated system,” said Rahmani, adding, “Based on the statistics we have, it is the world’s largest columnless balcony.”