Makkah grand mosque to get 16,000 carpets

Saudi Arabia will use 16,000 new carpets to cover the ground in and around Al Masjid Al Haram (Makkah’s Grand Mosque) after the end of the annual Muslim pilgrimage last month, a local daily reported on  Thursday.

Work to spread the expensive carpets is scheduled to begin on Thursday and could take several weeks, Bab Arabic language daily said.

“The cost of these carpets has not been disclosed…they will replace old carpets on the ground and first floors and around the mosque,” it said.

Al Masjid Al Ḥaram, an Arabic for “the sacred mosque”, is the largest mosque in the world. Located in the heart of the holy city of Makkah, it surrounds the Kaaba, the place which Muslims worldwide turn towards while offering daily prayers.

The current structure covers an area of nearly 356,800 square metres, including the outdoor and indoor praying spaces and can accommodate up to four million Muslim worshippers during the pilgrimage period, one of the largest annual gatherings of people in the world.

A few days before the last annual pilgrimage in mid November, Saudi Arabia enveloped Kaaba with a SR20-million silk dress, a customary practice coinciding with the arrival of nearly two million Muslim pilgrims to the Gulf kingdom.

The 85-metre long dress this year is around 47 metres wide and 14 metres high and is made of pure silk embroidered on the shape of a jellyfish written on it 'O Living, O Self, O Merciful, O Most Merciful, Praise be to Allah'.
 

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