We had to take a guided tour of the mosque, and there were at least 10 large groups, separated mainly by language, seeing it all at once. Rostom, our driver, was pushing Tim around in his borrowed (this time from a friend of Rostom’s) wheelchair, while I tried to take pictures. It was pretty comical because I kept lagging behind, then couldn’t find our group, trying to catch photographs on the move while searching for the wheelchair. As a result, I’m not so happy with many of my pictures, and they’re proving difficult (impossible in some cases) to process, but I’ll post what I can.

This was taken in the entrance to the main prayer hall.

“With a prayer hall that can accommodate 25.000, the Hassan II Mosque is the second-largest religious building in the world, after the mosque in Mecca. The complex covers 9 hectares (978,774 square feet), two-thirds of it being built over the sea. The minaret, the lighthouse of Islam, is 200 m (656 feet) high, and two laser beams, reaching over a distance of 30 km (18.5 miles) shine in the direction of Mecca. The building was designed by Michel Pinseau, 35,000 craftsmen worked on it, and it opened in 1993. … [It] is a monument to Moroccan architectural virtuosity and craftsmanship.” (“Eyewitness Travel, Morocco”)

Another of the monumental doors to the mosque, posted earlier: