The Grand Mosque

The Grand Mosque – historically Dubai’s leading place of Islamic worship – has had something of a chequered past. The original Grand Mosque was built around 1900 but demolished in the 1960s, although its replacement lasted only three decades before being razed in its turn to make way for the current edifice, completed in the 1990s. This is the biggest mosque in Dubai: an impressively large if rather plain structure, the general austerity relieved only by an elaborate swirl of Koranic script and some intricately carved windows over the main doors. Above rise eighteen tiny domes and the city’s tallest minaret, soaring proudly above the rooftops of Bur Dubai and the Creek beyond.