Mosques, Mosques and More Mosques and Call to Prayer

There are mosques located everywhere - every shape and size.  They spare no expense in building - very ornate and elaborate.  All mosques have a dome on top with minaret and crescent moon on top.  Men are required to go to mosque within 15 minutes of Call to Prayer.  The Call to Prayer is 6 times a day - 5:36am; 7:05am; 12:24pm; 3:28pm; 5:43pm; 7:14pm.  Mosques need to be located conveniently for this to happen.  Also, people don't drive so they need to be able to get to the mosque easily. 

Here is a little about the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, one of the most famous sites in Abu Dhabi; the largest mosque in the UAE and 8^th largest in the world.

• At night, lit with blue lights and it glows
• Size of 5 football fields and can accommodate over 40,000 worshipers
• Cost over $2 billion U.S. dollars to build
• Built with white marble imported from Greece
• Features world’s largest chandelier which weighs over 9 tons – 33 feet in diameter and 50 feet high; made from more than 40 million pieces of  Swarovski crystals; a staircase is built inside so it can be cleaned and maintained
• World’s largest hand-knotted carpet inside the main prayer room; worth over $8 million U.S.  and weighs over 47 tons; shipped to Abu Dhabi in 9 separate pieces and re-sewn inside the mosque
• There are raised lines incorporated into the carpet to show people where to kneel
• The Azan, the Muslim Prayer Clock –– is displayed on the wall just as you enter the mosque
• Ladies have to be covered from head to toe;  everyone has to remove their shoes; there were cubbies in the courtyard for your shoes to be placed while you were in the mosque
• Rather than borrow clothing from the mosque that others have worn, we wore long sleeves and long pants and took pashminas to cover our heads; Randy wore pants and shirt

My observation (not to be disrespectful): It was a beautiful building with ornate decorations and unbelievable architect but I did not get a sense of peace and serenity that you would expect from a place with the history and significance that this place holds.  Could it have been the children running around, the noise from the number of people there, the constant photography or something else?