Unlike Egypt where it is thought unseemly to build a pyramid bigger than your father’s, here in Morocco its definitely the done thing to build a bigger mosque than your dad’s.
We walked up to the old city here in Casablanca for the start of our city free walking tour. We saw the relatively small mosque built by Sultan Youssef of Morocco who was king from 1912 to 1927 during the time the French ‘occupied’ Morocco (although this seems to have been at the king’s request to shore up his weak support and control his opponents). The mosque was built next to the old city walls in an effort to give the native moroccans a mosque of their own away from the french settlements and occupied areas, and to be fair there were only about 200,000 people in the city at the time.
His son, King Mohammed V, built a much bigger one around the corner when he came to power (1927 – 1961), presumably to signify his importance and the growing size of the country.
But nothing matches what his son, King Hassan II (king from 1961 – 1999) did. Eventually we finished the tour at his mosque, built over the waterfront at a final cost of over half a billion euros. The building is 200 metres by 100 metres, the minaret is 60 stories high, and it can accommodate more than 105,000 people – which is more than the MCG can hold. Designed by a frenchman (which is ironic given both he and his father were both exiled by the French), it took 7 years to build, and at that stage was the largest mosque in the world.
We did spend a few minutes trying to speculate what his son, the current King Mohammed VI, will do to top that.
Had a very comprehensive tour. Walked over 12km in 3 hours, visiting the old city medina, the new french-built city centre with train stations, tram lines, plazas and hotels, the King’s Casablanca palace, the new mall that only the rich can afford to shop at, and a large number of mosques. We also saw the wall and cannons that were built to protect the old city from the Portuguese pirates, the port, the city (pigeon) square and one of the few city parks.
After lunch at the mall (guess we must be some of the rich people), we walked all the way back to the apartment to recover. Only 18km of walking today.