Mosque In Upper Egypt’s Sohag Nominated for International Architecture Award
By Muhammed Aladdin
When one thinks of awe-inspiring mosques, the first thing that comes to mind is the district of Old Cairo, the city of a thousand minarets with its Abbasid and Mamluk-era mosques. It is rare to find a modern mosque that would inspire the same feeling of grandeur.
However, far south of Egypt’s capital, in the midst of the green fields, mud-brick homes, and kind-hearted people of Upper Egypt’s Sohag, stands the Basuna Mosque, a modern architectural masterpiece.
Earlier this year, the mosque opened its door to worshipers with its magnificent interior design, but the love did not stop there, as the people at Abdullatif Al-Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture took notice of it as well. And just like that, Basuna Mosque snagged the nomination, thus, becoming the first mosque in Upper Egypt to be nominated for such an award.
Basuna Mosque is designed and built by the Egyptian Dar Arafa, an Egyptian architecture firm established in 2006 by Sohag’s very own Architect Waleed Arafa. This is not the first rodeo for Dar Arafa Architecture as in 2010, they were nominated to the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
The Sohag-based mosque has been shortlisted within the competing 27 finalists and will face off against designs from Thailand, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Mali. Hopefully, in the coming
In an unprecedented merging of Islamic and Pharaonic architecture, Basuna Mosque is simple on the outside but breathtaking on the inside. The elements of design are scattered in perfect order for the eye to take it all in; it is elegant as well as grand, a masterpiece.
Words will not serve me well when describing such magnificence, so perhaps these pictures will help you understand:
