Grand Mosque, Muslim place of worship in Kuwait City, Kuwait

The Grand Mosque is Kuwait's largest mosque, a pale tan stone building with a single smooth central dome and a parapet of vertical merlons along its walls. Its main facade has a row of recessed arched openings framed in darker stone, with smaller blind arches below. A slender minaret stands at the northwest corner. The square main prayer hall measures 72 metres on each side.

Construction began in the late 1970s under the patronage of Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah and continued until the mid-1980s. The project brought together dozens of engineers and hundreds of workers to create the largest house of worship in the country.

The mosque is called simply al-Masjid al-Kabir, "the Grand Mosque", for its size: it is the largest in Kuwait. Its interior inscriptions were all written by the calligrapher Mohammed al-Haddad, including the 99 names of God in white Kufic script on a blue ceramic ground at the centre of the dome. On the 27th night of Ramadan about 170,000 people pray in its courtyards.

The main prayer hall holds over 10,000 men, the women's hall 950, and the daily hall 500. A five-level car park beneath the eastern courtyard takes up to 550 cars. The minaret has an electric elevator instead of stairs. The main courtyard is ringed by arcades 760 metres long on columns eight metres high.

The minaret rises 72 metres on the northwest side, separate from the building, and is ribbed with twelve ribs of Syrian stone from Tartus. An electric elevator inside carries the muezzin to the top instead of stairs. Its shaft ends in a small dome with a large crescent on a copper column.