Saudi Arabia: Bin Salman launches phase 2 of historic mosques restoration 

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has launched the second phase of a programme to refurbish and restore historic mosques across the kingdom, the Saudi Press Agency has reported.

The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Project for Historic Mosques Renovation, which was announced in 2018, aims to restore a total of 130 mosques in various regions. The second phase will include the restoration of thirty such mosques, six of which are in the capital Riyadh, with five and four in the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah respectively.

Companies specialising in restoring historic buildings have been contracted with the task, with an emphasis on involving Saudi engineers to “preserve the original identity of each mosque,” explained the SPA.

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During the project’s first phase, thirty mosques were restored at a cost of over $13.3 million. The oldest mosque restored was reported to date back 1,432 years.

Last year, Arab News noted that among the historic mosques included in the project were the Jumu’ah and Qiblatain mosques built by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), along with others built by his early followers.

“Historic mosques in Saudi Arabia date back to the early period of Prophet Muhammad more than 1,400 years ago, the early Islamic era, and the various Islamic states, including the Umayyad, Abbasid and Mamluk states, up to the era of the Saudi state,” Sultan Al-Saleh, cultural heritage consultant and director of the Saudi Heritage Preservation Society, told Arab News at the time.

Despite the ambitious project, the kingdom has faced criticism from various Muslim organisations over the destruction of over 98 per cent of Islamic heritage in the country. Such cultural vandalism took place to make way for mosque expansions in Makkah and Madinah or to construct luxury hotels and other developments.

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