A blue-domed mosque of 2008 standing beside a Maronite cathedral, with the grave of the man who built it outside.
The mosque with the blue dome and the four minarets is the most photographed building in Beirut and it opened in 2008, which surprises most visitors.
Who built it and why
Rafic Hariri — the billionaire construction magnate who became prime minister and drove the reconstruction of downtown Beirut after the civil war — funded it personally.
It was intended as the great Sunni mosque of the capital, on a site where a smaller mosque and a zawiya had stood, and it was deliberately built at a scale that would dominate the skyline of the rebuilt centre.
The design is Ottoman revival, drawing on the great Istanbul mosques — a central dome 48 metres high, four minarets of 65 metres, and an interior in blue and gold.
Hariri was assassinated on 14 February 2005 by a truck bomb on the Corniche, an event that brought a million people into the streets, forced Syrian troops out of Lebanon after 29 years, and reshaped the country’s politics.
He is buried outside the mosque, beside the men killed with him, under a tented enclosure that has become a permanent shrine. The mosque was completed after his death and he never saw it.
The building next door
Immediately beside the mosque stands the Saint George Maronite Cathedral, a nineteenth-century Catholic church.
The Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint George is a short walk away, and the Roman cardo maximus and baths are behind both.
This concentration is not an accident and it is not entirely harmonious either. The mosque’s scale — and the fact that it stands directly beside and taller than the Maronite cathedral — was contested when it was built, and the argument was not really about architecture.
Lebanon distributes its state offices by sect: the president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, the speaker of parliament a Shia Muslim. Eighteen sects are officially recognised. The buildings on this square are a physical expression of a political system.
Visiting
Free and open to non-Muslim visitors outside prayer times.
Robes are provided at the entrance for women, and headscarves. Shoulders and knees covered for everyone. Shoes off.
Fridays around midday are closed to visitors.
The interior is vast, carpeted, and much plainer than the exterior suggests — Ottoman-style calligraphy, a large chandelier, and a great deal of light.
Photography is generally permitted outside prayers.
Around it
Martyrs’ Square is immediately in front, with the bullet-scarred statue.
The rebuilt downtown — Beirut Souks, the restored Ottoman and mandate-era facades, and the empty luxury shopfronts — is all around. It is worth walking and it is worth reading the downtown page first, because what happened here is contested and the buildings do not explain themselves.
More Landmarks
Raouché and the Corniche
Two limestone stacks in the sea and five kilometres of seafront promenade — the one place the whole city shares.
Martyrs' Square and Downtown
A statue full of bullet holes, and a rebuilt city centre that a great many Beirutis have never forgiven.
The Roman Baths and the Cardo
Berytus was a Roman colony with the greatest law school in the empire, and pieces of it are lying in the middle of downtown.