Written by Rasha Ibrahim
Manama, April 21 (BNA) So far, about 550 people have visited the Ahmed Al-Fateh Islamic Center since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.
An official from the center told the Bahrain News Agency that more than 1,500 people actually visited the center during the same period.
Last year, the center welcomed more than 3,000 people from all over the world while nearly 97,000 visited.
The center, inside the Al-Fateh Mosque, is among the major tourist attractions in Bahrain that are both physically and virtually visited.
The center is open to the public six days a week from 9 am to 4 pm and tour guides are available for an informative tour in a variety of languages including English, French, Filipino, Russian…
Visitors can learn about Islamic culture, history and the Arabic language, admire the surroundings and take pictures of the walls beautifully decorated with Kufic calligraphy.
Al-Fateh Mosque is one of the largest mosques in the region, with an area of 6,500 square meters and a capacity of more than 7,000 worshipers at one time.
The dome, which weighs 60 tons, is the largest fiberglass dome in the world. The doors are made of teak wood from India.
The center’s library contains about 7,000 books, some of which are 100 years old or more.
The mosque was built in the name of Ahmed Al-Fateh, the first ruler of Bahrain, by the late Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa in 1987.