Jameh Mosque of Makki

Jameh Mosque of Makki
Religion
Affiliation	Sunni Islam
Province	Sistan and Baluchestan
Leadership	Molavi Abdul Hamid
Location
Location	Zahedan
Municipality	Zahedan
Country	Iran
Location in Iran
Geographic coordinates	29°29′19.8″N 60°51′14.4″E
Architecture
Style	Ottoman architecture
Date established	1971
Specifications
Capacity	60,000+
Interior area	33,000 m2
Dome(s)	52
Dome height (outer)	46 m
Minaret(s)	4
Minaret height	92 m
Site area	50,000 m2+

The Grand Makki Mosque of Zahedan (Persian: مسجد جامع مکی زاهدان) is one of the world's largest Hanafism mosques, and the largest Sunni Islamic mosque in Iran, located in the center of Zahedan, the capital of the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

History

The founder of the mosque was Abdul Aziz Malazada who, until his death in 1987, had the most important Sunni religious authority of the Baloch in Sistan-Balochistan in Iran. The Makki Mosque was founded in 1971 as part of the Jamiat Darul Uloom seminary which is located next to the Makki mosque. The Darul Uloom is part of the Deobandi School.

The Darul Uloom in Zahedan is the center for the Sunni Baloch people who live in eastern Iran. From its founding in the early 1970s, it has become the center of a network of thousands of mosques in the region, 120 Deobandi madrasas and about seventy seminaries of which forty are under direct leadership of the Zahedan-based Darul Uloom.

For years, the mosque was overcrowded with a large number of worshippers and its space was inadequate for everyone to be able to pray inside the mosque. Prayers often had to be offered on the nearby streets. An expansion project was started which made the Makki mosque the largest Sunni mosque in Iran after completion. In 2010, the old mosque building with its two minarets had to be demolished to make room for the new 50,000 square meters mosque with four minarets.

Annual gatherings and conferences in the Makki mosque attract large numbers of Deobandi and other Sunni scholars from Iran and neighboring countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan. These gatherings and conferences have often prominent Deobandi speakers like the president of the Darul'Uloom in Karachi and speakers linked to the Tablighi Jamaat.

Leadership

The founder of the Makki mosque Maulana Abd-al-Aziz Mullahzada (1916–1987) was a well-respected Deobandi scholar. He was the major proponent of the spread of the Deobandi thought in Sistan-Baluchistan. His influence kept growing and after being acknowledged as the religious authority of the Baluch people, his religious authority spread all over the Sunni communities in Iran.

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See also

• Deobandi movement in Iran