Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca

The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca was completed in 1993 after great expense and artistic labor, and the result is one of the largest and most beautiful mosques in the world. Its gleaming newness and tremendous wealth is a stark contrast against the rest of Casablanca.
History

The great Hassan II Mosque was commissioned by its namesake, King Hassan II, in part to provide Casablanca with a single landmark monument. On his birthday, July 9, 1980, the king declared:

I wish Casablanca to be endowed with a large, fine building of which it can be proud until the end of time... I want to build this mosque on the water, because God's throne is on the water. Therefore, the faithful who go there to pray, to praise the creator on firm soil, can contemplate God's sky and ocean.

Designed by French architect Michel Pinseau, construction of the Hassan II Mosque began in July 1986 on land reclaimed (without compensation to the former residents) from a run-down area near the sea. The goal for completion of the mosque was King Hassan II's 60th birthday in 1989, but it ended up not being finished until August 30, 1993.

The project is estimated to have cost as much as $800 million, funds that were remarkably raised entirely from public subscription.

International reports have suggested both local resentment and less-than-voluntary donations to the project, but Moroccans seem to be genuinely proud of their monument and pictures of the mosque are displayed in homes and cafes throughout the country. The massive fundraising also had a positive side-effect: it temporarily reduced Morocco's money supply and brought down inflation.

Nearly all the materials of the Hassan II Mosque are from Morocco, with the sole exceptions of the imported white granite columns and glass chandeliers (from Murano, near Venice). The marble is from Agandir, the cedar wood is from the Middle Atlas and the granite comes from Tafraoute.

Over 6,000 Moroccan master craftsmen and artisans were employed to work these local materials into the dazzlingly intricate decorations that embellish the entire structure. When construction passed its deadline in the early 1990s, 1,400 men worked by day and 1,000 worked by night to bring the vast project to completion.
What to See

The Hassan II Mosque is open to all Muslims at daily prayer times and for special Friday services. Non-Muslim visitors may only enter the mosque on guided tours, which take place several times a day in English.

The most distinctive characteristic of the Hassan II Mosque is its spectacular location (see aerial view below) on a platform over the Atlantic Ocean. Uniquely, part of the mosque's floor is made of glass so worshippers can kneel directly over the sea. Unfortunately, this wonderful feature is mainly for royal use and is off-limits to visitors.

Above, an automated sliding roof opens (on special occasions) to the heavens. Thus the faithful of Casablanca can indeed contemplate God's sky and ocean in accordance with Hassan's wishes.

At 689 feet, the Great Mosque's minaret is the tallest structure in Morocco and the tallest minaret in the world. At night, lasers shine a beam from the top of the minaret toward Mecca, "to point the way to God." The building was designed to withstand earthquakes and has a heated floor and electric doors.

The style of the Hassan II Mosque displays strong Moorish influences, bringing to mind the Alhambra and Mezquita in Spain. Horseshoe arches prevail both outside and in, and the walls and columns of the interior are delicately carved in a variety of intricate patterns.

There is a huge women's gallery on the right as you face the prayer area, which is beautifully carved of dark wood. The prayer area in the back is spacious and carpeted in red. Downstairs are Turkish-style baths and fountains for washing.
Our Visit

The Sacred Destinations team stayed one night in Casablanca during our April 2007 Morocco trip, specifically to see the mosque (and secondarily the enjoyable Sacre-Coeur Cathedral). We aimed for the 11am guided tour on a Sunday (see Quick Facts, below).

We got a little lost on our way to the mosque. We had assumed it couldn't be too hard to just head for the tallest minaret in the world, but the streets really twist and turn and buildings often blocked our view. We ended up coming through a poor and dusty part of town, with no other foreigners in sight and piles of garbage everywhere.

The humble scene was a stark contrast to the gleaming marble mosque up ahead, as well as our digital cameras. But despite their poverty and our evident comparative wealth, no one approached us. Indeed, Casablanca was the only Moroccan city in which we were nearly always ignored - it was wonderful.

When we finally arrived, the abundance of cream-colored marble combined with the hot Moroccan sun was nearly blinding! The size, expense and artistry of the building were also extremely impressive, just as King Hassan II intended.

Our tour began in a downstairs area just outside the mosque, in a cool marble room with large and clean bathrooms. We bought our tickets from the counter (there's a small gift shop, too) then waited by a sign for the tour in English. When the tour began, we removed our shoes at the entrance to the mosque and were given plastic bags to carry them in.

The tour was excellent. It took about an hour and was led by a young woman who spoke excellent English. She pointed out all the notable features of the mosque, including where the speakers are cleverly hidden in the prayer area, and told some of its history. She made many jokes throughout - such as the need for shoe holders in each prayer rug to avoid searching through up to 50,000 pairs of shoes after prayer, and that Americans and Germans always want to know how much the mosque cost to build.
Quick Facts
Names: Hassan II Mosque; مسجد الحسن الثاني; Grand Mosquée Hassan II
Type of site: Mosque
Faith: Islam
Dates: 1986-93
Architecture: Modern, after traditional Moroccan style
Size: Accommodates 25,000 worshippers; minaret is 210 m (689 ft) tall
Records: Tallest mosque (because of the minaret) in the world; second largest mosque in the world after Mecca
Location: Casablanca, Morocco
Hours: Guided tours Sat-Thur: 9am, 10am, 11am, 2pm
Cost: 100dh; students 50dh

"Casablanca" remains Hollywood's finest moment, a film that succeeds on such a vast scale not because of anything experimental or deliberately earthshaking in its design, but for the way it cohered to and reaffirmed the movie-making conventions of its day. This is the film that played by the rules while elevating the form, and remains the touchstone for those who talk about Hollywood's greatness.

It's the first week in December, 1941, and in the Vichy-controlled African port city of Casablanca, American ex-pat Rick Blaine runs a gin joint he calls "Rick's Cafe Americaine." Everybody comes to Rick's, including thieves, spies, Nazis, partisans, and refugees trying to make their way to Lisbon and, eventually, America. Rick is a tough, sour kind of guy, but he's still taken for a loop when fate hands him two sudden twists: A pair of unchallengeable exit visas, and a woman named Ilsa who left him broken-hearted in Paris and now needs him to help her and her resistance-leader husband escape.

Humphrey Bogart is Rick and Ingrid Bergman is Ilsa, in roles that are archetypes in film lore. They are great parts besides, very multilayered and resistant to stereotype, and both actors give career performances in what were great careers. He's mad at her for walking out on him, while she wants him to understand her cause, but there's a lot going on underneath with both, and it all spills out in a scene in Rick's apartment that is one of many legendary moments.

"Casablanca" is a great romance, not only for being so supremely entertaining with its humor and realistic-though-exotic wartime excitement, but because it's not the least bit mushy. Take the way Rick's face literally breaks when he first sees Ilsa in his bar, or how he recalls the last time he saw her in Paris: "The Germans wore gray, you wore blue." There's a real human dimension to these people that makes us care for them and relate to them in a way that belies the passage of years.

For me, and many, the most interesting relationship in the movie is Rick and Capt. Renault, the police prefect in Casablanca who is played by Claude Rains with a wonderful subtlety that builds as the film progresses. Theirs is a relationship of almost perfect cynicism, one-liners and professions of neutrality that provide much humor, as well as give a necessary display of Rick's darker side before and after Ilsa's arrival.

But there's so much to grab onto with a film like this. You can talk about the music, or the way the setting becomes a living character with its floodlights and Moorish traceries. Paul Henreid is often looked at as a bit of a third wheel playing the role of Ilsa's husband, but he manages to create a moral center around which the rest of the film operates, and his enigmatic relationship with Rick and especially Ilsa, a woman who obviously admires her husband but can't somehow ever bring herself to say she loves him, is something to wonder at.

My favorite bit is when Rick finds himself the target of an entreaty by a Bulgarian refugee who just wants Rick's assurance that Capt. Renault is "trustworthy," and that, if she does "a bad thing" to secure her husband's happiness, it would be forgivable. Rick flashes on Ilsa, suppresses a grimace, tries to buy the woman off with a one-liner ("Go back to Bulgaria"), then finally does a marvelous thing that sets the whole second half of the film in motion without much calling attention to itself.

It's not fashionable to discuss movie directors after Chaplin and before Welles, but surely something should be said about Michael Curtiz, who not only directed this film but other great features like "Captain Blood" and "Angels With Dirty Faces." For my money, his "Adventures Of Robin Hood" was every bit "Casablanca's" equal, and he even found time the same year he made "Casablanca" to make "Yankee Doodle Dandy." When you watch a film like this, you aren't so much aware of the director, but that's really a testament to Curtiz's artistry. "Casablanca" is not only exceptionally well-paced but incredibly well-shot, every frame feeling well-thought-out and legendary without distracting from the overall story.

Curtiz was a product of the studio system, not a maverick like Welles or Chaplin, but he found greatness just as often, and "Casablanca," also a product of the studio system, is the best example. It's a film that reminds us why we go back to Hollywood again and again when we want to refresh our imaginations, and why we call it "the dream factory." As the hawker of linens tells Ilsa at the bazaar, "You won't a treasure like this in all Morocco." Nor, for that matter, in all the world.