One of the oldest and biggest mosques in the country, the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad holds a special place in the lists of tourist location found not only in the city but also in India. Located adjacent to the Charminar, it presents an equally marvelous site if compared to the Charminar. The construction of the grand mosque started under sultan Quail Qutub Shah’s aegis in 1617 but got completed after almost 77 years by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in the year 1694.

The legend goes that the sultan commissioned bricks to be made from the earth brought from Mecca, and inducted those bricks into the central arch of the mosque. Since the mosque is also patterned on the design of the holy mosque of the prophet Muhammad in Mecca, it was called the Mecca Masjid. The sultan himself laid the foundation stone of the mosque.

The hall of the mosque is 75 feet high, 220 feet wide and, 180 feet long. Each of the octagonal columns on the either side are made of single piece of granite each topped by an arched gallery that is crowned by a dome .The roof is supported by fifteen arches, five on each side of the three sides of the mosque. The fourth side has a high wall which blocks the western side making the Mehrab.The inscriptions from Quran adorn many of the arches and doors. It took 8000 masons and laborers to complete the structure, which is big enough to accommodate 10,000 devotees for prayers.

Once entry is made through the main gate of the mosque, in the courtyard a beautiful man made pond awaits the visitors with two stone and a slab seats. It is said that a visitor who sits on one these seats will definitely return to the place. Another specialty attached to the courtyard is a room, which is said to contain many sacred relics, one of which is the hair of prophet Muhammad. The cornices running around the entire mosque structure and the floral motifs and friezes over the arches show the recurrent them in Qutb Shahi architecture. They have a close resemblance to the arches at Charminar and Golconda fort. To the left of the courtyard an exquisitely graceful, rectangular, arched and canopied building housing the marble graves of Asaf Jahi rulers from Nizam Ali Khan to Mehboob Ali Khan and their family. It is possible that this structure came up during the rule of the Asaf Jahs who had ruled the place in between Qutub Shah and Aurangzeb since it contains the tombs of the Nizams and their family. The grave structures are examples of the architectural sophistication of the Jahi’s period too.

The Mecca Masjid of Hyderabad has been declared a heritage building, a place worth visiting for all those who are on tour of Hyderabad. Mecca Masjid is more like a journey to a pilgrimage.