User:Leonfitz1779/Great Mosque of Kufa

https://maxvanberchem.org/en/scientific-activities/projects/archeology/11-archeologie/181-a-survey-of-the-great-mosque-palace-complex-of-kufa-2019

Adding more details of the mosque.

Mosque[edit]
The area of the building measures approximately 11,000 square meters (120,000 sq ft). The historic mosque has a quadrangular layout, measuring 110 by 112 by 109 by 112 metres (361 ft × 367 ft × 358 ft × 367 ft). It has semi-circular bastions along its outer walls. Moreover, along the northern wall, there were detections of square foundations of previously built semi-round towers, whose remains had been incorporated into the towers appearing on the surface.(citation needed) Three circular (three-quarter-round) towers at its corners, and historically had one minaret, according to investigations of the site in the 20th century. The present-day mosque has four minarets. The shaft of a column standing next to the maqam-Nabī, located in the courtyard, and two capitals decorated with acanthus leaves re-employed at the sides of a door seemed to be related to this earlier phase.

The mosque has five gates: Gate of the Threshold (Bāb al-Sudda), Gate of Kinda (Bāb Kinda), Gate of al-Anmat (Bāb al-Anmāṭ), Gate of Hani ibn Urwa, and the Gate of the Snake (Bāb al-Thu‘bān) or Gate of the Elephant (Bāb al-Fīl).

The historic mosque structure has similarities to the design of the palaces of pre-Islamic Persia. According to a description by Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233), its ceiling was taken from a Persian palace and resembled the ceiling of a Byzantine church.