German Documentary Marks Hajj, Eid

The Suedwest-produced documentary, entitled "The Way to Paradise: A Journey With Pilgrims To Makkah", casts light on the picturesque and spectacular expansions made to the two holy mosques in Makkah and Al-Mainah Al-Munawarrah in late1980 s.

The director, Mohsin El-Gomri, chose famed German Muslim architect Mahmmoud Bodo Rasch to be the central piece of the one-hour documentary, thanks to his widely-acclaimed contributions to the expansion works.

The documentary begins with an overview of the new pilgrims’ village in Mina, some seven kilometers (4. 5miles) away from Makkah, displaying its Rasch-designed tents, made up of non-flammable material and stretching on vast swathes of land.
It then moves to the city of the Prophet (PBUH), showing the expansions sketched by Rasch, expanding the total area of the Prophet’s mosque’s to about 78 million square feet to accommodate the ever-increasing number of Muslims visiting the site.

The original mosque, built with mud bricks and tree trunks in 622 A.H., covered an area of8 , 661square feet.

The last expansion before the modern era was completed in 1849 by Sultan Abdul Majid II, bringing the mosque’s total area to a little more than 120 , 000square feet.

The Rasch-designed expansions also provided extensive roofed prayer area with 27 retractable and mechanized domes weighing close to eight tons each, in a sight which blends in harmony breath-taking geometric Islamic designs with state-of-the-art technology.

He also added 12 huge retractable non-flammable umbrellas, which shade the prayer courtyard from the searing sun.

The mechanized umbrellas are opened or closed depending on the weather.

The German Muslim architect is displaying lifelike models of these umbrellas outside his company in Stuttgart.

The expansions also saw a new air conditioning system, one of the largest and most innovative of its kind.

The system pumps17 , 000gallons of chilled water per minute through pipes into the basement of the mosque, used to cool air circulating throughout the complex.

Rasch also designed magnificent lightening system reflecting on the surface of marvelous marble and granite.

The expansion project further added six new minarets to the mosque’s four existing ones.

Each of the new minarets is 360 feet high, topped by a23 -foot brass crescent weighing close to five tons.

The film also showed Rasch performing prayers and hajj in addition to a mass iftar inside the Prophet’s Mosque.

Rasch, one of the leading contemporary architects in Germany, embraced Islam some 30 years ago.

He has been living since 1985 between Germany and Saudi Arabia, where he did his second dissertation on the holy journey undertaken by the pilgrims.