Webcam Moscow. Moscow Cathedral Mosque
The Moscow Cathedral Mosque is the largest and oldest mosque in Moscow. It is an example of Tatar religious architecture. In December 1903, the Moscow Governor-General-Governor Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich approved the mosque construction project proposed by the petty bourgeois S. Bakirov and merchant Kh. Akbulatov from Kasimov. The mosque was financed by Tatar merchant Saleh Yusupovich Yerzin. In the "Zodchyi" magazine (№32 of 1904) there was a note in the "information" section: "Mohammedan community in Moscow started the construction of the second mosque, having bought a piece of land for 35000 rubles".
The first imam of the new mosque, Badriddin Hazrat Alimov, applied to the authorities on 27 November 1904 with a request to start divine service in the mosque and the permission was given. The mosque was designed by Nikolai Alekseevich Zhukov, an architect with a choir for 2,000 people. The mosque escaped closure during the Soviet period and was the only functioning mosque in Moscow until the 1990s.
Since 1996 the mosque houses a separate building housing the Council of Muftis of Russia and the residence of its chairman, Sheikh Ravil Ismagilovich Gaynutdin. In September 2011 workers used special vehicles to tear down the historic mosque building to its foundations. Then the large-scale reconstruction of the mosque began. After the reconstruction is completed, the height of the two minarets of the renovated mosque will be 75 m.
