Ruhy Mosque(Spiritual Mosque) —is the largest mosque in Central Asia. The vast prayer room can hold 10,000 pilgrims, with 7,000 men on the main floor and 3,000 women on the second level. Beneath the mosque is an underground parking area with a capacity for 400 cars.
The walls of the mosque were inscribed with verses from both the Quran and the Ruhnama. This, unsurprisingly, outraged many Muslims, who believed that passages from the Quran should be given far more reverence than Niyazov’s modern book of rambling moral guidance, and should not appear alongside each other. Even more incendiary was one particular quotation inscribed prominently on the entry arch to the mosque, which reads “The Ruhnama is the holiest book and the Quran is the book of Allah.”
Saparmurat Niyazov, however, wasn’t the kind of person who paid much attention to the trifling complaints of the world’s religious leaders. He left his mosque as it was, resplendent in Italian marble and gold, along with the nearby mausoleum, which is a miniature version of the mosque, built in preparation of his own death. He died in 2006, two years after the mosque was built, and now rests in his mausoleum, surrounded by the words of the Quran and his own hallowed Ruhnama.
