Construction of mosque begins in Simferopol
SIMFEROPOL. Sept 25 (Interfax) - The construction of Crimea's central mosque began on Yaltinskaya Street in Simferopol on Friday, an Interfax correspondent has reported.
The mosque will be built on an area of 2.7 hectares and will have four 49-meter-high minarets, which will have domes of 18 meters in diameter. The mosque will be able to simultaneously accommodate up to 3,000 worshippers. Valuable kinds of stones will be used to decorate it.
Local Muslims had been requesting the construction of a cathedral mosque for over 15 years. It will be built by Turkish construction company Erbek. The project carries a price tag of two billion rubles.
"Given our agreements with the Turkish side, I believe that we will build the mosque through joint efforts," Crimean Muslims Mufti Emirali Ablayev said during the groundbreaking ceremony for the mosque.
Crimea's head Sergei Aksyonov, for his part, said that "we will jointly find the money to build the mosque, which will make Simferopol and the whole of Crimea even more beautiful."