With Saudi officials, Ben Ali inaugurates one thousand seat al-Abidin mosque in Carthage

Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Tuesday inaugurated the largest mosque in Carthage, the northern suburb of Tunis, Tunisia. The ceremony was attended by Saudi Arabia's minister of interior prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz as a special envoy of King Fahd.

The inauguration ceremony was also attended by Tunisia's First Lady Layla Bin Ali, Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal and Sheikh Saleh Kamel, and all of them performed prayers of greetings to the mosque and then the afternoon prayers.

The mosque which is built on a hill of three hectares area and took two years to be completed, can give seat to 1,000 worshippers and an internal courtyard of 1500 square meters and an external one of 2500 square meters. Its minaret is 75 meters high.

The architecture glimpses of the mosque were inspired from the Arab- Islamic architecture and comply with the architectural trend of the religious monuments in Tunis which is very abundant in Carthage. The mosque's courtyard is opened to 48 doors of craved wood.

Carthage was chosen to host the mosque which is named al-Abidin Mosque because history books and its incidents say that Carthage is the most important Tunisian city whose name was the preoccupation of the world for 28 centuries.