Faisal Mosque, Islamabad

The Pakistani national mosque at the base of the Margalla hills in Islamabad, designed by Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay in 1969 and completed in 1986 with Saudi King Faisal's funding. The 54,000-square-metre prayer complex uses an unusual eight-faceted triangular form inspired by a Bedouin tent, with no traditional domes, and holds about 100,000 worshippers in its courtyard. The mosque was the world's largest from 1986 to 1993. General Zia-ul-Haq is buried in the courtyard — the only burial in the mosque — and the Faisal Mosque is both the symbolic Pakistani national mosque and the architectural statement of Islamabad as a 1960s-1980s planned capital.