The Ambassador of the State of Qatar to Nigeria, Dr. Ali bin Ghanem Al-Hajri, has inaugurated ‘Al-Alem Abbas Ibn Firnas Mosque’ on the Nnamdi Azikiwe Worldwide Airport, Abuja.
The occasion, which came about on Wednesday, July 30, 2024, was attended by plenty of students and senior authorities officers.
In his remarks through the inauguration of the mosque mission, which was funded by the federal government of the State of Qatar, the Ambassador burdened the importance of naming it after the ninth century scientist – Al-Alem Abbas Ibn Firnas.
“The mosque is known as after Abbas ibn Firnas, a ninth century Andalusian scientist who was thought of one of many outstanding Muslim students who left immortal imprints and various mental output that’s unmatched within the human heritage. His scientific innovations had been – and nonetheless are – a supply of satisfaction and honour within the historical past of science,” he maintained.
In keeping with him, the mosque was a gesture to focus on the achievements of Ibn Firnas and his revered data and inquisitive thoughts, in addition to his fame, which has unfold all through the world. He emphasised that, “his reputation within the historical past of aviation is paramount; and it is because, along with his innovations which might be nonetheless in use right now together with fountain pen and Planetarium, there isn’t a a lot dispute amongst historians that Ibn Firnas was the primary to aim to fly utilizing wings.”
What makes the mosque mission uniquely crucial based on Mr Al-Hajri, “is its being located in crucial airports in Africa, an airport that doubles as a significant gateway for these coming from everywhere in the world to the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the second largest Muslim nation by way of inhabitants, with roughly 230 million folks, and the most important nation within the African continent by way of economic system, politics and tradition.”
He additionally expressed that even supposing many centuries have handed since his life, there are buildings all over the world right now which were erected to immortalise the scientist, particularly in airports, including that “probably the most well-known of those is his towering statue at Baghdad Worldwide Airport. The previous Jeddah Worldwide Airport bore the title of this scientist in honour of his distinctive innovations and contributions to the sector of aviation specifically, and the development of science basically. A crater on the moon was named after him by the Worldwide Astronomical Union in 1976.”
On the finish of the occasion, the Qatari Ambassador unveiled stone plaques engraved with a abstract of Ibn Firnas’ achievements in 5 languages, together with the three foremost Nigerian languages particularly Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
