The topic of the day is churches or religious buildings. Churches have featured quite often in my posts, sometimes melancholy, sometimes haunting or downright scarey, sometimes abandoned or as part of the skyscape. So for this challenge I have picked the Razavi Mosque in Mashad, Iran and limited myself to snaps off my HTC One M8, rather than a proper camera.

Thanks as ever to Cee, and I hope you enjoy seeing something a little different:

First up we have the distinctive blue dome of the Goharshad Mosque, which was originally separate but has now been incorporated into the main mosque complex. It dates from the early 15th century and was commissioned by the Empress Goharshad, wife of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh.

Next a picture where everything is wrong, but I like the overall effect. It was cold, my hands weren’t steady, the lighting was poor, but despite that I liked the way the reflections work and the slightly ghostly quality to the woman in the foreground. This is looking across the main courtyard and the blue dome from above is just peeking over the building to the left.

Google tried to do something clever with the picture below. It decided the image would work better in black and white, and I tend to agree. This is looking into complex from the Bab-e-Jawad (one of the gates).

Finally, here’s the view of the main entrance to the mosque proper, my poor phone struggled somewhat with the reflections off the gold bricks, but I think you get the idea of how imposing it is.

One day I’ll get round to writing up the travelogue from this journey, in the meantime if you are interested in my thoughts on religious travel you can check out extracts from my Hajj diary.

End