Last updated: July 2026 · Written by the Kazakhstan Tourism Guide editorial team
Astana is a city of bold silhouettes, and two of its most striking belong to mosques. On my visits I have watched the sun drop behind white marble at one and climb over enormous domes at the other. Here is how to see both of them properly, respectfully, and without any awkwardness.
The Hazrat Sultan Mosque, inaugurated in 2012, is Astana’s landmark white-marble mosque on Independence Avenue, named after the Sufi saint Khoja Ahmed Yasawi. It holds around 5,000 worshippers, rising to about 10,000 on holidays. Entry is free, non-Muslims are welcome outside the five daily prayers, and it opens roughly 09:00 to 20:00.
For years this was the mosque everyone photographed, the one that appeared on postcards and in the background of wedding shoots. Then, in 2022, the far larger Astana Grand Mosque opened across the river and took the regional crown. Both are worth your time, and they tell you different things about the country. If you are still mapping out your days, our guide to the best things to do in Astana puts these mosques in context alongside the city’s other landmarks.
Astana’s mosques at a glance
Three mosques come up again and again when people plan a trip to the capital. Here is how they compare before we go into each one in detail.
| Mosque | Opened | Capacity | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hazrat Sultan Mosque | 2012 | ~5,000 (up to ~10,000 on holidays) | White marble on Independence Avenue; held the “largest in Central Asia” title 2012–2022; free entry. |
| Astana Grand Mosque (officially the Astana Central Mosque) | 2022 | ~35,000 inside; ~235,000 with the courtyard | Largest in Central Asia; enormous handmade carpet and a mosaic qibla wall; observation deck; left bank near EXPO. |
| Nur-Astana / Abu Nasr al-Farabi Mosque | ~2008 | ~5,000 inside | Golden 40 m dome and four 63 m minarets; renamed in 2021 after the philosopher al-Farabi. |
Who was Hazrat Sultan? The saint behind the name
The name is the first thing worth understanding, because it carries a lot of history. “Hazrat Sultan” translates roughly as “Holy Sultan” or “Sultan of the Saints,” and it is an honorific for Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a Turkic poet and mystic who lived in the twelfth century.
Yasawi is one of the most revered figures in the spiritual history of the Turkic world. He wrote his religious poetry in a Turkic language rather than in Persian or Arabic, which made his teaching reachable to ordinary people, and he founded a Sufi order that spread across the steppe. For many Kazakhs he is not a distant historical name but a genuine part of their sense of identity, which is why the capital’s flagship mosque was named for him.
His mausoleum does not stand in Astana. It is in the city of Turkestan in the south of the country, a monumental building commissioned by Timur, also known as Tamerlane, at the end of the fourteenth century. That mausoleum is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the great pieces of Timurid architecture anywhere. If the saint’s story pulls at you, the pilgrimage route south connects directly to the country’s older trade history, which we cover in our guide to the Silk Road in Kazakhstan. Standing in the Astana mosque with that context in mind changes how the place feels; you are looking at a modern building that reaches back eight hundred years.
The architecture of Hazrat Sultan Mosque
The mosque was inaugurated in 2012, and from the outside it reads as classical Islamic architecture rendered in bright white marble. The effect is deliberately calm and formal rather than flashy. On a clear day the whole structure seems to glow, and in winter, when everything around it is white too, the domes and minarets stand out mostly by their shadows.
The central dome rises about 51 metres, and it is surrounded by eight smaller domes that cluster around it. Four minarets frame the building, each roughly 77 metres tall, so the profile is symmetrical and balanced from almost any angle. Inside and out you will notice Kazakh ornament woven into the more familiar Islamic geometric patterns, which is a nice detail: the decorative language is not simply imported, it is local. Those motifs echo the patterns you see in felt-making, jewellery, and textiles, all part of the wider story we tell in our guide to Kazakh culture.
The prayer hall normally holds around 5,000 people, and on major holidays the capacity stretches to something like 10,000 once the overflow areas are opened. When it was completed it was described as the largest mosque in Central Asia, a title it held from 2012 until 2022, when the new Grand Mosque eclipsed it. That handover says a lot about how fast Astana has been building. If the city’s skyline interests you as much as its faith, our overview of Astana’s architecture traces how these landmarks came together in barely two decades.
Where it stands: Independence Avenue and what’s nearby
Hazrat Sultan Mosque sits on Independence Avenue, sometimes written as Tauelsizdik Avenue, on the right bank of the Ishim River. This is one of the most concentrated clusters of monuments in the whole city, which makes it an efficient place to spend an afternoon.
Almost directly across from the mosque you will see the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, the glass-and-steel pyramid designed by Norman Foster. A short walk away are the Palace of Independence and the National Museum of Kazakhstan, and rising over the square is the Kazakh Eli monument, a tall white column topped by a golden bird. You can comfortably see the mosque, the pyramid, and the monument in a single loop on foot, and the sightlines between them are part of the design; the planners wanted these buildings to speak to each other across the open space.
If you keep walking or take a short taxi ride, you reach the ceremonial heart of the right bank and the Baiterek Tower, the city’s best-known observation landmark. I usually treat the mosque as the quiet, contemplative stop in a day that also takes in the museum and the tower, so that the pace of the visit rises and falls rather than staying at full volume the whole time.
Visiting Hazrat Sultan Mosque
Hours and entry
Entry is free, and that includes non-Muslim visitors, who are welcome to come and look outside of prayer times. As a general guide the mosque is open to visitors from roughly 09:00 to 20:00, but please treat those numbers as approximate. Hours shift with the seasons and with the prayer calendar, they are not always posted in English, and the building closes to casual sightseeing during the five daily prayers. Friday around midday is the busiest and most sacred window of the week, so if you only want to look rather than pray, come on another day or at another hour.
There is no ticket desk and no photography fee, which is refreshing. What the mosque asks of you instead is behaviour: modest dress, quiet voices, and a bit of awareness about where you point your camera. I will go through all of that in the etiquette section below, because it applies to every mosque in the city.
What it’s like inside
Once you have left your shoes at the entrance and stepped onto the carpet, the first thing you notice is the light. The pale interior and the high central dome make the main hall feel airy rather than heavy, and the decoration draws your eye upward toward the calligraphy and geometric work under the dome.
Stand near the back of the prayer hall if people are worshipping, keep to the edges, and simply take a few slow minutes to look up. There is no set route to follow and no audio guide steering you around; the experience is meant to be still. If a service is in progress, the respectful thing is to observe quietly from the rear or wait outside until it finishes rather than walking across the hall.
The Astana Grand Mosque: the largest in Central Asia
If Hazrat Sultan is the elegant, human-scaled mosque, the Astana Grand Mosque is the one that makes you stop mid-sentence. It opened in 2022 on the left bank, officially named the Astana Central Mosque, and it is now the largest mosque in Central Asia and among roughly the ten largest in the world. Seeing both mosques on the same trip is the real point, because they represent two very different ideas of what a mosque can be.
The record numbers
The scale is genuinely hard to take in until you are standing under it. The total capacity is around 235,000 people once you count the vast courtyard, with roughly 35,000 of those inside the building itself, split into something like 30,000 places for men and 5,000 for women. Four minarets rise about 130 metres each, and the main dome reaches around 83 metres high and about 62 metres across. Those figures dwarf almost every other religious building in the region.
The mosque was privately financed, and the cost has not been publicly disclosed, so you will see wildly different numbers thrown around online. I would not repeat any of them; the honest answer is that the price tag is not officially confirmed. What matters more for a visit is the effect, and the effect is overwhelming in the best sense.
Inside: the carpet, the qibla wall, and the great door
Three things inside tend to stay with people. The first is the carpet, one of the largest handmade carpets in the world at somewhere around 15,500 square metres, woven as a single vast field beneath your feet. Walking across it barefoot is a strange and lovely sensation.
The second is the qibla wall, the wall that faces Mecca, which here runs roughly 100 metres and is covered in a mosaic inscribed with the ninety-nine names of Allah. It is said to be assembled from something on the order of 25 million tiny glass pieces, and the way it catches light shifts as you move along it. The third is the main door, carved from iroko wood and standing around 12 metres tall, so heavy and detailed that most people photograph it on the way in without quite believing the scale.
Take your time in the main hall. Because the building is so large, the crowds disperse and it rarely feels packed outside prayer times. Look for the calligraphy bands, the chandeliers, and the play of daylight through the dome, and then simply sit for a moment near the edge of the carpet and let the size of the place settle over you.
The observation deck and facilities
One of the minarets has a public observation deck, which is unusual and well worth doing on a clear day for the view over the left bank and the EXPO district. There is a small charge to go up, reportedly around 2,000 tenge, and slippers are usually provided; treat both the price and the arrangement as things that can change, and ask at the entrance on the day. The view lines up nicely with the modern architecture on this side of the river.
The complex is set up for visitors in a way that older mosques are not. There is an on-site museum, a café, and a shop, so you can combine the visit with a coffee and a browse rather than treating it as a quick in-and-out. That makes it an easy anchor for a half-day on the left bank.
Getting there
The Grand Mosque stands on Mangilik El Avenue on the left bank, out near the EXPO site and the spherical Nur-Alem pavilion. It is a little removed from the older centre, so most visitors take a taxi or a ride-hailing app, which is inexpensive in Astana. If you are pairing it with the EXPO buildings and the newer government district, it slots in naturally; if you are coming straight from the right-bank monuments, budget a bit of extra travel time. Our sample Astana itinerary shows one practical way to string the two riverbanks together without doubling back.
The Nur-Astana (Abu Nasr al-Farabi) Mosque
Between these two giants sits a quieter, older mosque that many visitors miss, and it is worth a mention because its details are so deliberate. The Nur-Astana Mosque opened around 2008, arranged as a gift with the involvement of Qatar, and for a few years it was one of the main mosques of the growing capital.
The proportions carry meaning. The golden dome rises 40 metres, chosen to mark the age of the Prophet Muhammad at his first revelation, and the four minarets each reach 63 metres, his age at death. Inside it holds around 5,000 worshippers. In 2021 the mosque was renamed in honour of Abu Nasr al-Farabi, the great tenth-century philosopher and polymath who was born in the region, which ties the building to Kazakhstan’s intellectual heritage as much as its religious one.
In winter, wrapped in snow, the golden dome against a white-grey sky is one of the more photogenic sights in the city. Astana is famously cold, so if you visit in the deep months, keep your camera battery warm and your visit brisk.
Etiquette and dress code
None of this is complicated, and none of it is meant to catch you out. A mosque is a working place of worship, and the etiquette is simply about being a considerate guest. Get these basics right and you will feel comfortable rather than self-conscious the whole time.
For women
Cover your hair with a scarf, and cover your shoulders and knees. Loose, non-transparent clothing is the aim. At the Astana Grand Mosque this is made easy: free robes and headscarves are provided at the entrance, so even if you have arrived in summer clothes you can borrow what you need and hand it back on the way out. At the other mosques it is wiser to arrive already dressed modestly and to carry your own scarf, since provision is less certain.
For men
Men have it simpler but are not exempt. Wear long trousers rather than shorts, and keep your shoulders covered; a plain T-shirt and long trousers are fine. Turning up in athletic shorts and a vest is the one thing that will get you politely turned away or asked to cover up.
Shoes, prayer times, and photography
A few rules apply to everyone, and they are easy to remember.
- Shoes off. Remove your shoes before you step onto the carpet of the prayer hall. There are shelves or an attended area at the entrance; carry them or leave them as directed. Clean socks are a small kindness to yourself here.
- Mind the prayer times. If you are visiting only to look, avoid the five daily prayers and especially the Friday midday prayer, when the mosque fills with worshippers and sightseeing is not appropriate. Come between prayers instead.
- Photograph with care. General interior shots are usually fine, but do not photograph people while they are praying, and switch off your flash. Ask before taking a portrait of anyone.
- Keep voices low. Speak quietly, silence your phone, and let children know it is a calm place before you go in.
Follow those and you will be treated warmly. In my experience the staff and worshippers are welcoming to respectful visitors, and a small effort with dress and behaviour is repaid many times over.
Best time to visit and practical tips
The mosques are open year-round, so the real question is when the city itself is comfortable. Late spring through early autumn, roughly May to September, gives you mild days and long light, which is ideal for photographing the white marble and the domes. Astana’s winters are severe, this is one of the coldest capitals on earth, so a December or January visit is atmospheric but demands serious layers and short outdoor spells.
A few things that make the day go smoothly:
- Go mid-morning or mid-afternoon, between prayer times, for the quietest visit and the best light.
- Carry a scarf if you are a woman, even in summer, so you are never caught out.
- Wear shoes that slip off easily; you will be taking them on and off.
- Combine the right-bank cluster (Hazrat Sultan, the Pyramid, the National Museum, Baiterek) in one outing, and save the Grand Mosque and EXPO for another.
- Keep some small cash for the observation deck and the café at the Grand Mosque.
How the three compare
If you only have time for one, make it the Astana Grand Mosque for sheer scale and the sense of a nation making a statement. If you want something more intimate and more woven into the classic city sightseeing route, Hazrat Sultan Mosque is the easy choice and pairs perfectly with the other right-bank monuments. The Nur-Astana Mosque is the connoisseur’s stop, quieter and older, rewarding if you like the symbolism in its proportions or you simply want a calmer moment.
My honest advice is to see two of them, one from each bank, so you feel the contrast. The elegant white mosque named for a medieval saint and the vast new mosque with its record-breaking carpet are, together, a neat summary of how Astana holds its history and its ambition at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
Can I visit the mosques in Astana if I’m not Muslim?
Yes. Non-Muslim visitors are welcome at all three mosques outside of prayer times, and entry is free. Dress modestly, remove your shoes before the prayer hall, keep your voice down, and avoid the five daily prayers and the Friday midday service if you are only there to look. Beyond that, you are free to walk in and admire the interiors.
What is the dress code for the Astana Grand Mosque?
Modest clothing for everyone. Women should cover their hair, shoulders, and knees; free robes and headscarves are provided at the entrance if you need them. Men should wear long trousers and keep their shoulders covered, so no shorts or vests. The same standard applies at Hazrat Sultan and Nur-Astana, though at those two it is best to arrive already dressed appropriately and bring your own scarf.
Do I need to remove my shoes?
Yes, at every mosque. You take your shoes off before stepping onto the carpet of the prayer hall and leave them on the shelves or in the attended area by the entrance. Wear socks you are happy to be seen in and choose footwear that comes off easily, because you will be doing this at each mosque you visit.
Is there an entrance fee?
No. Entry to all three mosques is free, including for tourists. The only thing you might pay for is the observation deck at the Astana Grand Mosque, which carries a small charge, reportedly around 2,000 tenge, with slippers usually provided. Treat that figure as approximate and confirm on the day.
What are the opening hours?
As a rough guide, the mosques are open to visitors from around 09:00 to 20:00, and the Grand Mosque effectively keeps long hours. Please treat these as approximate. Times shift with the seasons and the prayer calendar, and all mosques close to casual sightseeing during the five daily prayers. Fridays around midday are busiest, so plan your look-around for another time.
Which is the largest mosque in Central Asia?
The Astana Grand Mosque, which opened in 2022. It is the largest mosque in Central Asia and among roughly the ten largest in the world, with a total capacity of about 235,000 including its courtyard. It took the title from Hazrat Sultan Mosque, which had been the region’s largest from 2012 until 2022.
Can I go up the Grand Mosque’s observation deck?
Yes. One of the Grand Mosque’s minarets has a public observation deck open to visitors, with a small fee and slippers usually provided. The view over the left bank and the EXPO district is excellent on a clear day. Because such arrangements and prices can change, ask at the entrance when you arrive rather than counting on fixed details.
Final thoughts
Astana’s mosques are among the most rewarding things you can see in the capital, partly because they are so different from one another. Hazrat Sultan Mosque gives you elegance, a saint’s story reaching back to the Silk Road, and a spot right in the middle of the city’s monument district. The Astana Grand Mosque gives you scale that genuinely stops you in your tracks. The Nur-Astana Mosque gives you a quieter, more symbolic pause between the two.
Come dressed simply, arrive between prayers, take your shoes off with a smile, and you will find these are welcoming places rather than intimidating ones. Fold them into a broader trip using our guide to things to do in Astana, and you will leave with a much fuller picture of what this young, ambitious capital is trying to be.
For more context, see our guides to beautiful places in Kazakhstan and building a Kazakhstan itinerary.
Photo credits
Hazrat Sultan Mosque: t_y_l (CC BY-SA 2.0). Astana Grand Mosque interior: Lucha (CC BY-SA 4.0). Nur-Astana Mosque in winter: Ilya Varlamov (CC BY-SA 4.0). All via Wikimedia Commons.
