Abdullah Bin Zaid Al Mahmoud Islamic Cultural Center (Fanar Masjid)

This guide to Fanar in Doha starts with a ninth-century caller climbing a spiral ramp inside the Malwiya, the mud-brick minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra, and the engineering problem it solved without a single stair. It follows that tower through the Mongol destruction of its mosque in 1278 and a 2005 bombing that targeted its summit, before turning to the modern concrete spiral rising over Doha that borrows its shape. The guide also traces the cultural center's own opening in January 2008 and the years its mosque held the title of Qatar's largest.