The state’s funds were limited and construction works dragged on for years. The colossal scale of the project required enormous amounts of steel and concrete, a supply that was partly imported from abroad, but which also greatly stimulated the emergence of domestic production. Although the lack of local technical expertise posed a challenge at the time, Istiqlal Mosque was nevertheless constructed with the most up-to-date technology. The prayer hall—a huge space lined with galleries running over four levels—is topped by a breathtaking reinforced concrete dome, the casting of which required the assembly of a complex polyhedron steel-frame structure built with the help of steel pipes and ball joints manufactured in West Germany. Because religious protocol mandates that the prayer hall be oriented towards the Qibla—slightly off the axis of Merdeka Square—Silaban rotated the mosque’s inner courtyard, known as a sahn, by 20 degrees to have the colonnade facing directly onto the National Monument, in the middle of the square.
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