Hassan Tower or Tour Hassan (Arabic: صومعة حسان) is the minaret of an incomplete mosque in Rabat (الرِّبَاط), Morocco. The tower was intended to be the largest minaret in the world, and the mosque, if completed, would have been the largest in the western Muslim world.
Hassan Tower was commissioned by Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, the third Caliph of the Almohad Caliphate, near the end of the 12th century.
When al-Mansur died in 1199, construction on the mosque stopped. The minaret was left standing at a height of 44 meters.
After Yaqub al-Mansur's death in 1199 the mosque remained unfinished and his successors lacked the resources or the will to finish it. The structure was left with only the beginnings of its walls and 348 columns.
The walls of the mosque were made of lime concrete on top of a rubble stone base.
The tower, along with the remains of the mosque and the modern Mausoleum of Mohammed V ( ضريح محمد الخامس), forms an important historical and tourist complex in Rabat.
Although the tower and the mosque were commissioned by Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, the monument is known as the ‘Hassan’. How the monument came to be given this name is unknown.
