Three Houses, One Garden: The Abrahamic Family House
On Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, a mosque, a church and a synagogue stand on one shared garden. They were born from a document signed by a pope and a grand imam.
On the fourth of February 2019, in Abu Dhabi, Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, signed the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. Four years later, the idea had walls.
The Abrahamic Family House on Saadiyat Island was designed by the architect David Adjaye. It was inaugurated on the sixteenth of February 2023 and opened to the public on the first of March. Three houses of worship of the same size stand on a shared garden: the Eminence Ahmed El-Tayeb Mosque, the St. Francis Church and the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, named for the philosopher born in Córdoba.
Each house keeps its own rites and its own direction of prayer. What they share is the ground floor.
A shared foundation
The foundation stone is labelled in Hebrew, English and Arabic. The building does not ask anyone to blend their faith into the others. It asks something harder and more honest: that people who pray differently agree to be neighbours, and to show their children the way across the garden.
The Document on Human Fraternity is in the Archive, and the two men who signed it are in the Hall of Peace.
Written by
Editorial desk
Contributor, Abrahamic Ambassadors
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