The central mosque of Tbilisi occupies a narrow site in the old town, beneath the fortress of Narikala and beside the domed sulphur baths that gave the district its character. It is the only mosque still standing in the Georgian capital, others having been lost over the course of the twentieth century, and it serves a community drawn from several origins. What makes it genuinely unusual is that Sunni and Shia Muslims worship together in the same hall, an arrangement rare enough to be noted well beyond Georgia and one that speaks directly to the mixed history of this quarter. The building itself is modest in scale, brick-built, with a slender minaret rising among tiled roofs and balconied houses. The film observes the rhythm of prayer, the calligraphic decoration and the light of the interior, then steps outside to place the mosque within a few hundred metres of Orthodox churches, an Armenian church and a synagogue - a concentration that is the real subject of the programme.
