The Idgah Masjid — used for the large outdoor congregational prayers of Eid — is one of Srinagar's most prominent mosques, located in the Idgah area north of the main old city. The mosque itself is a substantial structure, but the Idgah function — the vast open courtyard designed to hold the enormous Eid congregations — is what distinguishes it architecturally from the city's other mosques. On Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha, tens of thousands of worshippers gather here.
The area around the Idgah Mosque is one of the more politically active parts of Srinagar; large public gatherings here have historically been the starting point of demonstrations as well as religious observance. Visiting outside major prayer times is straightforward; the mosque and its courtyard give a sense of the scale of the city's religious life that smaller neighbourhood mosques don't provide. The neighbourhood north of the Idgah has some good traditional Kashmiri architecture and several of the city's older craft workshops.