yes , you are right
but always people try to show the best when they going to make large mosques
we also in Egypt have very simple mosques in every street , even some people use room in house as mosque and called it Zawya ( Angle in English )
but when we want show something different or huge , we thinking totally out of box
for example we built very large mosque in the new capital last year and most people talking about beautiful design and structure and gardens around ( i’m not visit it yet )
also you can see my post for Al Hassan II mosque here