Sultan Ahmed Mosque

About

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque rises in the historic heart of Istanbul, facing the great church of Hagia Sophia across the open square of the Sultanahmet quarter. Raised under the patronage of the young Sultan Ahmed I between 1609 and 1617, it is known as the Blue Mosque for the more than twenty thousand cobalt-glazed İznik tiles that line the upper reaches of its interior.

The architect Sedefkar Mehmed Aga, a pupil of the great Mimar Sinan, conceived the building as a return to the centralised plan and cascading half-domes of the Ottoman classical age. A vast central dome rises upon four massive piers, descending through subordinate cupolas, and the prayer hall opens upon a wide arcaded forecourt.

The mosque is distinguished by its six slender minarets, a feature unusual among Ottoman foundations and which famously prompted the addition of a seventh minaret to the Sacred Mosque of Mecca to preserve the precedence of that holiest sanctuary. More than two hundred and fifty stained-glass windows admit a softened daylight that diffuses across the patterned tiles and painted arabesques.

As an active congregational mosque, the Sultan Ahmed continues to gather the faithful for the five daily prayers and the Friday jum'a, even as it welcomes large numbers of visitors. It remains both a working place of Islamic worship and one of the most iconic landmarks of Istanbul.

History

Sultan Ahmed I came to the throne as a teenager and undertook the mosque as a personal pious foundation, having had no military victories to fund the kind of imperial mosque erected by his predecessors. The construction effort drew upon traditional Ottoman waqf endowments, and the surrounding külliye originally included a madrasa, a hospice, a hospital and the sultan's türbe, in which Ahmed himself was buried in 1617 shortly after the dedication of the mosque. The building has weathered earthquakes and centuries of urban change, and recent comprehensive restoration has returned its tiles and stonework to their seventeenth-century brilliance.

Significance

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is among the great congregational sanctuaries of the Muslim world and one of the principal architectural emblems of Istanbul. Its luminous interior, its place within the Historic Areas of Istanbul UNESCO World Heritage Site and its enduring role as a place of daily prayer give it a singular standing in the religious and cultural life of Turkey.