Sultan Ahmet Mosque
Istanbul is the city of history, which is Constantinople, the Topkapi, and the Ottoman Empire with its sultans and palaces.
You cannot wake up to the call to prayer in Istanbul and neglect or delay visiting its religious monuments, the most important of which is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque or the Blue Mosque, and after the conversion of the Hagia Sophia Cathedral into a museum in 1934,
The Sultan Ahmed Mosque has become the main mosque in Istanbul and one of its largest edifices, and it is one of the amazing examples of the splendor of Ottoman architecture.
The person entering the courtyard of the mosque wonders why it was called the Blue Mosque
The reason for the name is the blue tiles that decorate its walls, as the mosque’s walls cover 21,043 ceramic tiles imported from the city of Iztec (an hour away from Istanbul), so that it combines more than fifty designs and the painted decorations occupy every part of the mosque.
The blue color of the decorations added a strong sense of the dominance of this color.
The mosque overlooks the Bosphorus Strait, which separates the European continent from the Asian continent, which gives it additional beauty, especially for those coming through the Sea of Marmara or the Bosphorus Strait.
Work began on the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in 1609 AD. The mosque was completed on Friday, 1617 AD, after Sultan Ahmed placed the last stone in its dome.
Prayers are still performed in the mosque, and it is one of the most important landmarks that attract tourists to Turkey. It was named after the surrounding area. It was built by the architect Muhammad Agha, a student of the famous architect Sinan Pasha, whose architectural fingerprints are found in Istanbul and Cairo.
The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is considered one of the largest architectural works. It is considered one of the royal mosques. It has six minarets, and its dome is based on four cylindrical pillars, each of which is five meters in diameter, made by hand. The pillars are called elephant legs.
And it is decorated with ornaments painted in blue from the inside, and 260 windows overlook the external courtyard of the mosque, and the art of Islamic calligraphy, which was copied and networked by (Sayyid Qasim Gobari), the greatest of the Turkish calligraphers at the time, highlights it.
The mosque has a high wall that surrounds it on its three sides. It has five entrances, two of which lead directly to the qiblah, and three entrances lead to the mosque’s wide courtyard, to be the center of worshipers gathering before they perform the prayer.
Around the mosque is a courtyard covered with thirty domes surrounded by balconies and a fountain intertwined with arches carved with carnations and embossed tulips and Islamic calligraphy decorations and the names of the venerable companions Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Ali.
As for the crescent shape located at the top of the minarets and the dome, it is coated with copper in a golden color. Thousands of local and foreign visitors come to visit the Sultan Ahmed Mosque every year, and on religious occasions in particular.
On Friday and the month of Ramadan, the mosque is narrowed to delegates, despite its vastness
Carpets are laid out in the inner and outer courtyards of the mosque to hold the obligatory and Tarawih prayers as well.
If, before the Islamic conquest of Istanbul by Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, Istanbul was proud of the greatest church built by human hands on earth, which is the Church of Hagia Sophia,
Which was built at the peak of its splendor in (537 AD) during the reign of Emperor Justian, after the heirs of the Roman Empire collected for it the most valuable money and jewelry they owned and brought the best builders and workers.
The Ottoman Caliphs and the Islamic nation succeeded in defying the Roman Empire and Justin in particular, so they established on the land of Istanbul the largest, greatest and most durable masterpieces of Hagia Sophia, such as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Suleymaniye Mosque, Al-Fateh Mosque and other amazing and impressive monuments.
