One of the most important monuments of the 17th century, The Blue Mosque is a masterpiece which was built by Mimar Sinan. It developed by Architect Sedefkâr Mehmet Ağa who became pioneer of Turkish architecture after Mimar Sinan.
Sultan I.Ahmet, the founder of the Blue Mosque, ascend the throne as 14th padishah when he was 14 in 1603 and after 14 year reign he died in 28 in 1617.
Sultan Ahmet Han laid the foundation to the Mosque himself first. You can see this pickax in Topkapı Palace. The completion of the construction took 7 year, 5 month and 6 days. It opened on June 9, 1617.
Architectural Landmark of The Blue Mosque
The place of worship of the mosque is rectangle and the sizes are similiar to square. 53.50×49.47 (2.646 m2). Inside of the Blue Mosque has four cloverleaf plan. The main dome is 43 meters high and 23.5 meters in diameter.
This measurements show Mehmet Ağa’s talent as an engineer. Due to 260 windows which positioned skillfully, the inside of the Mosque wrapped spacious air. The big dome seems like suspended in the air cause of positions of the windows.
The Name of Blue Mosque
The Western People call it as “Blue Mosque“. This mosque is brighter and more spacious from the other ones. It gets the light from countless windows. The colours of tiles and decoration, which is blue, caused the name of Blue Mosque.
The Internal Structure of The Blue Mosque
They used 21043 tile which bought from workshops in İznik and Kütahya as 16-18 coin for each of them. There are tiles more than 50 various patterns in Blue Mosque.
The mahfel of Sultan, mihrab, mimbar of the Blue Mosque are works of art respectively. Especially the mahfel of Sultan is a masterpiece. And the embossed mimbar is golden gilded.
