Istanbul Diary - Day 2: SULTANAHMET CAMİ ::

:: SULTANAHMET CAMİ ::

Continued from here

The six minarets of the Sultanahmet mosque are a trademark - I believe it was the only one with so many. And after this was built, the priest were annoyed that it had the same number as the Mecca one, so the Sultan went and put an extra minaret at Mecca, which now has seven minarets.

So, the fourteenth Sultan Ahmet I built this mosque, and relatively speaking for Istanbul, its very new - opened in 1617 - almost modern one would think!

The whole area around the mosque now is Sultanahmet, as is the tram stop. Walk in a little closer, and the view below is in front of you - and we are able to only capture the 4 minarets, with the 3 balconies. The outer 2 have only 2 balconies.

There is a lovely garden all around, and you will find children playing there at all times of the day.
Looks lovely in the evening light as well, which was when we visited it.
And we gasped, because the inside is rather different from the plain and simple outside! I loved the domes and the windows which let in so much light. If you read the expert writing about this mosque, they say that the paint is of poor quality, and the tiles are second-grade, etc etc, (and after seeing the Rustem Pasha mosque, I did see their point), but for a first time visitor, its all quite grand.
And the stained glass windows came from Venice. Actually, the Sultan seems to have rubbed several people the wrong way while building this mosque. The clergy were miffed about the six minarets. The ulema were also annoyed that he used treasury funds for its building (rather than war booty, which seems to have been the general practice at that time.) But what was he to do, he hadn't won any wars, and he was looking for a way to appease the Gods. He had lost Georgia and Azerbaijan to Persia, and Austria had stopped paying their annual tribute, so a sultan has to do something grand isnt it to get his PR ratings up.
More red mosque according to me, than blue mosque, which is what its called.
I quite liked these grand pillars. But the critics refer to them as elephant columns and they are criticised for being too "fat" and taking away from the beauty of the dome. Maybe architect Mehmet Pasha was scared the roof would fall down, otherwise.!

And the carpets, in this and the other mosques we saw, amazing! Plush, thick and soft. Not ragged, worn-out, smelly affairs that one would expect in a well-used public place.

The Aya Sofia seen from the entrance of the mosque, and from which it borrowed and tried to outdo. The mosque is built on the site of the Great Palace of the Byzantines.



If you walk past this side of the mosque and come to the Arasta Bazaar, there is a bit of the Great Palace floor that has been restored, and it is quite something else.
I always wonder why kings, sultans or other people in power have to destroy what a rival does, in order to establish themselves? Wouldn't it have been good if Sultan Ahmet I had built his mosque somewhere else and we also had the Great Palace for posterity?
Anyway, this is the last of the old-style classical mosques to be built in the region.