An American in Turkey

The first sight we visited this Saturday was the Imperial Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I, also known as Sultanahmet Camii or The Blue Mosque. It is a massive mosque whose dome is only matched in height by the Ayasofya. It stands roughly 300 yards across the Hippodrome from Ayasofya. Its massive dome towers roughly 140 feet in the air with a cascade of half domes in its support structure. It has six minarets that was, and still is, highly unusual. When it was built the main mosque in Mecca only had five minarets, and thus it had to add two more after Sultanahmet was completed. Inside the walls are covered in exquisite blue Iznik tile (for which the Europeans gave it the name Blue Mosque).

The mosque still functions today, as does every mosque with the exception of Ayasofya, and is open most of the day to tourists. This is first mosque I’ve ever been inside in and I must say it left on me an impression that was much different than any comparable cathedral or church I’ve visited. While a cathedral may have several shrines and statues to different saints this, and every mosque, has only writing and floral patterns with a cavernous open space for prayer. Depictions of human beings are forbidden amongst religious Muslims because only God has the ability to create man, and any attempt to replicate such an action is an insult to his intelligence. While I don’t necessarily agree with such reasoning the function is successful, there is nothing inside this mosque to distract you from intent prayer. Even the separation of men from women is not done to nominate women as a second-class, but because if men and women could see each other during prayer it would be a distraction.

In all, Sultanahmet displays two things successfully, a majestic piece of architecture that loses none of its serene functionality.