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Wednesday, July 10, 2024

2024 Turkey: The Sultan Ahmet Mosque (The Blue Mosque) II

 The outer view of the Sultan Ahmet Mosque with one of the exterior gates.  We entered through the side.



The mosque has a total of six minarets (The long thin structures from which the call to prayer is made).  It is one of five mosques in Turkey that has six minarets and was the first outside of Mecca at the time to have six minarets; as the story goes Sultan Ahmet had a seventh minaret built at Mecca to apologize for the presumption.


The side entrance to the main mosque.  To the left just out of view is where ablutions are done by worshippers.


The main courtyard of the mosque:


The shadirvan, a fountain where ablutions were done in older times:


The main gate leading to the outside:


Another view of a minaret:


Looking at the mosque from the courtyard:


One of the exterior domes in the courtyard wall:


Looking through the gate:





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4 comments:

  1. Nylon127:38 AM

    Lots of stonework there TB, wonder where the marble came from? Nice perspective from those photos.

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    1. Toirdhealbheach Beucail10:19 AM

      Nylon12, I do not really know - nothing I read had any information on where the stone was quarried - although given other structures in these parts, I bet it was not terribly far away. If you recall, most of the marble for The Parthenon was quarried only about 20 miles away from Athens.

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  2. Leigh5:06 AM

    Again, absolutely amazing. Truly rivals the Renaissance architecture of Europe at that time.

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    Replies
    1. Toirdhealbheach Beucail10:40 AM

      Ottoman Architecture, as it turns out, is this whole category I had never thought of. The architect's master Sinan was quite famous in the Islamic world.

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