Sultan Ahmed Mosque

Interesting facts

The tile orders swallowed the entire İznik industry, and in 1613 the sultan banned making or selling tiles for anyone else until his were finished.

The interior holds 21,043 tiles in more than fifty designs; the finest line the upper gallery's north wall, out of reach of most visitors.

The mosque stands on the seating stands and imperial box of the Byzantine Hippodrome, and ancient seats turned up in its courtyard during early 20th-century digs.

Islamic scholars objected that an imperial mosque should be paid for with spoils of war, and they even forbade the faithful to pray in it.

Some 260 windows light the interior, and part of their coloured glass was a gift from the Republic of Venice after a request from Ahmed in 1610.

According to folklore, the architect misheard the sultan's wish for golden minarets, altın, as six minarets, altı; historians treat the story as apocryphal.

Old chandeliers were hung with ostrich eggs, popularly said in Istanbul to keep spiders away.

The inlaid wooden doors of the courtyard entrance were made by the father of the 17th-century travel writer Evliya Çelebi.

Ahmed I lies in a tomb beside the mosque together with his wife Kösem Sultan and his sons, the sultans Osman II and Murad IV.

In 2006 Pope Benedict XVI visited the mosque, only the second papal visit in history to a Muslim place of worship.

Why it is worth it

Sultan Ahmed I commissioned this at just 19 years old, and it was built between 1609 and 1616 — a low point in Ottoman fortunes, coming right after an unfavorable peace ended a long war with Persia. An imperial mosque of this scale was, among other things, a calculated show of confidence: proof the empire hadn't actually faltered. Ahmed died the year after it was finished, at 27.

Its architect, Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, had spent twenty years as a mother-of-pearl craftsman before training under the great Mimar Sinan and turning to building design. His mosque became the first in the world raised with six minarets — a number that, until then, had been reserved for the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. The perceived overreach caused enough controversy that the Ottomans are said to have funded a seventh minaret for Mecca's mosque to restore its precedence, though historians still dispute exactly when that seventh minaret was actually added.

Inside, more than 20,000 handmade İznik ceramic tiles in dozens of blue patterns cover the upper walls and domes — the reason the whole world calls it the Blue Mosque, even though every official document, then and now, simply calls it the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. Architecturally, it borrows its cascading domes and half-domes directly from the Hagia Sophia across the square, fused with the taller, more vertical proportions Sinan had perfected a generation earlier.

Good to know

It remains an active place of worship: the prayer hall closes to visitors briefly five times a day for prayers, and modest dress (covered shoulders and legs, headscarves for women) is required inside.

Getting there

Located in Eminönü. Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW) is about 30 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque, is an Ottoman-era historical imperial mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. It was constructed between 1609 and 1617 during the rule of Ahmed I. It attracts a large number of tourists and is one of the most iconic and popular monuments of Ottoman architecture.

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