부산대학교 도서관

(Istanbul) When Ahmed I (reg 1603–17) ascended the throne, no imperial mosque had been built in the city for 44 years. The Sultan selected Mehmed Ağa as chief architect and picked a site of immense symbolic significance. Whereas imperial mosque-complexes had been situated on imposing hilltop sites and provided infrastructure for the growing population in resettled quarters of the city, Ahmed’s mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque) was placed in the heart of the city on a site containing the ruins of the Byzantine Great Palace and facing the Hippodrome to the west. It confronted at a distance of some 200 m to the north the most venerated and important mosque in the capital, the converted church of Hagia Sophia. With its six minarets and its semi-domes cascading on four axes, the mosque represents the ultimate evolution of the imperial Ottoman mosque after two centuries of linear development (...