It is not difficult to name the monuments of architecture that made Istanbul famous all over the world: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the Top Kapi Sultan's Palace. But the mosque has a special history, and, by the way, a different official name: Ahmediye. It was built for political reasons by the young ruler Ahmed I, and it was named after him. At the beginning of the 17th century, Turkey's position in the political arena was rather shaken. To emphasize the imperial scope, the ruler of the Sublime Porte decided to start a grandiose construction of the temple.
Where the palace of the Byzantine emperors once stood, a new metropolitan shrine, the Blue Mosque, was to appear. Istanbul of that time already had one of the greatest temples - Hagia Sophia, the Christian Cathedral of Hagia Sophia of Constantinople converted in the Muslim manner. However, the ambitious young sultan decided to build the temple of God initially according to all the canons of Islam. The skilled architect Sedefkar Mehmed-Aga was appointed to supervise the construction.
The architect faced a difficult task: after all, the Blue Mosque was supposed to rise directly opposite Hagia Sophia, not to compete with it, but not to complement it. The master came out of the situation with dignity. Twotemple subtly create a single architectural ensemble due to the fact that the domes of Ahmediya form the same cascade as in Hagia Sophia. Just as subtly and unobtrusively, the architect inherits the Byzantine style, skillfully diluting it with the Ottoman one, only slightly deviating from the classical Islamic canons. To prevent the interior of the huge building from looking gloomy and dark, the architect solved the lighting problem by planning 260 windows, glass for which was ordered in Venice.
Since Sultan Ahmed ordered something special to glorify Allah, the Blue Mosque was decorated not with four minarets - at the corners of a square fence, but with six. This led to a slight embarrassment in the Muslim world: before that, only one temple had five minarets - the main mosque in Mecca. Therefore, the mullahs saw in the six extensions to the temple a manifestation of the Sultan's pride and even an attempt to humiliate the significance of Mecca, sacred to all Muslims. Ahmed I hushed up the scandal by sponsoring the construction of additional minarets to the shrine in Mecca. Thus, there were seven of them, and the subordination was not violated.
The Blue Mosque has another unusual feature: a prayer niche was carved from a single piece of marble. Since the temple was built as a sultan's, a separate entrance was provided for the ruler. He arrived here on horseback, but a chain was stretched before entering the gate, and in order to pass, the Sultan, willy-nilly, had to bend down. This demonstrated the insignificance of a person, even clothed with supreme power, in front ofthe face of Allah. The temple was surrounded by numerous outbuildings: a madrasah (a secondary school and a seminary), a caravanserai, a hospital for the poor, and a kitchen. In the middle of the courtyard there is a fountain for ritual ablutions.
The Blue Mosque is called so because of the large number of blue tiles that decorate the interior of the temple. The young sultan, who began construction in 1609, when he was only 18 years old, could only rejoice at the finished work of his hands for only a year: the construction was completed in 1616, and in 1617, 26-year-old Ahmed died of typhus. His mausoleum is located under the walls of the "Ahmediya", which the people stubbornly call the Blue Mosque.
