Tag: Mosques

  • Istanbul Camlica Mosque by Tuncer Cakmakli Architects

    Istanbul Camlica Mosque by Tuncer Cakmakli Architects

    Istanbul Camlica Mosque by Tuncer Cakmakli Architects

    PostDateIcon November 27th, 2012 | PostAuthorIcon Author: admin

    Camlica Mosque Tuncer Cakmakli

    Project: Istanbul Camlica Mosque

    Designed by Tuncer Cakmakli Architects

    Location: Istanbul, Turkey

    Website: www.cakmakli.com

    thumbs istanbul mosque tuncer cakmakli 02One of the shortlisted proposals for Istanbul Camlica Mosque competition is coming from Tuncer Cakmakli Architects, narrowed down from 62 considered projects. The jury has singled out 20 projects, placing two in the lead, the building is created as a major new landmark for the city of Istanbul. With capacity for up to 30,000 people, it will besides it’s religious function also come as a tourist hotspot accommodating a variety of hospitality openings as well as an educational center and a massive surrounding park.

    Discover more of the project after the jump:

    Camlica Mosque Tuncer CakmakliCamlica Mosque Tuncer CakmakliCamlica Mosque Tuncer CakmakliCamlica Mosque Tuncer CakmakliCamlica Mosque Tuncer Cakmakli

    About the Project:

    Istanbul Camlica Mosque has been located in the heart of nature and in a Garden of Eden on top of the most visual hill of Istanbul as a structure with the function of not only a prayer space but also as an area where Muslims gather, pray and receive education along with the function of public kitchen. Walls surrounding the mosque become solid in the mihrab wall and transform into a Garden of Eden around the courtyard wall.

    Spaces acting as social complexes in ‘Kulliye’ structure in Ottoman period existing in many structural masses have been integrated into the Istanbul Camlica Mosque as one structural mass. The mosque, with transparent courtyard walls decorated with roses, jasmines and other flowers with many different colours on the inner and outer surfaces will provide the ambience and sensation of a Garden of Eden. Two minarets located on the sides of the mosque in Qibla direction will act as shafts aspirating fresh air and provide natural ventilation for the prayer room. Minarets will allow the prayer room to breathe with this new function.

    Source WorldArchitectureNews. *

    via Istanbul Camlica Mosque by Tuncer Cakmakli Architects.

  • Turkey: Istanbul Mosque Debate about Democracy or Islam?

    Turkey: Istanbul Mosque Debate about Democracy or Islam?

    In Turkey, it is not just the cost and questionable necessity of massive government development projects that are giving citizens pause. It is also what critics charge is the undemocratic way the city of Istanbul is being transformed without local input.

    Among the ambitious projects initiated by Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), the building of a massive mosque in Istanbul with the world’s highest minarets, and the construction of another mosque and creation of a pedestrian area in the city’s central Taksim Square stand out. The roughly 50,000- square-meter mosque atop Istanbul’s Çamlıca Hill, one of the metropolis’ few undeveloped spaces, will be visible from around the city of 13.5 million. The Taksim Square project will eventually involve building a large mosque in Istanbul’s entertainment district, and then redirecting traffic underneath the square through underground tunnels.

    Civil society activists in Istanbul aren’t necessarily opposed to the projects, but some are critical of what they say is the central government’s top-down approach, featuring close to no competition for public tenders, little transparency and few opportunities for public input.

    “The government thinks that they have all the authority, which they surely have on political issues, but then they expand this into technical issues,” said Oğuz Öztuzcu, president of the Istanbul Independent Architects’ Association. “This is the key problem today.”

    It is a problem that is infused with particular emotional energy, given its connection to one of the most pressing questions in Turkish society today – where to redraw the line separating mosque and state.

    Critics of the Islamist-rooted AKP’s development projects disagree about whether the debate over Islam is really relevant to the Istanbul mosque debate. Cengiz Aktar, a political science professor at Istanbul’s Galatasaray University, asserts that the question is not about the role of Islam in Turkey, but of democracy. “Turkey is an Islamic country already. It is not a matter of becoming [more] Islamic,” Aktar said.

    Some believe that Turkey’s powerful Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a devout Muslim, ordered the construction of the Çamlıca mosque as a monument to his own legacy, as well as to “his party and Islam.” Plans to build it with public funds have furthered such accusations.

    In announcing the Çamlıca project this May, Erdoğan did not delve into justifications, but described the initiative as a heritage revival that would also include workshops for traditional artisans and the reconstruction of madrasas, or Islamic learning centers.

    “There is no consultation with stakeholders, users, or dwellers in the town,” complained Öztuzcu. “[The projects were] invented by a few individuals.”

    Despite the eyebrow-raising complexity of these publicly funded projects, no official cost estimates exist for the Çamlıca mosque, the Taksim mosque or the Taksim Square pedestrian area. While all three projects will involve the destruction of relatively rare green areas, no public discussions to address related concerns have been held.

    While few Turks may be “rejoicing” over the projects, noted Aktar, “people are dealing with their own daily struggle to survive,” and are not strongly inclined to protest over issues such as these.

    For the planned mosque in Taksim, officials claim that people in the surrounding area need more space in which to pray – an assertion fueled by the perceived Islamic revival in the country. Istanbul, according to government estimates, contains 3,028 mosques.

    A court ruling this summer overrode attempts to stop the Taksim-Square mosque’s construction.

    Requests by EurasiaNet.org for comment about the projects from the Istanbul municipality were not returned. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, which oversees urban development projects, was unable to comment, and had not heard of Hacı Mehmet Güner, the Çamlıca mosque’s architect.

    For the governing AKP, now a decade in power, state spending on large-scale projects could have important economic ramifications. The construction sector comprised about 10 percent of the economy in 2011, according to TurkStat, the government statistics agency. Last year, Turkey’s economy grew by a stellar 8.5 percent, with the construction sector expanding by about 11 percent. Faced with a projected slow-down in economic growth, the government has a strong incentive not to rock the boat at this point.

    Editor’s note:

    Justin Vela is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

    via Turkey: Istanbul Mosque Debate about Democracy or Islam? | EurasiaNet.org.

  • Kocatepe Mosque Picture — National Geographic Photo of the Day

    Kocatepe Mosque, Turkey

    Photograph by Andrew Abrahamson

    This Month in Photo of the Day: 2012 National Geographic Photo Contest Images

    Kocatepe Mosque, one of the largest in the world (holding up to 24,000 worshippers), is a modern building completed in 1987. I had been given permission to wander around and take photos during the service, although I only got up to the top balcony after it had finished and most people had gone.

    (This photo and caption were submitted to the 2012 National Geographic Photo Contest.)

    via Kocatepe Mosque Picture — Turkey Wallpaper — National Geographic Photo of the Day.

  • Turkey’s Towering Ambition

    Turkey’s Towering Ambition

    Hugh Eakin

     

    A woodcut of the Süleymaniye mosque in Istanbul by Melchior Lorichs, 1570

    In March 1548, having brought the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power, Suleiman the Magnificent decided to build a mosque in Istanbul. “At that time,” an anonymous chronicler explains,

    His Highness the world-ruling sultan realized the impermanence of the base world and the necessity to leave behind a monument so as to be commemorated till the end of time….Following the devout path of former sultans, he ordered the construction of a matchless mosque complex for his own noble self.

    In late May of this year, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—Turkey’s powerful prime minister, a devout Muslim, and the self-styled leader of the new Middle East—announced that he would be erecting his own grand mosque above the Bosphorus. It will be more prominent than Suleiman’s. The chosen site—the Büyük Çamlıca Tepesi, or Big Çamlıca Hill, overlooking the city’s Asian shore—is 268 meters above sea level; it is easily the most conspicuous point of land in greater metropolitan Istanbul. (A favorite look-out spot, it is here that the protagonist in Namik Kemal’s late Ottoman novel Awakening (1876) begins a tragic love affair with a woman of loose morals.)

    “We will build an even larger dome than our ancestors made,” an architect involved in the project, Hacı Mehmet Güner, boasted to the Turkish daily Milliyet in early July. Güner added that the mosque would be built in a “classical style” and have six minarets—more than any in Istanbul save for the Blue Mosque (Suleiman’s mosque, the Süleymaniye, has four). He also said that their height would exceed that of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, whose tallest minarets are 344 feet.

    Among Turkey’s secular elite, these plans have met with a mixture of incredulity and derision. Suleiman’s mosque complex was built by Sinan, the greatest Ottoman architect; Güner was a little known municipal public works official. One architecture professor likened the envisioned vast prayer hall to an “Olympic stadium.” Nor has Erdoğan’s previous record of mosque building helped his case. In July, with debate over the Çamlıca project in full swing, the prime minister announced the completion of another Ottoman-style mosque on Istanbul’s Asian shore by calling it a selatin mosque—using the word for religious institutions built at the behest of a sultan. “Has Erdoğan Just Declared His Sultanate?,” one Turkish newspaper editor asked.

    AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan campaigning in front of a mosque in Istanbul, June 11, 2011

    Nonetheless, walking the streets of Istanbul this summer, I found it difficult to miss the intended symbolism. Erdoğan, who comes from the city’s rough Kasımpaşa neighborhood and has not conquered any foreign countries, is hardly a Suleiman. But after a decade in power in which he has presided over a record economic boom and a dramatic resurgence of Turkey in international affairs, he is widely acknowledged as the most powerful politician since Kemal Atatürk, the country’s modern founder. At the same time, he has gone further than any of his predecessors in moving away from the stridently anti-religious state that Atatürk created in the 1920s.

    Soon after proclaiming the new republic in 1923, Atatürk’s government abolished the caliphate and closed the madrasas, turning Turkey overnight into the most secular nation in the Muslim world. But earlier this year, Erdoğan declared he wanted the country to have a “religious youth,” and, since March, when parliament passed a controversial bill to expand Islamic education, more than sixty new religious schools have opened in Istanbul. When you enter the courtyard of one of the city’s historic mosques, you are increasingly likely to run into groups of young boys or girls (they are separated by gender) sitting at little desks, receiving instruction in the Quran.

    Headscarves, once rare in the fashionable European districts that Orhan Pamuk writes about in The Museum of Innocence, have become common, including in high-end, designer versions. All over the city, Ottoman religious complexes are being restored at great expense (among them a beautiful Sinan madrasa, built around an octagonal courtyard, which construction workers proudly showed off to me). One Turkish political analyst complained that the call to prayer, broadcast everywhere on outdoor speakers, is far louder than it used to be. And the Ramadan fast, once better known locally for being honored in the breach, was embraced this summer with newfound rigor. Under pressure from the religious establishment, a local rock music festival that was staged a few days before the beginning of the Muslim holiday decided to ban alcohol, despite having been sponsored by Turkey’s largest beer company.

    This is not the first time that Turkey’s deeply secular state has seemed to move in a more religious direction. As far back as 1967, a close replica of another sixteenth-century Sinan mosque was built in Ankara; a more daring, modernist design by Vedat Dalokay was rejected. Turgut Özal, who was prime minister in the late 1980s and is credited with beginning the economic opening to the world that has matured under Erdoğan, was a devout Muslim who went on the Hajj while in office. And Erdoğan’s own AKP party is a direct heir to the since-banned Islamist party of Necmettin Erbakan, who briefly served as Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister in the 1990s (leading to a military coup in 1997).

    But what makes the recent changes particularly dramatic is that the Turks themselves seem to be generally embracing them: headgear has become a point of pride for many Anatolian businesswomen, and the recent alcohol bans appear to have been imposed as much by local communities—by some far more than others—as by higher authorities. Indeed, Erdoğan, now in his third term of office, has a huge base of popular support. And while the AKP has not quite gained the supermajority in parliament the prime minister has sought, it has had sufficient dominance to transform significant parts of the Turkish political system.

    In successive steps that have continued in recent days, the prime minister has skillfully taken control of the once-dominant—and fiercely secular—Turkish military; dozens of top generals and admirals have been thrown in jail for alleged coup plots, including one that supposedly involved bombing mosques in Istanbul. Meanwhile, his conservative Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or AKP) has been pushing through far-reaching reforms of the judiciary and the education system, some suggest, to favor its own agenda. (Erdoğan’s rapid transformation of the courts from a bastion of Turkey’s military-secular elite into a key part of his own campaign against the military can only be the envy of Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, whose judiciary remains loyal to its own politically powerful armed forces.) More radically, AKP leaders are now drafting a new constitution that, if adopted, could turn Turkey’s parliamentary system into a strong presidential republic—just in time for Erdoğan’s planned move in 2014 to the presidency, where he could spend another decade running the country.

    Certainly, the most controversial aspects of Erdoğan’s leadership have little to do with religion. Human rights activists are far more concerned by what they describe as his increasingly authoritarian style of leadership and his use of the police and judiciary to suppress critics. In July, the government announced it was eliminating the much-criticized special court system that has been used to prosecute “conspiracy” cases and “terrorism-related” crimes. But dozens of journalists, students, and scholars are already in jail, many of them for writing about the Kurdish PKK, or criticizing the government’s ties to the powerful Gulen religious movement. Abolishing these courts has struck critics as largely cosmetic; other courts may end up with the same sweeping powers. In a recent interview with Christiane Amanpour, Erdoğan disputed the number of jailed journalists, claiming that “there are 80 people who are in prison right now. Only nine of them have yellow press identification cards.” But he also said, “insult is one thing; criticism is another thing. I will never put up with an insult.”

    At the same time, the Turkish government has gone from a dull but reliable NATO ally to an assertive leader of the new Middle East. Before last year’s uprisings, Turkey made much of its “zero problems” strategy with all neighboring powers—a policy that included promoting economic ties with Assad’s Syria and Ahmadinejad’s Iran, and, before the flotilla raid, working relations with Israel. Now, Ankara has renewed ties with Hamas while aggressively supporting the Sunni-led Syrian uprising and giving refuge to fugitive Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni leader who was sentenced to death in Iraq last week on charges of orchestrating sectarian killings. With Sunni-led governments in charge through much of the Middle East and Turkish economic growth driven increasingly by trade relations with the Gulf, Erdoğan seems to have found it convenient to bring Turkey closer to the old lands of the Caliphate, regardless of the diplomatic consequences.

    All this, too, can be seen on the streets of Istanbul. Amid the attractions of the Old City, the usual summer influx of European tourists was leavened this year by groups of visitors from the Arabian peninsula, often with the women in full black niqab. In fact, there has been a staggering 71 percent increase in Arab visitors to Turkey in the first six months of 2012, a figure that is even higher for some nations like the UAE and Qatar. I asked several Turkish friends about it and was told that Arabs have supplanted Israelis, who before the flotilla incident used to visit Turkey in large numbers. Part of the appeal—along with Halal food, Turkish soap operas, and ample new shopping centers—seems to be that the country is now led by a popular Muslim leader with strong pro-Arab credentials. A new Turkish law has also made it easier for foreign nationals to invest in real estate, a move that seems to be particularly aimed at Arab investors.

    One longtime Istanbul resident, citing the government’s interest in malls and infrastructure projects that can “rival Mecca,” suggested that the new pro-Arab policies have been accompanied by Persian Gulf-style urban development. Large as it is, she observed, the planned Çamlıca mosque complex—which is apparently to be funded by pro-AKP businessmen—is far from Erdoğan’s most ambitious building project. In recent months, he has renewed his campaign promise to dig a second Bosphorus, a thirty-mile shipping channel to the Black Sea—an undertaking so enormous that, he claims, it would surpass the Suez and Panama canals. And the government’s announcement this spring that it plans to fill in a 2.8 square mile section of the Sea of Marmara along the Istanbul shore—apparently to create a public assembly space for up to 800,000 people—has been compared by one writer to “wanting to straighten the Seine or turn the Colosseum into a football stadium.”

    Vedat Dalokay

    Vedat Dalokay’s experimental 1957 design for the Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara, later rejected in favor of a replica of a Sinan mosque in Istanbul

    But far more than the scale or apparent religious content of such mega-projects, what has rankled Turkish critics most is how they will look. In late July, perhaps embarrassed by the Çamlıca controversy, the Islamic association overseeing the mosque project took out advertisements in Turkish newspapers announcing an architectural design competition for the complex. But the hasty competition seemed to foreclose the possibility that something exciting or unusual might arise from it: entries were limited to Turkish architects and not much more than a month was allotted for designs to be submitted—all of which had to conform to the enormous proportions of the building specified. (The winning design was supposed to be announced earlier this month, but the decision has been postponed.)

    The larger irony is that in calling for a huge new mosque in the tradition of Sinan, Erdoğan may be missing the more fundamental lesson of the Ottoman architect’s work. As Bruno Taut, the German architect who emigrated to Turkey to flee the Nazis, argued, Sinan was himself a proto-modernist whose ability to create extraordinary beauty from novel engineering had more in common with twentieth-century German functionalism than earlier Islamic architecture. Rather than imitating his predecessors’ designs, he continuously sought out new and more subtle ways to surpass them. Sinan aimed to be more elegant than his Byzantine and Ottoman forebears; Erdoğan, it seems, just wants to be taller.

  • Postcard from Istanbul: Prayer and silence at Eyup Sultan Mosque

    Postcard from Istanbul: Prayer and silence at Eyup Sultan Mosque

    Photographed by Heba Helmy

    istan

    It was Friday prayer time. The resonant, melodious sound of azan, the call to prayer, overwhelmed the vast marble plaza surrounding Eyup Sultan Mosque and Tomb in Istanbul with instant silence. Nothing was heard but the footsteps of people hurrying to offer their prayers, merged with the chirps of birds from a huge plane tree in the courtyard.

    Built in 1458, it was the first mosque established by the Ottoman Turks after putting hands on Constantinople. The real attraction, however, is the burial site for the later sultan, known also as Abu Ayoub al-Ansari, a close companion of the Prophet Mohamed, after whom the mosque is named — Eyup is the Turkish version of Ayoub.

    The cozy working-class neighborhood, which holds the same name of the mosque, is a magnet for tourists and locals alike. Both come to enjoy a laid-back day in the handful of restaurants scattered across from a fountain and the mosque’s differently sized domes and pencil-shaped minarets. Specialized authentic food and Turkish coffee, served in tiny, inlaid copper or porcelain cups, add to the traditional Turkish atmosphere, scented with bukhoor (scented natural woodchips).

    Entering the great gate of the mosque, a huge Ottoman-style chandelier hanging down from the ceiling was the first thing to grab my attention. However, this is not the only thing inside created for the eye’s pleasure. There are verses of Quran inscribed in golden, handmade Arabic calligraphy on the walls that perfectly match the color of the elaborate carvings on the minbar, the Islamic pulpit, and the mihrab, the prayer niche.

    On the other side lies the tomb and a short biography written on a marble plate, recounting that Ayoub hosted the Prophet at his home in Medina during the first months of the hijra, or migration, as well as the glorious battles of Islam he joined.

    Behind the historical site, little souvenir shops occupy the uphill road that eventually leads to a long line of colorful cable cars. On my ride to the top of the hill, I passed a wide array of tall trees that shade dozens of white marble Islamic tombs facing the turquoise waters of the Bosphorus, the narrow strait that separates Asia and Europe.

    This piece was originally published in Egypt Independent’s weekly print edition.

    via Postcard from Istanbul: Prayer and silence at Eyup Sultan Mosque | Egypt Independent.

  • Finding Religion Through Istanbul’s Mosques

    Finding Religion Through Istanbul’s Mosques

    “There are 4,000 mosques in [Istanbul], some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.”

    20120727205603092This quote from Liam Neeson, an Irish actor who made a movie in Istanbul, was in some tabloids earlier this year, leaving some to assume that he had converted to Islam.

    Whether or not Neeson will actually follow up on his words, he was definitely right about one thing: the mosques in Istanbul are breathtaking.

    Metropolitan Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, is home to more than 3,000 mosques, with 600 of them legacies of the Ottoman Empire. Most of these Ottoman mosques are strikingly beautiful. When stopping to pray in some of them, you cannot help but notice the beauty and enormity.

    One of the most famous Ottoman Empire mosques is the Sultanahmet Mosque, or Blue Mosque, situated in the heart of Istanbul’s old city. It is one of the most remarkable and striking mosques in the Islamic world. The construction alone took seven years, and Sultan Ahmet I commissioned it in 1601 when he was only 19 years old.

    The architect misinterpreted the instructions to build altin (gold) minarets with alti (six) minarets. In the end, Sultanahmet Mosque stands grandly with six slender minarets. It has a huge dome that stands 43 meters high and a series of smaller domes that cascade down to each level. The mosque was built to show the glory of Islam and to rival Ayasofya Mosque, which is located a short walk away.

    The 53-by-51-square-meter interior of Sultanahmet Mosque was designed to present the greatness of God, so anybody praying inside would sense its vastness.

    The ceiling is lined with 20,000 tiles of the 16th century Iznik design, with 50 different designs of tulip, Turkey’s official flower. It is from these turquoise tiles that the mosque got the name Blue Mosque.

    Because Islam prohibits figurative art, the interior feature Koranic verses, flowers, trees and geometric shapes. A huge eye-catching chandelier hangs beneath the central dome. The area below is restricted for the countless visitors that come to the mosque every day. The interior is lit by 260 windows that bathe the space in light.

    In Ottoman times, the mosque was an integral part of public life. The mosque complex included a Koran school, caravanserai (lodging for travelers), a hospital, a primary school, a market, several shops and a kitchen that provided soup for the poor. In the 19th century, however, those buildings were all torn down.

    While entrance to the Blue Mosque is free, to visit Ayasofya, or Hagia Sophia, a former Orthodox basilica and mosque that is now a museum, you will likely have to brave a long line to buy a ticket. Taking an official tour might be a good idea because it allows you to skip the line to get into one of Istanbul’s can’t-miss destinations.

    The museum is striking with its massive central dome and four minarets. It is a jewel of Byzantine architecture, featuring impressive works of art and tracing the historical journey of Ayasofya and the changing powers in Istanbul.

    Inside, the building is 70 meters by 75 meters of layered white marble. The central dome is 31 meters in diameter and soars 55 meters high. It has massive vaults supported by huge columns of green and white marble at both levels. Mosaics — figurative decorations and circular frame disks inscribing the names of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad — decorate the vault. The second level is a gallery with an empty library and mosaics on the wall.

    Ayasofya, Turkish for “holy wisdom,” was initially an Orthodox patriarchal basilica built by Constantine the Great during the Byzantine Empire in the fourth century. The original building was at one point destroyed by fire.

    Theodosius II rebuilt the church and that too was destroyed. Emperor Justinian I rebuilt the church for the third time in the 6th century with an entirely different basilica. The construction used Hellenistic columns from the Artemis Temple in Ephesus and black stone from the Bosporus region in Turkey, large stones from Egypt, green marble from Thessaly, Greece, and yellow stone from Syria. More than 10,000 people were involved in the construction.

    Justinian’s basilica was the first masterpiece of Byzantine architecture and later influenced Greek and Roman churches, as well as Muslim mosques.

    For more than 900 years, the church was the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople and became the largest cathedral in the world. Ayasofya remained a functioning church until 1453 when Sultan Mehmet II of the Ottoman Empire conquered Byzantine.

    Fascinated by the beauty of Ayasofya, the sultan immediately converted it into his imperial mosque. Initially, no major changes were made, though the church mosaics that depicted figurative images were covered in plaster. The sultan added a mihrab (prayer niche), mimbar (pulpit) and a wooden minaret.

    Sultan Mahmud I later restored the mosque and added an ablution fountain, a Koran school, a soup kitchen and a library. Sultan Abdulmecid also made extensive restorations between 1847 and 1849, reworking the decorations and adding disks with the names of Allah, Prophet Muhammad, the four caliphs and the grandsons of the prophet.

    For almost 500 years, Ayasofya was Istanbul’s principal mosque and a model for other Ottoman mosques in Istanbul, such as Sultanahmet, Suleiman, Sehzade and Rustam Pasha.

    via Finding Religion Through Istanbul’s Mosques | The Jakarta Globe.