Monday, September 21, 2009

Suleymaniye Mosque

The Suleymaniye Mosque was built under Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire. The mosque, a gigantic building, was built as a display of Suleyman's power. It was built from 1550-1557, which is actually a relatively short building time for that time period. When it was built, its dome was higher than that of any other mosque in the Ottoman Empire.
The Suleymaniye Mosque affected Ottoman civilization in many ways, having influence on every aspect of SPECS from social to scientific. It is social because in a way mosques are a place for social gatherings, and the religious interactions between people can be considered social. Also, the building of a mosque could have affected the relationships between Suleiman and his subjects, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
This is also political, because the Muslim community would probably give Suleiman more political support because his support of Islam showed them he agreed with their personal views, but the non-Muslim community would probably feel less welcome because of the expense being made for Muslim monuments.
The amount of money that must have been spent would factor into this as the economic aspect. Going deeper, this could affect economics more because of all the other things the money could have been spent on, especially since it must have been a fairly large sum for such an extravagant building. You can see from the pictures below how complex the building itself and the decorations inside are, and from that have a grasp of how much it must have cost.
It is fairly obvious how this relates to culture. The building itself, being a religious building, is cultural architecture, and because of its nature could be considered cultural art.
And last but not least, the scientific aspect. Although at first it may seem that no science would go into the simple construction of a building, the ability to make sturdy buildings that last hundreds of years really is a science. As you can see in the pictures below, especially the topmost one, the mosque had a very large dome, which takes a lot of technology and engineering to build properly and safely. And while the technique of building domes may have already been around for a very long time, the actual construction still required much careful planning. The Suleymaniye Mosque is a great example of a place where all of the aspects of SPECS come together.



I used Wikipedia as a source for background information.

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