The Suleymaniye Mosque

The Suleymaniye Mosque is an Ottoman mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. It is the second largest mosque in the city and was built on the order of Sultan Suleyman. It was constructed by the Ottoman architect named Mimar Sinan. It took seven years to build and the construction was from 1550 to 1557. The mosque itself is preceded by a monumental courtyard on the west side. The courtyard has columns that are made of marble, granite, and porphyry. Porphyry is a variety of rock consisting of large-grained crystals dispersed in a fine-grained mass. It has a purple-red appearance, which is valued. Purple was the color of royalty and the rock was prized for various monuments, such as the Suleymaniye Mosque columns.

The beauty of this mosque shows the wealth of these people in Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire. They must have spent a lot of their gold and cared about this temple with a great passion. They mostly made it mainly for the Muslims to gather. They also put a lot of effort in their architecture. The architects designed this temple with much care and precision. It shows how art influences their creativity. The quality of the stones and walls of the imperial temple were of the highest value in that time. Suleyman most likely had a lot of support from the people in the empire because a lot of people in the Ottoman Empire were Muslims. He would have had some problems and disagreements from the non-Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire. The non-Muslims who lived among the Ottoman Empire would have not have liked this temple because Suleyman the Magnificent, who is a Muslim, funded the makings of this temple with a major amount of the empire's gold. The other people living in the Empire probably would have wanted the use of the gold for their needs and purposed. Instead of using their wealth to make a large Mosque, they could have used it for trade for weapons and scientific study. If used for trade and other various things, they could have had the advantage on their enemies of war.