Contemporary Mosque Design in Anatolia

Built on the highest hill of old Istanbul, the Suleymaniye presents a bold response to Istanbul’s other great house of worship, the Hagia Sophia. The sixth-century Byzantine basilica had stood for a millenium with the largest dome in the world. After nine hundred years as the largest cathedral in Christendom, the Seville Cathedral finally displaced it. Less than a half-century later, the fall of the Byzantines and the capital Constantinople to the Ottomans marked its transformation into one of the greatest mosques in Islamdom and its dominance over Turkish mosque design.