Prior to the conquest of Constantinople in 1445, two mosques were built by the Turks at Brusa in Asia Minor. The plan of Ulu Jami, the great mosque, follows the original courtyard type. Yeshil Jami, the Green mosque (1430), built on the site of a Byzantine church, is cruciform on plan. In both of them the Persian influence is shown, in the magnificent towers with which they are covered, the marble casing and the stalactite vaults.

Fig. 61.—Pendentive, from the Court of the Lions, Alhambra.

After the conquest of Constantinople, the supreme beauty of St Sophia, and the adaptability of its plan to the requirements of the Mahommedan faith, caused it to be accepted as the model on which all the new mosques were based. The first two erected were the Bayezid (1497-1515) and the Selim mosques (1520-1526). In the former the dome and its pendentives are carried on octagonal piers, and the dome, 108 ft. in diameter, is greater than in any subsequent example. The finest mosque, and the example in which we find the complete development of the Turkish style, is that erected by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1550-1555. This mosque, designed by Sinan, an Armenian architect, is still quite perfect. The plan follows very closely its model, St Sophia, and consists of a central dome, 86 ft. in diameter and 156 ft. high, carried on pendentives, resting on great arches which are slightly pointed, with great apses on the east and west sides, and three smaller apses in each, the arches of which ate all circular. The principal change in design is that found in the north and south walls, under the arches carrying the dome; in St Sophia they were subdivided into two storeys with galleries overlooking the church, but in the Suleimanic mosque the galleries are set back in the outer aisles, and the screen walls consist of a wide central and two side pointed arches, and voussoirs alternately of black and white marble. The tympana above this is pierced with eighteen windows filled with geometric tracery. Stalactite work is employed in the pendentive of the smaller apses and in the capitals of the columns carrying the pointed arches. The columns are of porphyry, the shafts, 28 ft. high, being taken from the Hippodrome and probably brought originally from Egypt. The walls are cased with marble up to the springing of the dome, but the magnificent mosaics of St Sophia are here replaced by vulgar colouring and plaster decoration of a rococo style, due probably to recent restorations. The mosque is preceded by a forecourt, surrounded by an arcade on all sides and containing a fountain, and in the garden in the rear is the tomb of the founder and his wife.

The Shah-Zadeh mosque, known as the prince’s mosque, was also built by Sultan Suleiman, from the designs of Sinan, the same Armenian architect who built the Suleimanic mosque. Here, instead of confining the great apses to the east and west sides, they are introduced on the north and south sides in place of the screen, and produce a monotonous and poor effect. The same design is found in the Ahmedin mosque, built 1608, and with the same result. Externally, however, they are both fine, owing to the variety of domes, semi-domes and other curved forms of roof.

The minarets of the Turkish mosques are very inferior to those of Cairo. They are of great height, generally semicircular, with narrow balconies round the upper part, and crowned with extinguisher roofs. To a certain extent, however, they contrast very well with the domes and semi-domes of St Sophia and those of the mosques built by the Turks.

In the mosque of Osman, built 1748-1757, we find the first trace of Western influence in its rococo design, but here, as in the mosque of Mehemet Ali in Cairo, built in 1837, the scheme is so good that, notwithstanding the great falling off in design, and, in the latter mosque, the construction, the effect of the interior is very fine.

Amongst other architectural features, the fountains in the courtyards of the mosques and those which decorate the public squares are extremely pleasing in design. The latter are square on plan with polygonal angles elaborate niches with stalactite heads, with overhanging eaves on each side; the ornament is very varied and the colour sometimes very attractive. The roofs have sometimes most picturesque outlines.

(R. P. S.)

Modern Architecture

The beginning of the 19th century may be considered to mark the beginning of the modern era in architecture. The 19th century is the period par excellence of architectural “revivals.” The great Renaissance movement in Italy already described was something more than a mere revival. It was a new spirit affecting the whole of art and literature and life, not an architectural movement only; and as far as architecture is concerned it was not a mere imitative revival. The great Italian architects of the Renaissance, as well as Wren, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor in England, however they drew their inspiration from antique models, were for the most part original architects; they put the ancient materials to new uses of their own. The tendency of the 19th-century revivals, on the other hand, except in France, was distinctly imitative in a sense in which the architecture of the great Renaissance period was not. Correctness of imitation, in the English Gothic revival especially, was an avowed object; and conformity to precedent became, in fact, except with one or two individual architects, almost the admitted test of excellence.