ISTANBUL, Turkey-
When a 17th-century Ottoman sultan ordered architect Mehmet Aga to build a mosque to rival a majestic former Byzantine church, the result was an imposing structure of cascading domes and an interior decorated with elaborate blue tiles.
Pope Benedict XVI made a brief stop at Istanbul’s famed Blue Mosque on Thursday, a conciliatory gesture toward Muslims. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, visited a mosque in Syria in 2001.
The Blue Mosque, officially the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, stands opposite the 1,500-year-old Haghia Sophia, which was the main Byzantine church in Constantinople–present-day Istanbul–before being turned into a mosque after the Muslim conquest of the city in 1453. It is now a museum.
The mosque gets its unofficial name from the blue floral tiles from Iznik in northwestern Turkey that line its walls.
Ahmet I, who ruled between 1603 and 1617, had the Blue Mosque constructed to show that Muslim architects could rival the Byzantine glories of the Haghia Sophia.
Construction was completed in 1616, a year before Ahmet I died at age 27. Successive sultans performed Friday prayers there.
Today, the mosque is a major tourist site and a prominent landmark in Istanbul’s ancient district. Tourists enter from a different door than worshippers to preserve the sanctity of the mosque.
