NEW MOSQUE ( YENİ CAMİİ )

NEW MOSQUE

This is a mosque-based complex located at the most visible point of the Eminönü area, which was once a crucial center of shipping trade. Aside from the mosque, the complex includes elements such as a royal pavilion, a kindergarten, a school for Qur'anic studies and bazaar shops. This list of additional buildings was later expanded to include a timekeeper house, a library, tombs and more fountains. 

The first patron of the mosque settlement was Safiyyah Sultan, mother of Sultan Mehmed III. Her patronage made it a royal mosque. Although construction was underway, it was to take people much longer than they expected to see it finished. The same year the process started, the architect of the project, Davut Ağa, died of plague. The position of architect was then filled by Dalgıç Mehmet Ağa. Three years later, however, while construction was still going on, this time it was Sultan Mehmed III who died. This caused a change that would affect our mosque as well. Once her sultan son was dead, Safiyyah Sultan lost her position as a “sultan mother,” and this stripped her of the authority required to maintain the mosque complex construction. So the unfinished construction site remained untouched until the year 1660, when the “sultan mother” of that time, Hatice Turhan Sultan, decided to support it. This time, Meremetçi Mustafa Ağa became the third architect of the mosque site and managed to finish it in 1665. In the end, the construction of the New Mosque took a lot longer than most prominent mosques in Istanbul.

The New Mosque is not known for its sumptuous interior design, but the abundance of tiles, calligraphy and muqarnas inside is actually spectacular enough to rival even the Blue Mosque.

Today, the bazaar shops of the mosque complex are now part of the famous shopping area of Eminönü, and are no longer considered part of the mosque.