The Significance and Representation of the Nuruosmaniye Mosque as a Baroque Monument

Abstract

The Baroque style of architectural building, which had prevailed in much of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, emerged for the first time in the mid-eighteenth century in Istanbul. It was the Nuruosmaniye mosque in its Baroque tendencies that broke away from the traditional Anatolian and distinctive classical Sinan style of building. As Cerasi puts it, "It is no rough quotation or mere imitation of foreign styles, but a clever transposition of a foreign vocabulary into a perfectly dominated indigenous poesis." (Cerasi 1988: 98) This genius in reversing the roles and borrowing this foreign language of Baroque and applying it on a monument from Ottoman Turkey in a synthesis of two worlds is at the core of the Nuruosmaniye, which is considered one of the best representations of Baroque spirit in the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, what adds to this mystery is the little information regarding the architect and the direct origins that influenced the building of this mosque. This paper addresses the events that led to the building of the Nuruosmaniye and the penetration of Baroque influence into Turkey. While the character of the Nuruosmaniye retains a certain originality amongst the mosques of its time, true recognition of the Nuruosmaniye seems to have been suspended. With the exception of a few historians, the likes of Dogan Kuban and Aptullah Kuran, one may postulate that the Nuruosmaniye has been poorly represented in current historiography on Ottoman art—especially in contrast with previous Ottoman monuments, namely those of the Sinan period. While presenting a rich and rare evaluation of the Nuruosmaniye, this paper attempts to counterbalance the Nuruosmaniye's absence from literature dealing with Ottoman art history.