The Blue Mosque is a working mosque with the daily five calls to prayer that are read and broadcasted across the city from the 4 towers, minarets, around the main dome. In order to walk into this inner sanctuary, women must be dressed modestly and cover their heads; so for the tour, I covered myself head to toe and continued to enter after I took off my shoes. Overall, my first impressions were that it smelled like feet and the interior is not as blue as I had wished. But I was not entirely a critic, rather I was in awe of the ornamental plaster paintings and the structural feat it was to build such a dome. Four "elephant feet" act as concrete columns disguised at marble to hold up structure. Many variations of tulips as national flower are interwoven into the design such as in their rugs, the tiles on the walls, and the stained glass windows.
Next on the list that day was the Hagia Sophia, which was a Christian church that was transformed and plastered over with the Ottoman takeover as Islam became national religion. To mark the conversion and make a legally suitable mosque, the Ottomans took away all the images within the church, especially those of Christ, his disciples, and Mary. Islam's aversion to icons is grounded in the belief that images of God and his prophets is a type of false worship. An example of their efforts against this was their putting of medallions on angels heads so you could only see wings. At the front of the sanctuary, a gateway to heaven pointed east to mark what direction where the Muslims prayed. The other mark of the Islam conversion were these larger than life Arabic medallions on every corner of the elephant feet that held up the dome.
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