Nusretiye Mosque with Historical Location and Architecture

Abstract

The aim of this article is to comment on Nusretiye Mosque's -which is in Istanbul's Tophane district- historical location, its place in important innovations of its era and its structural changes which have been taken place since its first construction; through the terms of our art, architecture and cultural history. The construction of the mosque, located in Beyoglu's Tophane district, outside the borders of historical Istanbul, started in June of 1823 and was completed by the April 8 1826. The mosque is a selâtin (imperial) creation in which we can see features of both baroque and imperial style. In addition to this another feature that makes the building different is, because of its historical location there is a lot of political commentary regarding the building. The name of Nusret (victory) is one of the important events of the period and will be referred as Vaka-i Hayriye in future and it is believed that the name was given as a reference for abolition of janisary corpses by Sultan Mahmoud II. However this view leads us to ignore all other possibilities. We believe that it would be more useful to approach the matter from another point of view that is by taking into account of main meaning of the word "Nusret" which means "victory" in the written publications of art history.