Mosque
4/5
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About this ebook
“Gorgeously illustrated . . . Macaulay is renowned for spectacular children’s books with an architectural flavor . . . Mosque is a superbly illustrated and technically engrossing explanation of how a great Turkish mosque complex would be built in about 1600 . . . Frankly, I had no idea that I was interested in how mosques were put together, but I found the subject fascinating. And I learned how to make a brick and build a dome, and also a good deal about the economics of the Ottoman Empire and the role of the mosque in society. Macaulay’s mosque is fictional, but loosely based on those built around Istanbul (then Constantinople) in the late 16th century by Sinan, a great architect of the Ottoman Empire.” —The New York Times
David Macaulay
David Macaulay is an award-winning author and illustrator whose books have sold millions of copies in the United States alone, and his work has been translated into a dozen languages. Macaulay has garnered numerous awards including the Caldecott Medal and Honor Awards, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Christopher Award, an American Institute of Architects Medal, and the Washington Post–Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award. In 2006, he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, given “to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.” Superb design, magnificent illustrations, and clearly presented information distinguish all of his books. David Macaulay lives with his family in Vermont.
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Reviews for Mosque
40 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5David Macaulay's Mosque tells the story of a fictionalized mosque being constructed during the latter part of the Ottoman Empire. The book shines because it is not strictly dry historical information taken from encyclopedias or academic books; Macaulay manages to engage his young readers by providing the details of the mosque-building project and the people who were involved with its construction.Macaulay's intricate illustrations definitely draw the reader in because of their complexity. There are large illustrations that depict the construction site from a bird's eye view. Macaulay uses these high-angle shots to show his readers that building a mosque was not comprised of building only one structure. Besides the mosque itself, the building plan included a turbe (a tomb), a medrese (a school), an imaret (a soup kitchen), a hamam (a public bath), and a cesme (a public fountain). in addition to these larger illustrations, there are small drawings of a process, such as making a brick out of sand and clay. These varied illustrations illuminate the story that Macaulay so clearly describes in the text of this book.This would be a great book to give to readers interested in construction or buildings. Macaulay has written a number of books describing architectural edifices, so if this book prompted a response, there are many more like it.
Book preview
Mosque - David Macaulay
Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Frontispiece
Introduction
Mosque
Glossary
About the Author
Copyright © 2003 by David Macaulay
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Macaulay, David.
Mosque / David Macaulay.
p. cm.
1. Mosques—Design and construction. I. Title.
NA4670.M33 2003
726'.2—dc21 2003000177
RNF ISBN-13 978-0-618-24034-9
PA ISBN-13 978-0-547-01547-7
eISBN 978-0-547-34829-2
v4.0816
For my children and their children’s children
Preface
The building complex in this story is fictional, as are its patron and architect. The individual structures, however, are modeled directly on existing examples built between 1540 and 1580 in and around Istanbul, Turkey, by Sinan, the most famous architect of the Ottoman Empire.
In piecing together the various construction details I was introduced to a number of books on a subject I quickly realized I knew very little about. I was convinced, however, that the time had come to find out where these extraordinary buildings came from, who built them, why, and of course how. Those looking for more information on Sinan, mosques, or Ottoman architecture should treat themselves to books either written or edited by Dogan Kuban, Aptulla Kuran, Godfrey Goodwin, Hans G. Egli, the family Uluengin, Martin Frishman and Hasan-Uddin Khan, John Freely, Marcus Hattstein and Peter Delius, Rowland J. Mainstone, and Reha Gunay.
For their personal contributions to this journey, I would particularly like to thank the filmmaker Suha Arin, Professors Suphi Saatchi, architect M.Sc., Gulsun Tanyeli, and Ilknur Kolay at the Istanbul Technical University, architects Bulent and Mehmet Bengu Uluengin, Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan, and my guide and connection to almost all those listed above, fixer and friend Akif Ergulec. Closer to home, my thanks to our neighbor Kathryn Swanson who was always willing to put down her trowel or hat boxes for an on-demand objective comment. And last but not least, here in the trenches with me, thanks to my long suffering wife, Ruthie, who managed to maintain her critical eye long after mine was of dubious reliability. Without her steady support this book would still be on the drawing board.
It seems to me that the best examples of religious architecture are among humankind’s proudest accomplishments. When working in the service of some higher entity, we humans seem capable of surpassing our reach and perhaps even our expectations. Motivated by faith, but guided ultimately by common sense, these builders created constructions that reveal a level of ingenuity, ambition, and craftsmanship rarely found in secular architecture. The greatest achievement of these buildings, however, as well as the ultimate indication of their success, lies in their ability to impress