Blue Mosque, Yerevan

The "Blue Mosque", also known as the "Gyok Jami" ( _hy. "Կապույտ Մզկիթ", "Kapuyt Mzkit" or "Գյոյ Մզկիթ", "Gyoy Mzkit"; Turkish: "Gök Camii", "Gyok Jami"; _fa. "مسجد کبود", "Masjed-i Kabud"), is a mosque in Yerevan, Armenia. It was built in 1766 during the reign of Hussein Ali, the khan of Erivan (and is therefore sometimes referred to as "the mosque of Hussein Ali"). It was the largest of eight functioning mosques in Yerevan when the city was captured by Russia in 1827. The complex consisted of a main prayer room, a library, a medresse with 28 cells, all organised around a courtyard, with the overall complex occupying 7,000 square metres of land. It originally had four 24-metre high minarets - however, three of them were later demolished.

Due to the secularist policies of the Soviet government, religious services at the Blue Mosque were stopped, and in 1931 the building was turned into the Museum of the City of Yerevan. [H. Hovhannessian, "The Museums of Yerevan", Yerevan, 1986, p19-21.]

In the second half of the 1990s, the mosque underwent a heavy and aesthetically damaging restoration funded by Iran [Brady Kiesling, "Rediscovering Armenia", 2nd edition, Yerevan, 2005, p37.] , and Islamic religious services have now resumed.

References

ee also

*Erivan khanate
*Persian Armenia
*Azeris in Armenia

External links

* [http://sketchup.google.es/3dwarehouse/details?mid=2cd7390fb4e212045918b51a266e53d4 3D model]