The Blue Mosque was built in 1609-1616. One of the most important features of the Mosque is one you cannot see. It was built entirely by donations. A lot of Churches and Mosques have been built through blood money or slavery, but this one had none of that. Sultan Ahmet wanted to build something new across from the Hagia Sophia that would not distract from it's granduer but it would be large enough to serve it's purpose as a mosque. When it was built with 6 minarets it was considered sacreligious because only the mosque in Mecca had 6 minarets. So to fix this, the Sultan sent the architect Mehmet Aga to the mosque in Mecca to errect a seventh minaret. Later, Mehmet Aga continued east and worked on the Taj Mahal.
(I didn't take many pictures of the inside of the Blue Mosque because it is very nicely copied by the Sabancī Camii in Adana. So you can search my blog for the Sabancī to see more photos. It was just too dark and too crowed in the Blue Mosque to get decent photos.)
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