Blue Mosque, Yerevan
Encyclopedia
The "Blue Mosque" was built by Iran, and is also known as the "Persian Mosque," "Gök Jami", . The mosque is in Yerevan
Yerevan
Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...

, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

. The Yerevan region was under various Muslim rulers since the incursions of Timur
Timur
Timur , historically known as Tamerlane in English , was a 14th-century conqueror of West, South and Central Asia, and the founder of the Timurid dynasty in Central Asia, and great-great-grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty, which survived as the Mughal Empire in India until...

 in the 14th century. Since the second third of the 18th century, when it had been taken from the Ottomans, it had been a province of Iran (ruled successively by Nadir Shah, Karim Khan Zand and the dynasty from the Qajar tribe) before it fell to Russia in 1827.

History

For the mosque building, various dates from the mid-18th century are cited in literature. According to a tradition reported by the 19th-century traveller H.F.B. Lynch
H. F. B. Lynch
Henry Finnis Blosse Lynch, MA, FRGS was a traveller, businessman, and British Liberal Member of Parliament.-Biography:...

 it was erected during the period of the Iranian ruler Nadir Shah (1736–47) by the local gouvernor Husayn Ali Khan. George Bournoutian
George Bournoutian
George A. Bournoutian is a Senior Professor of History at Iona College. He is the author of numerous books on Armenian history and has taught Armenian history at Columbia University, Tufts University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Connecticut, Ramapo College, and...

 names Husayn Ali Khan as the patron of the building, but places his reign in the years 1762-83. According to Vladimir M. Arutyunyan et al. construction started in 1760 and was completed under Husayn Ali Khan in 1764-68.

The building was the main congregational mosque for the city. When Yerevan was captured by Russia in 1827 it was, according to the cataster drawn up by the Russians, the largest of its eight functioning mosques. The building consisted of the main prayer hall, a library, and a madrasa with 28 cells, all organised around a courtyard, with the overall complex occupying 7,000 square metres of land. There is a single minaret at the main portal, in keeping with contemporaneous mosques, and there is no evidence that there were more minarets.

Due to the secularist policies of the Soviet government
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, religious services at the Blue Mosque were stopped and in 1931 the building was turned into the Museum of the city of Yerevan. In the latter half of the 1990s the mosque underwent a heavy restoration, funded by Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, that has been criticised for being aesthetically damaging. Islamic religious services have now resumed within the Blue Mosque, which is the only mosque operating in Yerevan. The Museum of the City of Yerevan is now housed in a purpose-built building on another site.

External links

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