Category Archives: Istanbul

The dome of the Blue Mosque.

The Blue Mosque has an amazing history.

It was built in just 7 short years, from 1609 to 1616 during the reign of Ahmed 1.

It has a tomb for the founder, a madrasa and a hospice inside it.

It is both a major tourist attraction and a working mosque, therefore it is closed to visitors at least 3 times a day because of daily prayers.

As you’ve seen, women must cover their heads, their shoulders and down past their ankles.

Men must cover their knees.

It seems unfair but that is the way it is.

Much of Malaysia, when we visited there, had the same rules in the mosques.

It is made up of over 20,000 handmade tiles, which you can see in many of the pictures I’ve posted here.

There is also over 200 stained glass windows.

It is truly a sight to behold and to have seen the Hagia Sofia, the Basilica Cistern, and the Blue Mosque, all in one day, was almost too much.

Next time we go, we will take more time and really take in each place more carefully.

Hopefully we will be living in Turkey, or Greece, in the next few years and will be able to go more often, and therefore, not have to just be tourist, but an actual resident that can relax and go when it isn’t as busy.

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The prayer area of the Blue Mosque.

Even though Jill doesn’t like having to cover, we both loved the Blue Mosque.

For your information, mosque are called “Camii” in Turkish.

This would seem to be easily pronounced as “Cami” like a girl’s name, but it isn’t.

The letter “C” is actually pronounced as a “J” in Turkish.

So, “Camii” is actually pronounced “Jamii” or in English as “Jammy.”

This isn’t that hard once you figure it out.

The weird part is the pronnouncation of Jill’s name.

People in Turkey are totally confused by it.

Since “C” is pronounced as a “J” there is no letter “J” in Turkish.

Therefore, everywhere we were booked in a hotel or for our tours, people were quite confused and couldn’t pronounce it on the first try.

I actually enjoyed this because “Aram” is an Armenian name, and a name also used in some Arabic countries, so people almost always pronounced my name with ease.

It was a very nice culture shock that I had forgotten from my last time in Turkey, about 10 years ago, and enjoyed greatly.

By the way, there is another “Ç” in Turkish, with a little hook underneath it, that is pronounced “Ch.”

There is a city in Turkey, called Çanakkale and our tour guide says they are constantly confused because tourists ask to go to “Canakkale” and not “CHanakkale” and they don’t understand where they want to go until they realize the tourist doesn’t understand that the word should be pronounced with the “Ch” sound.

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