According to the Byzantine conception following the Roman traditions, the cities were designed and planned according to a plan in horizontal and they were arranged with arterial roads and squares. In contrast, the Ottoman conception of architecture, begin the design and planning of the city with the profile of the landscape in order to emphasize the vertical aspect and elements with the development of the most important and representative buildings in the Ottoman Empire such as the mosques, the madrasas, the baths (hamams), the caravanserais, the kulliyes, the bazaars…etc. With Mimar Sinan, one of the most important architects of the Ottoman Empire, this concept further developed to a point that the mosque became …show more content…
Kulliye is an important part of the Ottoman cities, it is a social and religious public place that is composed of individual buildings with different functions, all together these buildings forms the Kulliye complex. So kulliye is a religious and civic space that serves to public in many different ways.
The Ottoman Mosques:
The Ottoman mosques play a central role in the religious, cultural and political life of the society. It was given the central location in the kulliye, emphasizing the mosque’s centrality in the order of the Muslim space.
The Ottoman mosque evolved from the traditional hypostyle plan that was used widely in the Muslim world. Early mosques had rectangular structures with flat roofs raised by arcades and joined by courtyard with a fountain. The Madrasas were very similar to the ones in the Selcukian period and organized in iwans with vaulted roofs and courtyards. Later the horizontal plan was changed to vertical structure rising to the sky, which started with the use of the domed roof, sometimes arranged in a number of small domes rising progressively like steps towards the main dome of the central aisle