Yıldız Hamidiye Mosque occupies a special place among Istanbul’s nineteenth-century Ottoman mosques, not only because of its architecture but also because of its role in the political and ceremonial life of the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II. Built by the Sultan close to Yıldız Palace and opened for worship in the mid-1880s, it became one of the most visible buildings connecting the palace complex with the city.

The mosque differs markedly from the great classical Ottoman imperial mosques. Instead of a monumental composition expanding beneath a large central dome and semi-domes, it is smaller, rectangular in plan and closer in character to palace architecture. Tall windows, pointed arches, decorated façades and a single minaret reflect the eclecticism of the late Ottoman period. Neo-Gothic details are combined with Ottoman and Islamic motifs, making the building less an example of one pure style than an original synthesis of several architectural languages.

The interior is very different from the comparatively heavy appearance of the exterior. Woodwork, painted decoration, geometric and vegetal motifs and rich colour give the space something of the atmosphere of a palace hall. The blue decoration of the dome, evoking a starry sky, is particularly striking. The imperial loge is not merely an additional feature; it is central to the mosque’s direct relationship with the palace and the Sultan, making the building both a place of worship and a setting for imperial representation.

One of the mosque’s most important roles in late Ottoman history was as the setting for the Friday selamlık. Abdülhamid II travelled from Yıldız Palace to the mosque for Friday prayers in an elaborate ceremony attended by officials, military units, foreign representatives and invited guests. Because this was one of the few regular occasions on which the Sultan appeared publicly, the selamlık was both a religious and a political ritual. Once a week, the mosque and the space before it became a stage on which the Ottoman state made itself visible.

These ceremonies also placed the mosque at the centre of one of the dramatic events of Abdülhamid’s reign. On 21 July 1905, after the Friday selamlık, a bomb attack was carried out in front of the mosque. An explosive-laden carriage had been timed for the Sultan’s exit, but a brief delay as Abdülhamid left the mosque prevented the explosion from reaching him as planned. The Sultan survived, while many people were killed or injured. The event made Yıldız Hamidiye Mosque a witness not only to architectural history but also to the political tensions of the late Ottoman Empire.

Photographing the mosque without considering its surroundings would be incomplete. Yıldız Palace, its gardens, the roads descending toward Beşiktaş and the position of the mosque all help explain why it was built here. It is not an isolated religious building placed by chance in the city, but part of a carefully formed relationship between palace and city, Sultan and public, religious ceremony and state representation.

For me, the fascination of Yıldız Hamidiye Mosque lies in these two characters existing at once. Inside is an intimate place of worship shaped by colour, wood, ornament and light; outside is a historical stage that witnessed the Friday ceremonies of Abdülhamid’s long reign, imperial ritual and the assassination attempt of 1905. The building in my photographs is therefore not simply a beautiful nineteenth-century mosque, but an architectural witness to the final decades of the Ottoman Empire.