Orient the prayer hall so that its principal wall, the qibla wall, stands square to the direction of Mecca, and mark the middle of that wall with a niche, the mihrab.
qibla wall ⟂ direction of the Kaaba; mihrab on the axis
Minarets mark rank
Give an ordinary mosque one minaret with one balcony; reserve several minarets, and several balconies (şerefe) on each, for the foundations of the sultan and his family.
The slender Ottoman minaret, polygonal or fluted, with its corbelled balconies and tall conical lead cap, is a marker of status as much as a place for the call to prayer. The Süleymaniye has four minarets carrying ten balconies in all, a number traditionally explained by Süleyman’s place as the tenth Ottoman sultan. At the Selimiye four minarets of about 70 metres stand at the corners of the prayer hall itself, framing the dome from every direction.
Related rules
Build the tower for the call to prayer in the form of the regional tradition: square and stepped in the Maghreb and Spain, cylindrical and tapering in Iran and Central Asia, needle-like and polygonal in the Ottoman lands.
Let the exterior show the structure: pile semidomes, exedrae, corner domes and weight towers round the central dome so that the masses rise in steps to the crown.
Found the mosque together with the institutions that serve it and its neighbourhood (colleges, a hospital, a public kitchen, a guest-house, a caravanserai, a bath, a school and the founder’s tomb), endowed as one charitable trust and grouped round the mosque’s outer court.
Divide the city into neighbourhoods (mahalle), each gathered round its own small mosque, whose imam answers for its people; keep the workshops and markets in the market quarter, apart from the houses.
Build the house with a masonry ground storey and timber-framed upper storeys, and jetty the upper rooms out over the street in bays (çıkma) on brackets, squaring them over the irregular plot and turning their many windows to light, air and view.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Minarets mark rank”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/pencil-minaret. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.