3-077-683 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Broussa, in Asia Minor, the ancient Turkish capital: Mosque of Oulou Djami, 1890. 'Broussa was founded two centuries before the Christian era, by Prusias, King of Bithynia, from whom it took its name, subsequently corrupted into "Broussa." It became a Roman or Graeco-Roman city, and fell into the hands of the Turcomans, after a ten-years siege, in the year 1327 A.D.: and here the first six Turkish Sultans have their tombs, which are visited with devout veneration by "the Faithful." In fact, Broussa is regarded almost as a Holy City; and the grandeur of its mosques equals, if it does not surpass, many of those in Constantinople. As specimens of the early Turkish architecture, Saracenic in their type, there is nothing in the East precisely like them, and the tiles which line the interior are of wonderful beauty and variety of colours. The largest mosque is the Oulou Djami, in the centre of the city...Its walls are lined with rare and beautiful tiles, and adorned with gilded inscriptions from the Koran. What would be termed the pulpit in a Christian church, from which the Ulema read passages of the Koran, is of oak, richly carved with arabesque devices'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.