Lauren Booth – Visit to Suleymaniye Mosque – Islamic Heritage Series
AI: Summary ©
The history of Islamic society and culture is discussed, including the famous cycle of the Message of God, the Magnificent Lawgiver, and the famous cycle of the Message of God. The architecture of a mosque in Istanbul is highlighted, along with the importance of religion and the need for people to be mindful of their surroundings. The significance of the Mahdi or God of Light, and its influence on society and culture, is also discussed. The legacy of events like the events in Istanbul involving the construction of a mosque and the rebuilding of water channels is also highlighted, along with the importance of religion and mindful behavior in the region.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum, peace to you, I pray
this finds you well and blessed.
Welcome back to my series on Islamic heritage,
kicking off here in Istanbul yet again, subhanAllah,
because we have a leader today that we're
going to be finding out about and just
reading about him makes you realize that he
embodied all of the areas of a great
Islamic leader, the biggest of these being Adala,
yes justice.
He reigned over a golden era of the
Ottoman Caliphate, his name given to him by
the way by the enemies of Islam, Suleyman
the Magnificent.
It's really interesting that this period of Islamic
history was ruled over by a man named
after King Suleyman or Solomon in the Holy
Quran and of course Solomon was known for
what?
For justice.
This 46 year period of Islamic history is
seen as the longest period of perfection of
justice, subhanAllah.
Wow, just wow.
So when the leaders and the Popes built
Hagia Sophia, they commissioned it, it was said
that they boasted that they'd outdone King Solomon
from the Bible because Hagia Sophia was so
magnificent and so when Suleyman the Magnificent or
the lawgiver, as he was known to the
people who lived under him, commissioned buildings like
this which had courts and bars and gardens
and places to eat for the poor, he
said that in doing these projects he had
restored the honor of Suleyman.
The trees around here, hear that?
They're filled with weird birds like parrots and
parakeets and that's because the Ottomans had a
tradition of selling birds for cages, yes.
They also had a tradition where pious people
would come to the markets and they would
buy the birds and then just let them
go into the trees.
So one of the things you'll notice about
Istanbul is strange squawks and screeches from tropical
areas, that's why.
You know what's amazing is that Allah Ta
'ala in his wisdom brought together a man
of vision and a man of action, a
man of practicality and a man of ideas.
We've got Suleyman the Magnificent, the lawgiver, with
all of that power and wealth and the
ideas for expanding the law of Allah across
the world and you've got at the same
time Mimar Sinan, this incredible architect known for
perfecting insurmountable, right, unimaginable, insurmountable engineering
ideas, problems that nobody else could have done.
No computer, writing it down, thinking about it,
testing the air, divine intervention, divine ideas, inspiration
coming to this man.
So I always wonder how on earth did
they get those huge domes up, right?
You know there's been TV programs where they
try to replicate it, building bridges like the
Romans did and they can never do it,
but there was a technique and you see
that lovely little dome archway over there, okay,
so it's got the central dome and a
couple of smaller ones coming off it.
It's kind of a bit like a miniature
of the main mosque.
Well that's exactly what Mimar Sinan did.
He built this first to test his mathematical
ideas and that is Iqqan, that is the
ideal from Islam of doing things to the
highest standard and we should all be aiming
at that, that idea, the ihsan, the perfection
of whatever we do.
You see that writing above the main entrance,
focus now on the writing.
I know it's all amazing, we'll come back
to that, right, but that writing on the
red background.
I just want you to think about how
we're meant to be people of intention and
inspiration as Muslims because this, this right here,
this is a charter for success.
This is a charter for stating your goals,
right?
We're all goal setting.
Listen to this.
Sultan Suleyman has drawn near to God, the
Lord of majesty and omnipotence, the creator of
the world of dominion and sovereignty.
Sultan Suleyman, who is his slave, made mighty
with divine power, the caliph resplendent with divine
glory, who performs the command of the hidden
book and executes its decrees in all regions
of the inhabited quarter, conqueror of the lands
of the orient and the occident, with the
help of almighty God and his victorious army,
possessor of the kingdoms of the world, shadow
of God over all peoples, sultan of the
sultans of the Arabs and the Persians, promulgator
of sultanic canons, tenth of the Ottoman khans,
sultan, son of the sultan, Sultan Suleyman Khan,
may the line of his sultanate endure until
the end of the line of the ages.
You know, I get asked a lot, why
are so many European people, Americans too, Australians,
flocking to Istanbul to live here?
And as an artist myself, a writer and
an actor brought up in an artistic environment,
I can tell you with absolute certainty that
it is the beauty that lies on every
corner.
It is the arts, it's the calligraphy, it's
the paintings, it's the structures, and these had
their roots in the reign of Suleyman the
Magnificent, the lawgiver.
Because, subhanAllah, you talk about a vision for
society that isn't materialistic, right?
It's artistic, it's spiritual at its root.
He founded special organizations for the arts.
They started off with 40, you might call
them guilds, where people could specialize in calligraphy,
in creativity there, in poetry, in architecture, and
50, 60 years later on there were 2
,000 organizations which really are alive today in
the structures that we see in Istanbul.
Allahu Akbar, we have to nurture the arts,
we have to look after the arts, it's
the soul of a society.
The first time I came in here I
cried.
This is to me the most spiritual mosque
in Istanbul that I've been to, and I
see non-Muslims coming here day out from
Poland, from Italy, from Russia, and there is
a moment, you know, it's almost like you
want to catch them when they fall.
There is so much peace and beauty in
here that, I don't know, it's just wow.
A couple of really wonderful facts about the
building here which you're seeing.
It's quite simplistic actually, it's not brassy or
flashy, and it has the kind of windows
that they used to have in churches, so
that stained glass was pulled across, but more
than 3,000 craftsmen of the highest degree
worked on this which is considered the most
magnificent yet simplistic mosque in the whole of
Istanbul, and if you come here you mustn't
miss out on it.
This breeze is lovely, you know, they really
knew, the designer really knew about where to
place things, where the windows come, where the
air comes through, it's amazing.
While the Europeans
called him the magnificent, the Ottomans called him
Kanuni, or the lawgiver.
Suleyman was acknowledged as such for having freed
thousands of Persian and Egyptian slaves, giving justice
to those who were wronged by his predecessors,
ending discrimination against Jews and Christians until there
was a flux of migration into the empire.
He punished corruption and lawbreakers as well as
codifying the Ottoman Kanun within the Islamic Sharia,
and this would serve the Ottoman Empire for
longer than 300 years.
So Sultan Suleyman was a warrior who pushed
back the impositions of European warlords into the
territories of the Muslims, but he was also
a poet.
He wrote in Turkish, Persian and Arabic, the
people think of wealth and power as the
greatest fate, but in this world a is
the best state.
What men call sovereignty is a worldly strife
and constant war.
Worship of God is the highest throne and
happiest of all estates.
Sultan Suleyman and his beloved wife Hurrem were
interested in all the people in the different
realms of the Ottoman Empire, and especially it
seems one area in particular had their heart,
Jerusalem.
She, from her own endowment, her own money,
built a mosque in the old city of
Jerusalem, and around it she made sure that
there was a 55 room lodge for pilgrims
to Al-Aqsa, Mashallah, and there was a
granary for milling grain so that the people
had bread, and even kitchens and stables and
so much more.
And she wasn't on her own, her husband
requested and made sure that the dome of
the rock was completely refurbished, and he took
care of the city walls as well, subhanallah.
He took his whole role actually as guardian
of the three major mosques of Islam very
seriously, and in Mecca during his lifetime all
of the minarets were completely redone and the
seventh was added to the main mosque, subhanallah,
and inside the mosques of Mecca and Medina
candles were donated so people could pray in
the night, and even musk and even oud
was donated for the beautification and the smells
of those wonderful areas of prayer, subhanallah.
But you know what I really love?
I really love the fact that he built
kitchens for the poor in both Mecca and
Medina, and who did he donate that rizq
to, that barakah?
His beloved wife.
In other words, he said, oh Allah, all
of the mouths that are fed from the
kitchens in Mecca and Medina from the pilgrims
and the poor, please put them on my
wife's account on Yom Kippur.
Now that is what you call a Muslim
husband.
It is a testimony to Sultan Suleiman's fatherhood
and philanthropic legacy that his daughter Mehrumah Sultana
followed in his footsteps.
She found out that the water channels of
Mecca had disintegrated.
These channels were originally endowed by Harun al
-Rashid's wife Zubaydah.
Mehrumah went to her father with all of
her precious jewels in her hand to ask
for Mimar Sinan to be sent on an
urgent mission to restore the waters of Mecca.
Although the architect had only just finished laying
the foundations for the Sulaymaniyah mosque, he mysteriously
disappeared.
It was presumed that he had abandoned the
project.
It was only discovered much later that the
water channels, which ran in the name to
this day of Ayn Zubaydah, were secretly restored
by none other than Mehrumah Sultana.
Right, that's it for today.
I hope you've enjoyed following me to learn
all about the legacy of Suleiman, the magnificent
back then and now.
And I'm reading all your comments, so keep
them coming.
They're really boosting me along to make more
in this series.
And if you're enjoying it, don't forget to
subscribe to the channel.
As-salamu alaykum.