br Acknowledgement br Introduction The expansion of

Acknowledgement
Introduction The expansion of territories by the Ottoman Empire resulted in the development of the Ottoman architecture. The Ottomans constructed several public buildings and edifices in various sizes and forms because of the growing needs of the changing Ottoman JSH-23 (i.e., from an immigrant tribe to an empire). The annexation of new lands to territories that were ruled by the Ottomans enabled Ottoman architects to promote and enhance their construction techniques by working with architects from newly acquired regions. This practice satisfied the increasing demands of a flourishing community. According to the Ottoman regulation, settlers should be accommodated in newly occupied regions. With regard to building architecture, this regulation influenced the construction of several new mosques because the Ottomans practiced Islam. The size and form of the mosques were influenced by a number of factors, such as the Muslim population in a region. The increase in Muslim population required the construction of Jami Mosques, which are known as Cami in the Turkish language. Believers congregate in these mosques every Friday (Crane, 1993; Pasic, 2004). A thriving economy can also be another factor in the construction of large mosques because an increase in wealth increases the status of a town. The Ottomans were also conscious of the ability of architecture to immortalize power and wealth. They constructed public buildings with luxurious architectures because mosques had always been an important component of such buildings. The luxurious interiors of these buildings are shown by fenestrations spreading over the façades and shaft of the dome. These fenestrations reflect the grandeur exterior of the building, attract the attention of passersby, and kindle the virtuosity of esthetes. This construction method can be attributed to the Ottomans (Saoud, 2004). The Ottomans gradually disseminated this architectural tenet during their territorial expansion from Asia Minor to Europe, where Ottoman prints could be easily seen, particularly in the Balkans (Flon et al., 1984; Pasic, 2004; Saoud, 2004). Pendentive dome construction was applied in designing mosques in this region. A pendentive dome refers to the construction of a “dome above a dome,” that is, a dome that seems to be “hanging in the air” over four giant arched supports. The uniqueness of this type of dome construction enables the creation of a large multivolume space in the mosque interior (Mango, 1976; Figure 1). Nonetheless, the core traditions indicated by the Quran and the Sunnah are intact. To understand the mosque as a building type, formal analysis of the mosque as a constituent of physical/symbolic architectural elements or as an object of events and social process is insufficient. Given the theoretical and methodological tools of space syntax, analysis should focus on the genotype of mosques, that is, configurational regularities that show spatial categories and social practices (Aazam, 2005, 2007). This analysis compares six categories and samples of pendentive dome mosque layouts. Each mosque category was established during different periods and evolved from previous categories (Kuran, 1968; Unsal, 1973; Mango, 1976; Flon et al., 1984; Bernardini, 1987; Marshall and Rossman, 1999; Goodwin, 1993; 2003; Pasic and Siravo, 2004; Guba and Lincoln, 2005; Gulru, 2005; Omer, 2008). These categories are presented as follows.
Space syntax and mosque layouts Space syntax is a theory of space and contains a set of analytical, quantitative, and descriptive tools that can be used to analyze the spatial formations of building layouts, cities, and landscapes (Hillier and Hanson, 1988; Hillier, 2007). Space syntax reveals the relationship between human beings and their inhabited spaces. The distinctive characteristics of societies exist within spatial systems and are conveyed through space and the organization of spaces (Osman and Suliman, 1993; Dursun and Saglamer, 2003). Space syntax refers to this relational characteristic of space as a configuration; this characteristic forms human behavior and contains social knowledge (Aazam, 2007; Dursun, 2007).