Blue Mosque

About

The Blue Mosque (also known as Gyoy Mosque or Huseyn Ali Khan Mosque) is an 18th-century Persian Shia mosque and the only functioning mosque in Armenia, built in 1766 (1179 AH) by order of Hussein Ali Khan, the Sardar (governor) of Yerevan under Persian rule, on the former site of the Def Sultan Mosque, which was destroyed in a 1679 earthquake. Once the largest of Yerevan's roughly ten mosques, it survived Soviet-era demolitions and served as the Yerevan History and Natural History Museum from 1937 to 1982 before being returned to religious use and restored with Iranian government funding in 1994–1998; today it is administered by the Embassy of Iran under a 99-year agreement signed in 2015. Visitors can see the rectangular complex (97.2 x 66.5 m) built around an inner courtyard (71 x 47 m) paved with tuff and centered on a stone fountain, the tall circular minaret (20 m) in the southwestern corner, prayer halls in the northern and southern wings, and the domes and minaret decorated with glazed blue, yellow, and green brick; the complex also houses a library, classrooms, and space for cultural events and exhibitions.