Jonathan Bloom as not yet successful compared to later examples. The mosque has a total of four minarets, arranged around the four corners of the courtyard. Its southwestern minaret was the tallest Ottoman minaret built up to that time and features three balconies, from which the mosque's name derives. The mosque was heavily damaged by an earthquake in 1752 and partly reconstructed. The overall form of the Üç Şerefeli Mosque, with its central-dome prayer hall, arcaded court with fountain, minarets, and tall entrance portals, foreshadowed the features of later Ottoman mosque architecture. It has been described as a "crossroads of Ottoman architecture", marking the culmination of architectural experimentation with different spatial arrangements during the period of the Beyliks and the early Ottomans. Kuban describes it as the "last stage in Early Ottoman architecture", while the central dome plan and the "modular" character of its design signaled the direction of future Ottoman architecture in Istanbul. Scholars have tried to suggest various possible sources of influence and inspiration for this design. Blair and Bloom suggest that it is a grander-scale version of the Saruhanid congregational mosque or Ulu Cami (1367) in Manisa, a city with which Murad II was familiar. Godfrey Goodwin suggests that all the elements needed for the design of the Üç Şerefeli Mosque were already present in the existing mosques of western Anatolia, such as the Ulu Cami of Manisa and the Isa Bey Mosque of Selçuk, but that they had simply not been united together in a single design. Kuban suggests that the mosque's spatial design evolved from the importance of the domed space commonly found in front of the mihrab in early Islamic architecture, as well as from the influence of earlier single-domed Ottoman mosques. Kuban also notes that the mosque, which is built in cut stone and makes use of alternating bands of coloured stone for some of its decorative effects, marks the decline of the use of alternating brick and stone construction seen in earlier Ottoman buildings. Gallery See also Islamic architecture List of mosques Ottoman architecture References Sources External links Üç Serefeli Camii, Archnet Photographs taken by Dick Osseman 15th-century mosques Ottoman architecture in Edirne Mosque buildings with domes Mosques in Edirne Ottoman mosques in Edirne Tourist attractions in Edirne Mosques completed in 1447