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The Blue Mosque is an 18th-century Shia mosque in Yerevan, Armenia. It was commissioned by Huseyn Ali Khan, the khan of Erivan. It is one of the oldest extant structures in central Yerevan and the most significant structure from the city's Iranian period. It was the largest of the eight mosques of Yerevan in the 19th century and is today the only active mosque in Armenia.
The mosque was secularized in the 1920s and housed the History Museum of Yerevan for more than five decades. Following Armenia's independence, the mosque was renovated with the support from the Iranian government and again started operating as a mosque, serving the Iranians residing in Yerevan.
Western visitors in the Russian period, such as H. F. B. Lynch and Luigi Villari, referred to the mosque as Gök Jami (Gok Djami, Turkish: Gök Cami), which translates from Turkish as "sky blue mosque". It is known as Կապույտ մզկիթ, Kapuyt mzkit’ "Blue Mosque" in Armenian, although Գյոյ մզկիթ, Gyoy mzkit՛ is sometimes used as well. It is known in Persian as Masjid-i Juma or Jami-i Shahr.
The mosque was built in 1765–1766 (AH 1179) by Hussein (Hoseyn) Ali Khan, the ruler of the Erivan Khanate under the Afsharid dynasty of Persia, as the city's main Friday mosque. The mosque underwent substantial redecoration with tiles around 1887-88 (AH 1305), under Russian administration. The mosque underwent another reconstruction in 1907–1910.
The mosque was the largest of the eight mosques operating in Yerevan when the Russians captured it in 1827.
H. F. B. Lynch, who visited Erivan in 1890s, wrote: "There is nothing very remarkable in the architecture of the mosque; but the floral paintings which adorn the ceiling of a companion and smaller edifice on the north side of the court are of very high merit." Luigi Villari, an Italian diplomat and historian, gave a detailed description of the mosque in his 1906 book titled Fire and Sword in the Caucasus. He wrote that the "great mosque called the Gok Djami [...] is a good deal more than a mosque; it is a long quadrangle containing several places of worship and a number of cells, schools, and offices of the Moslem religious administration. It is not very ancient [...] but it is handsome." The Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) described the mosque as the "finest building in the city." The minaret of the mosque, standing at 24 metres (79 ft) was the tallest structure in 19th century Yerevan.
The mosque was secularized after Soviet rule was established in Armenia. The mosque's entrances and exits were modified significantly. The main gate, on the southern side, to the right of the minaret was blocked. The western gate was "incorporated into a residence complex and became hardly recognizable as an entrance." The entrance on the northern side became the only entrance. It is accessible and visible from Mashtots Avenue. Beginning with Alexander Tamanian's 1924 master plan for Yerevan, the mosque has been situated more than two meters below the street level, which requires visitors to descend a flight of steps.
The Blue Mosque is the only active mosque in Armenia, which has a small Muslim population (between 812 and 1,000 or 0.03% of the total population).
Since restoration, it has become a religious and cultural center for the Iranians residing in Armenia and Iranian tourists visiting Armenia. In 2003 the journalist Thomas de Waal noted that the only regular worshippers at the mosque were "the dozen or so diplomats from the Iranian Embassy." Less than a decade later, in 2009, ArmeniaNow wrote that of the up to 2,000 Iranians residing in Yerevan as many as 500 periodically attend the mosque on Thursdays. The Iranian cultural center inside the mosque complex attracts young Armenians seeking to learn Persian. The Persian library of over 8,000 items, named after the poet Hafez, was opened inside the complex in October 2014.
On December 10, 2015 the government of Armenia leased the mosque complex to the embassy of Iran to Armenia for 99 years to use it as a cultural center
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