File:Istanbul Ayazma Mosque view from SE 0641.jpg

English: One of pictures of the exterior of the mosque. It has one lone minaret. At its other side there is a royal pavilion, where the sultan could reside waiting for or after the service. It is a construction that was increasingly built in that period. Another element one can see on more mosques, but rarely in this quantity and size, are bird nests on the walls of the mosque (I saw at least one on a gate too). The mosque was built on the spot where earlier stood an Ayazma Palace. I was informed that an ayazma was a well of “holy water” (so considered by Orthodox Greeks) and was shown a building across a road from the mosque’s main entrance, where a window opened to the interior of that ayazma. I could not take a picture of that interior. In the back of the mosques there are lots of graves, two are of former Janissaries (a sultan had put an end to their power, killing many and destroying their graves, but two grave monuments were reinstalled). They show a headgear typical of the Janissaries as one sees them now in the Military Museum during the Mehter performance.