Prayer hall (harim)

The prayer hall, or harim in Turkish, is the main enclosed space of a mosque where the congregation lines up in rows for prayer. Everything in it is organised around the qibla: the qibla wall sets the main direction, the mihrab sits at the centre of that wall and the minbar stands to its right. Because the rows run parallel to the qibla wall, prayer halls are usually as wide as they are deep, or wider.

Plan and roofing types

The way the hall is roofed shapes both the structure of the mosque and the experience of the space. In Turkish architecture the main approaches can be summarised as follows:

• Multi-support hall: a flat timber ceiling or many small domes carried on columns and piers, dividing the space into bays.
• Single-dome hall: a square space covered by one dome and read as an undivided volume.
• Central-dome hall: a main dome extended by semi-domes and smaller domes, carried by large piers.
• Timber-roofed hall: a timber ceiling and roof resting on masonry walls.

The prayer hall in surveys and restoration

A survey of the prayer hall draws the plan on the qibla axis, with sections cut through the mihrab axis and perpendicular to it. Dome and arch profiles, painted decoration, timber galleries and floor levels are recorded together. Where the hall reads as a single volume, a laser-scan point cloud makes dome deformation and wall lean visible. Because the building usually stays in use for worship, a restoration project handles lighting, heating and acoustics so that the original character of the space is not disturbed.