Namazgah as an anomalous architectural typology: Historicizing open-air prayer and interiority in Ottoman İstanbul

Namazgahs – open-air prayer spaces widespread across Ottoman cities and travel routes – occupy an ambiguous position within architectural history. Despite extensive documentation and typological classification, they have largely remained peripheral to architectural theory, often treated as residual religious installations or inert heritage objects. This article argues that such marginalization stems not from architectural deficiency, but from the namazgah’s resistance to dominant assumptions equating architecture with physical containment, interiority with volume, and sacred space with monumentality. Studying fifty-five namazgah sites from sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul, the physical remains of which are still locatable within the contemporary city, the author reframes the namazgah as a flexible spatial framework rather than a discrete building type. Drawing on critical historiography and semantic analysis as well as a close examination of architectural constituents, typological constellations, and historical functions, the study demonstrates that namazgahs operate through relational assemblages and bodily practices that produce coherent spatialities without enclosure. Historically, they functioned not only as places of prayer but also as wayfinding devices, rest stops, gathering grounds, and sociocultural nodes embedded within landscapes of movement. By tracing the progressive reduction of these functions in modern contexts, the article shows how namazgahs have been transformed into symbolically sacred yet spatially inactive remnants. In response, it proposes the namazgah as a critical lens for rethinking an architectural interiority that is generated through orientation, relationality, and spatial inscription. In doing so, the study contributes to debates on architectural typology, sacred space, and design practices at the limits of enclosure.