Taha Toros Arşivi, Dosya No: 171-Mimar SinanTaha Toros Arşivi, Dosya No: 171-Mimar Sinan

İstanbul Kalkınma Ajansı (TR10/14/YEN/0033) İstanbul Development Agency (TR10/14/YEN/0033

Edmonds, Anna G.

Istanbul Sehir University Repository

Suppose you had the opportunity to reshape the skyline of one of the capitals of the world — what spec­
tacle would you create? Tall office build­
ings? Mammoth indoor sports arenas? 
Large areas of parks? A memorial of 
everything your age stands for?
This year the sultan who ordered 
the changes in Istanbul over four cen­
turies ago is being remembered in the 
“Age of Süleyman the Magnificent Ex­
hibit” (curator: Dr. Esin Atıl) in the Unit­
ed States. Over two hundred art trea­
sures are on display there: the jewels 
and rugs and calligraphy and gold of 
royalty. The exhibit is at the National 
Gallery of Art in Washington DC (Jan, 
25-May 17). It will go to the Art Institute 
of Chicago (June 13-Sept. 6) and to the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New 
York (Oct 4- Jan 17, 1988). In the 
spring of 1988 it will be at the British 
Museum in London; then it will go to 
Japan and France.
But we who are in İstanbul are for­
tunate to have some of the grandest 
examples of the artistry of his reign 
right here. They are part of the distin­
guishing features of this city.
Can you think back to what the 
skyline of İstanbul might have looked 
like when Sultan Süleyman began his 
reign in 1520? St. Sophia was here, and 
St. Irene close by; the Mosques of 
Bayezit and the old Fatih, then trees and 
houses and a few domes of smaller 
mosques and former churches. How 
undistinguished this outline would seem 
to us now. But to have had the imagina­
tion (and the wealth and the mandate) 
to envision the buildings that would 
give this city its character — what a 
challenge!
We today are not the first ones to be 
struck by the attractive synthesis of the 
contours of Istanbul. In the eighteenth 
century Lady Mary Wortley Montague 
wrote to her friend, Lady Bristol, “On 
the European (side) stands Constan­
tinople, situate on seven hills. The 
unequal heights make it seem as large 
again as it is (tho’ one of the largest citys 
in the world), shewing an agreeable 
mixture of gardens, pine and cypress 
trees, palaces, mosques and publick 
buildings, rais’d one above another 
with as much beauty and appearance of 
symetry as your Ladyship eversaw in a 
Cabinet adorn’d by the most skilfull 
hands, jars shewing themselves above 
jars, mix’d with canisters, babys and 
candlesticks. This is a very odd com­
parison but it gives me an exact Image 
of the thing.” *
*  (Complete Letters, vol. I, p. 397. Oxford)
SİNAN’S EARLY LIFE
Mimar Sinan, the architect most 
responsible for designing these changes,
THE
LEGENDARY
ARCHITECT
SlNAN
His Mosques Are Paragons
of the Garden of 
Heaven
by Anna G. Edmonds
started out in the city as a slave, a Chris­
tian boy conscripted into Sultan Selim 
I’s janissary army. He might have lived 
out his life a free man, peacefully work­
ing in his village; he might never have 
been touched by the power and the 
ideas shaping the Ottoman Empire in 
those years. We today would be the 
poorer without his servitude. Perhaps 
it’s only we who think of him as having 
been enslaved.
Many people have wondered what 
happened that out of obscurity and 
poverty a person of Sinan’s genius devel­
oped. Two biographical novels have 
been written about him recently, one by 
Arthur Stratton, another by Veronica De 
Osa. He is the subject of a forthcoming 
scholarly study by Aptullah Kuran. The 
genius is part of legend. My guess is that 
his training went something like this:
Sinan the son of Abdulmennan was 
taken in 1512 in the regular levy (dev-
şirme) of Christian boys for the janis­
sary corps. His home village was Ağir- 
nas (today Mimarsinan) near Kayseri. 
There’s a lot of debate about his age at 
that time, largely because he lived so 
long after. He must have been a bit over 
20 — rather old for the usual conscript.
One can imagine him and his com­
panions who had been conscripted at 
the same time marching briskly along a 
road in Central Anatolia. They were 
probably a ragged, undisciplined bunch 
of youths wbo looked around in raw 
wonder at the wide world. Drawings of 
similar groups make one feel sorry for 
them. How excited they must have 
been, and how tired.
When he got to İstanbul he was 
enrolled in school, perhaps in the bar­
racks now called the İbrahim Paşa 
Palace. Janissary recruits got a good 
education; as one he would have stud­
ied languages and religion, military 
arts and athletics, etiquette, law, arith­
metic and statesmanship. It was hard 
work learning to be a janissary. But ev­
eryone knew that each slave had the 
possibility of rising to any one of a 
number of positions of power: judge, 
governor, vizier or general. Each one 
was also taught a trade — goldsmithing, 
calligraphy, cobbling, woodworking. 
Probably young Sinan’s first lessons 
were in Turkish; eventually he learned 
the craft of carpentry.
SİNAN THE SOLDIER
This was a time when the Ottoman 
Empire was gaining territory and power. 
Many battles were being fought, and for 
them many soldiers were needed. When 
the army went on campaign the sol­
diers had an opportunity to see distant 
countries and to advance in the service. 
We know that Sinan travelled the length 
and breadth of the Ottoman Empire -- 
to some parts of it more than once. An 
alert youth, he paid attention to what he 
saw on these campaigns, particularly the 
buildings; he remembered them for 
later use. Eventually he became a mem­
ber of the Imperial Guard, a rank of 
which he was proud the rest of his life. 
In that position the Sultan would have 
known his work and his character well. 
Later he is said to have been a boon 
companion of Süleyman.
Like all armies, in the course of the 
numerous battles the corps of engineers 
was called on frequently to build things: 
roads, bridges, canals and fortresses. 
Sinan must have sawed a lot of lumber, 
pounded hundreds of nails, and hit his 
thumbs more than once during those 
years. A story credits him with helping 
build the ships that carried the Otto­
man cannons and other armaments 
across Lake Van during the Two Iraqs 
campaign in 1534. In another cam­
paign, in Moldavia, he is supposed to 
have been in charge of constructing a 
bridge across the River Prut. Finished 
in less than two weeks, his talent drew 
the praise of Sultan Süleyman. Shortly 
thereafter the Sultan made him his 
Chief Court Architect. From then on, 
for fifty years Sinan’s genius had free 
scope to express in architectural terms 
the grandeur and majesty of the empire 
that Süleyman and his son, Selim II, 
ruled.
“APPRENTICE’ARCHITECT
Sinan’s first commission in the cap­
ital doesn’t usually attract tourists today. 
It was the collection of buildings en­
dowed by Sultan Süleyman’s wife, Hür- 
rem Sultan (known in the West as Roxe- 
lana). A royal foundation, the Haseki 
Hürrem Complex is the third largest 
complex in Istanbul. The mosque is still
in use, but it has been changed so that 
its form is no longer that which Sinan 
gave it. The hospital, a building of quite 
unusual shape, has been restored in 
this century. According to Nimet Taşkı- 
ran (Hasekinin Kitabı), it was intended 
originally for women because a woman 
ordered it; now it’s a general hospital. 
Columns in the school building (med­
rese) have carved snakes — probably an 
acknowledgment of the work of a fabled 
early Anatolian doctor named Asclepius 
and his descendant, Hippocrates.
Shortly after the Haseki Hürrem was 
built, Süleyman’s oldest son, Şehzade 
Mehmet, died of smallpox. Grieving for 
the one whom he had chosen to suc­
ceed him, the Sultan ordered Sinan to 
build a great mosque in Mehmet’s mem­
ory.
Sinan struggled throughout his ca­
reer with the refinement of the dome 
and the inner spaces of the mosque. 
His first attempt to solve the problem 
was in the memorial to Şehzade Mehmet 
which he considered an apprentice’s 
workmanship. But on its completion,
the court and popular opinion acclaim­
ed it a resounding success. A part of 
that success is in Sinan’s having made 
the inner shape of the mosque mean­
ingful and pleasing on the outside. 
(This he repeated in his later works.) 
The lines of the walls, the windows, the 
domes, the weight towers and the 
minarets combine to cause the viewer 
to look up. Sinan did one thing here 
which he didn’t repeat: he put an elabo­
rate design in relief on the minarets. 
Perhaps he decided that it was too 
fussy, that the pattern detracted from 
the total effect.
MİHRİMAH AND 
RÜSTEM PAŞA
Sinan built two mosques in Istanbul 
for Süleyman’s best-loved daughter, 
Mihrimah. This woman’s political im­
portance increased greatly after her
mother, Roxelana, died and she took 
over the role of advising and counsel­
ling Süleyman in matters of state. Two 
separate mosque complexes in İstanbul 
carry her name, one located at the ferry 
landing in Üsküdar, the other by the 
land walls of the city at Edirnekapt.
Mihrimah’s husband was Rüstern 
Paşa, twice Grand Vizier under Süley­
man. His nickname was “Lucky Louse;” 
he was so stingy that he let his father 
and brother beg in the streets of Istan­
bul when they showed up expecting to 
enjoy his wealth. He sold everything he 
possibly could that would bring income 
for the Palace, including the vegetables 
grown in the Palace gardens. He must 
have been hard to live with (could Mih­
rimah have been as difficult?), but he 
kept the government finances in good 
shape.
The mosque which Sinan built for 
Rüstern Paşa in İstanbul is quite differ­
ent from the two for Mihrimah. It’s in a 
very dirty, crowded market section of 
the city. To enter it one must duck into 
a dingy flight of stairs that lead to the
upper level courtyard. Structurally and 
economically, this building is supported 
by the many small shops on its ground 
floor.
Sinan was usually restrained in his 
ornamentation of buildings, but in this 
mosque the colors and the designs of 
the tiles on the walls are florid almost to 
a fault. It’s as if Sinan had said to him­
self, “For once I’ll show what 1 can do if 
there are no limits; and even in this 
gaudy display I’ll create a harmony.” 
The tiles, both at the entrance and 
inside, are so remarkable and so extrav- 
agent that they usually take my atten­
tion away from Sinan’s engineering 
skills. Here in this “garden” there are 
carnations and hyacinths and pome­
granates and artichokes and roses -  
and snails — and tulips of more designs 
than I’ve ever been able to count. 1 never 
tire of visiting the Rüstern Paşa Mosque, 
but for me it’s primarily an art gallery.
THE SÜLEYMANİYE
If I were asked to choose the one 
mosque in Istanbul which I consider 
the supreme example of art which 
expresses the purpose of the building, 
it would be the mosque which Sinan 
built for his sultan. In addition to that, 
the speed of its accomplishment amazes 
me. The construction of St. Peter’s in 
Rome stretched throughout the entire 
sixteenth century; this mosque was 
built in seven years. And it still stands. 
For over 400 years the Süleymaniye has 
represented in architecture the power 
and the mastery of Sinan,of Süleyman, 
and of Islam.
In the Süleymaniye Complex the 
balance of mass, line and height culmi­
nate in the architect’s interpretation of 
a place of worship. Western artistic 
expressions of religion, perhaps with 
the exception of music, are in human 
terms; in Islam the measure is a search­
ing for God, the ineffable. 1 attribute to 
the Mosque of Süleyman some of the 
non-verbal qualities I strive to find in
God — and in this Sinan’s genius con­
tinues to reach across the years and the 
cultures that separate me from him.
AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT 
OF WORK
The Mosque of Atik Valide and 
Şemsi Paşa in Üsküdar, of Sokollu 
Mehmet Paşa, Zal Mehmet Paşa and 
Molla Çelebi in İstanbul, the kitchens of 
Topkapı (following the fire in 1574), 
and the mausoleums of Süleyman and 
Roxelana are works of Sinan. Outside 
the city there are the aqueducts in the 
Belgrade Forest and the many-arched 
bridge in Büyük Çekmece.
The list goes on: schools, caravan­
serais, palaces, warehouses, baths — big 
and little. He built for royalty and for 
relatively unimportant people. He often 
built more than one building for a per­
son — a caravanserai for Rüstern Paşa in 
Galata, an imaret for Hürrem Sultan in 
Medina, a major complex for Süleyman 
in Damascus. He built — or oversaw the 
building of — works in Jerusalem and 
Sofya and Aleppo, in Kayseri and in 
Trikkala, in Sarajevo and Erzurum and 
Van and Mecca. Most of his work is 
listed in three contemporary accounts, 
the Tezkiret-ül Ebniye (a register of 
buildings), written by Mustafa Şa’î, the 
Tuhfet-ül Mimarin, and the Tezkiret-ül 
Bünyan. Kuran (Sinan) has carefully 
studied all the sources and determined 
that there are 477 separate entries; of 
this remarkable amount of work over 
300 were built in the environs of 
Istanbul.
In addition to all these, as Chief 
Court Architect Sinan was responsible 
for the business details of an office that 
approved all the construction work in 
İstanbul and the major building through­
out the Empire. Godfrey Goodwin (A 
History of Ottoman Architecture) gives 
a sense of those niggling problems: 
Repairs of drains, fire safety precau­
tions for wooden houses, workers de­
manding more pay, a Sultan’s meddling 
orders for a particular marble, shop­
keepers encroaching on the city streets, 
a personal dispute with neighbors over 
his farm property at the same time that 
he was siphoning off water from Süley- 
maniye for his own use — these he 
managed along with training the corps 
of architects who worked under him. 
Among them Davut Ağa (who started 
Yeni Cami) and Mehmet Ağa (who built 
the Blue Mosque) were his protégés and 
successors.
Of those younger men he must have 
sent many to oversee the projects that 
he is credited with in distant parts of 
the Empire. Perhaps he sketched the 
plans for the mosques outside the city; 
but the local construction engineer and 
his less-skilled workmen had to adapt
Selimiye
them to their abilities, to the tastes of 
the local inhabitants and to the unex­
pected pecularities of the land. This, 
Kuran and Goodwin believe, is the rea­
son for the uneven workmanship in 
many of the buildings outside İstanbul.
Unlike the miserly Rüstern Paşa, 
after Sinan had become established in 
Istanbul he took care of his family from 
his home village. He brought one of his 
brothers to Istanbul; he remembered 
his nephews and a niece in his will. 
When the residents of Ağirnas were in 
danger of being exiled to Cyprus he 
intervened with the Sultan and got an 
order exempting them from deporta­
tion. But while we know these details 
about his personal life and that he was 
married and had children (who prede­
ceased him), little else about his charac­
ter appears in the records. No big fights 
with his patrons, no other artistic side 
to his genius, no major tragedies in his 
life. Could such a consummate artist 
have been even-tempered?
SELİMİYE-.THE CLIMAX
Sinan was almost 50 years old when 
he built the Haseki Hürrem Complex; 
he was close to 80 when he reached the
Süleym aniyc
summit of his career with the Selimiye 
Mosque in Edirne. This all the critics 
unite in judging the climax of classical 
Ottoman architecture. For me, I always 
have feelings of serenity and elation 
when I enter the building. The perfec­
tion of this mosque is in its blend of 
space and light and color, of line and 
texture, of organization and mass and 
exquisite detail. Over it all arches the 
triumphant dome. Here is the classical 
Ottoman solution of the question of 
what constitutes beauty in architecture. 
In this building the artist’s genius com­
municates, through precision and bal­
ance, a profound sense of aesthetic 
harmony.
Sinan became legendary even in his 
lifetime, and a number of anecdotes 
collected around him and his work. 
The more important the buildings, the 
more elaborate were the stories. One 
was about the Shah of Iran who wanted 
to belittle the power and the wealth of 
Süleyman and so he sent a caravan of 
jewels to help pay for the construction 
of his mosque. The Sultan sent back his 
thanks for the stones which Sinan had 
ground up and used in the mortar of 
one of the minarets.
Another story was that Süleyman 
was impatient to have his mosque fin­
ished and kept pressing Sinan to give 
him a date. Finally Sinan said, “Two 
months.” To which Süleyman retorted 
in effect, “I dare you.” Sinan scurried 
around hiring all the laborers he could 
— among them gypsies and nomads — 
and met his deadline. At the opening 
ceremonies for the mosque Süleyman 
handed Sinan the key as the one who 
had earned the right to enter first.
A tulip in the Selimiye in Edirne 
hints at a third legend. Was this flower 
cut on the column to mark a strange 
event on the trade route of bulbs be­
tween the Middle East and Europe? Or 
had the land on which Sinan built the 
mosque belonged to a gardener who 
had been perverse when the Sultan 
asked for a gift? Dainty and graceful, the 
tiny tulip still hangs upside down in the 
middle of the mosque.
Sinan died in 1588, the Grand Old 
Man, whose influence dominated Ot­
toman architecture for another century. 
His tomb is in the shadow of the 
Mosque of Süleyman, a building that 
belongs as much to him as to his sultan.
Much of the skyline of İstanbul is 
defined today by the work of Sinan and 
his prote'ge's. Envisioned when the ideas 
for these buildings had not been pres­
ent before, Sinan created masterpieces 
that have stood the test of time. In them 
the harmonious synthesis of dome and 
mass and original geography are Sinan’s 
memorial to the greatness of the Otto­
man Empire.
Kişisel Arşivlerde Istanbul Belleği 
Taha Toros Arşivi


The legendary architect Sinan:His mosques are paragons of the garden of heaven

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