Sinan Architecy

Architectural heritage

Architect Sinan

Hacı Ali Saruhan İlköğretim Okulu. Turkey

Architect Sinan (b. Anatolia, Turkey 1489; d. Istanbul, Turkey 1588) Mimar Koca Sinan, the "Great Architect Sinan", was born of Greek Christian parents in Anatolia ( Kayseri/ Agırnas ) , Turkey in 1489. Drafted as a soldier into the Ottoman royal house in 1512, he quickly advanced from calvary officer to construction officer. As construction officer he built bridges and fortifications. In 1538 he was appointed Architect of the Abode of Felicity.During his career Sinan built hundreds of buildings including mosques, palaces, harems, chapels, tombs, schools, almshouses, madrassahs, caravan serais, granaries, fountains, aqueducts and hospitals. Of this diverse group of works, his mosques have been most influential.For his mosques, Sinan adopted the design of the Hagia Sophia to create a building in which the central dome would appear weightless and in which the interior surfaces would appear bathed in light. He used buttressing on the exterior of his buildings to open the interiors. He often designed his mosques as part of a complex comprising schools, baths, guesthouses and hospitals.Generally considered the greatest of all Ottoman architects, Sinan's career spanned fifty years. His great mosques are the archetypal image of Turkish Ottoman architecture. Sinan died in Istanbul, Turkey in 1588.

Mimar Sinan bust in Ankara

At age 22, Sinan is then recruited into the Corps of Ottoman Standing Troops (Janissary). During this military tour he travels widely throughout the empire, as far as Baghdad, Damascus, Persia and Egypt.

In his own words he informs us about his observations:

“I saw the monuments, the great ancient remains. From every ruin I learned, from every building I absorbed something.”

By mid-life Sinan acquires a reputation as a valued military engineer and is brought to the attention of Sultan Suleyman (1520-66) who in 1537 appoints Sinan (aged fifty) as head of the office of royal architects. The sultan, upon the death of his favorite son Prince Mehmet, orders Sinan to design and

construct a royal mosque. Challenged by the works of his predecessors and the majesty of Hagia Sophia, Sinan creates the Sehzade Mosque, one of his first masterpieces and is considered one of the most remarkable of buildings to this day.

Due to Sinan’s rising reputation, a flood of royal as well as individual clients produces an unprecedented building boom that changes the Istanbul landscape to what today the Turks and people from all over the world consider the hallmark of this great city’s image. Under Sultan Suleyman, Sinan is elevated to the position of State Architect, which he holds for a decade.

The legendary stature of Suleyman is realized in what is commonly called the “crown on the hill”.

Dominating the Bosporus and the Golden Horn, the silhouette of the Suleymaniye, with its slender minarets and lofty dome, is one of the defining features of Istanbul. Almost 10 years in the making, Sinan master plans, designs and builds the “Suleymaniye Kulliye” (a complex of charitable buildings) commissioned by the Sultan on a site overlooking the Golden Horn and Pera. The Kulliye covers almost 25 acres and includes in addition to the large mosque (basilica plan), four schools (medreses), a hospice, public baths (hamam), a hospital & dispensary, bookshops, a library, the Sultans’ tomb (turbe) and the worlds first teaching asylum (bimarhane).

One of the truly unique urban Mosque and charitable building project is commissioned by the Grand Vizier and called after his name, the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque Complex (1571-72) in the Kadirga Liman quarter, location of the former gate (Kumkapi), which protected the harbor. The approach to this neighborhood complex is through descending narrow crooked lanes. The irregular site drops over 56 feet and presents a serious urban planning challenge. Sinan’s indigenous talent for taking advantage of the lay of the land is evident from the respect for scale and the ingenuity and delightful changes in views one experiences accessing any one of the number of entries to this complex.

During the construction of the Sokollu Sinan receives a great deal of pressure from Sultan Selim II, son and successor to Sultan Suleyman, to progress what is to be Sinan’s monumental masterpiece, The Selimiye Complex in Edirne (1568-74). As described …“tall minarets announce the city of Edirne from its endless landscape and from as far as the eye can see. The mosque dominates and crowns the highest elevation, looking down on a city articulated by domes and minarets of other massive buildings.”

It is said that in Istanbul monuments grow from the city but the Selimiye grows from the land. The dome is of the same diameter as Hagia Sophia but is higher. The pencil-shaped minarets, grooved to express verticality, are some of the tallest ever built (230 feet from ground to finial). Sinan used these minarets as buttressing piers. The mosque plan, like the Sehzade Mosque, comprises two equal parts, one open (the spacious court) and one covered (the mosque). “The superb quality of the exterior does not adequately prepare one for the breathtaking spaciousness and sheer poetry of space and light within”. Edirne has suffered through many earthquakes but none have harmed this monument. Sinan’s crowning glory is summed up in this project through its graceful synthesis of the exterior with and ideal spatial interior.

The few prominent projects presented here represent only a small part of this great architect’s voluminous design and construction accomplishments throughout the Empire. It is believed that Sinan’s total works encompass over 360 structures which included 84 major mosques, 51 small mosques (mescit), 57 religious schools (medreses), 7 seminaries, 22 mausoleums (turbe) 17 care facility, 3 asylums, 7 aqueducts, 46 inns, 35 palaces and mansions and 42 public baths.

Sinan died in 1588 and was buried in a modest tomb, which he designed for himself at the rear of his garden near the Suleymaniye Mosque in İstanbul.

Some of his works: 

Azapkapi Sokullu Mosque in Istanbul

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Caferağa Medresseh

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Selimiye Mosque in Edirne

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Süleymaniye Complex

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Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex

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Molla Çelebi Mosque

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Haseki Baths

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Piyale Pasha Mosque

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Şehzade Mosque

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Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Edirnekapı

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Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad

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Nisanci Mehmed Pasha Mosque

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Rüstem Pasha Mosque

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Zal Mahmud Pasha Mosque

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Kadirga Sokullu Mosque

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Koursoum Mosque or Osman Shah Mosque in Trikala

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Al-Takiya Al-Suleimaniya in Damascus

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Yavuz Sultan Selim Madras

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Mimar Sinan Bridge in Büyükçekmece

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Church of the Assumption in Uzundzhovo

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Tekkiye Mosque

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Khusruwiyah Mosque

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Oratory at the Western Wall

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SINAN’S ART WITH PHOTOS

Selimiye Mosque, built by Sinan in 1575. Edirne, Turkey.

Selimiye Mosque interior

Selimiye Mosque dome

Suleymaniye Mosque in İstanbul

One of many court yards in Suleymaniye Mosque

Hadim Ibrahim Pasa Mosque 1551 Silivrikapi Istanbul

Şehzade Complex 1543-1548 Divanyolu Sehzadebasi İstanbul

Hadim Ibrahim Pasa Mosque Interior

The Ṣehzade Mehmet Mosque Interior

Şehzade Complex 1543-1548 Divanyolu Sehzadebasi İstanbul

The Ṣehzade Mehmet Mosque Interior

The Ṣehzade Mehmet Mosque Interior

Haseki Sultan Complex 1612 Avratpazari İstanbul

Haseki Sultan Complex Interior

Haseki Sultan Complex Interior

Mihrimah Sultan Complex 1547 at Uskudar İstanbul

Mihrimah Sultan Complex Interior

Mihrimah Sultan Complex Interior

Mihrimah Sultan Complex Interior

Semiz Ali Pasa Mosque 1569-1575 1585-86 at Babaeski Kirklareli

Semiz Ali Pasa Mosque Interior

The Sokullu Mosque c 1573 to 1577-1578 Azapkapi Istanbul

The Zal Mahmut Pasa Mosque 1551-1579 Eyup Istanbul General View

Sokollu Mehmed Pasa 1565-69-70 Luleburgaz Kirklareli 2

The Semsi Ahmet Pasa Mosque 1580-81 Uskudar Istanbul

The Semsi Pasa Complex 1580-81 Uskudar Istanbul general view

More detailed information about Sinan’s art The early years (till the mid-1550s) : apprenticeship period

During these years he continued the traditional pattern of Ottoman architecture, but he gradually began exploring other possibilities, because during his military career he had had the opportunity to study the architectural monuments in the conquered cities of Europe and the Middle East.

His first opportunity to design a major building was the Hüsrev Pasha mosque and its double medresse in Aleppo, Syria. It was built in the winter of 1536-1537 for his commander-in-chief and the governor of Aleppo between two army campaigns. It was built hastily and this is evident in the coarseness of execution and the crude decoration.

His first major commission as the royal architect was the construction of a modest Haseki Hürrem complex for Roxelana(Hürem Sultan), the wife of the sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent. He had to follow the plans drawn by his predecessors. Sinan retained the traditional arrangement of the available space without any innovations. Nevertheless it was already better built than the Aleppo mosque and it shows a certain elegance. However, it has suffered from many restorations.

In 1541, he started the construction of the mausoleum (türbe) of the Grand Admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa. It stands on the shore of Beşiktaş on the European part of Istanbul, at the site where his fleet used to assemble. Oddly enough, the admiral is not buried there, but in his türbe next to the Iskele mosque. This mausoleum has been severely neglected since then.

Mihrimah Sultana, the only daughter of Süleyman and wife of the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha gave Sinan the commission to build a mosque with medrese (college), an imaret (soup kitchen) and

a sibyan mekteb (Qur'an school) in Üsküdar. The imaret no longer exists. This Iskele Mosque (or Jetty mosque) already shows several hallmarks of Sinan's mature style: a spacious, high-vaulted basement, slender minarets, single-domed baldacchino, flanked by three semi-domes ending in three exedrae and a broad double portico. The construction was finished in 1548. The construction of a double portico was not a first in Ottoman architecture, but it set a trend for country mosques and mosques of viziers in particular. Rüstem Pasha and Mihrimah required them later in their three mosques in Constantinople and in the Rüstem Pasha Mosque in Tekirdağ. The inner portico traditionally have stalactite capitals while the outer portico has capitals with chevron patterns (baklava).

When sultan Süleyman the Magnificent returned from another Balkan campaign, he received news that his heir to the throne Ṣehzade Mehmet had died at the age of twenty-two. In November 1543, not long after Sinan had started the construction of the Iskele Mosque, the sultan ordered Sinan to build a new major mosque with an adjoining complex in memory of his favourite son. This Şehzade Mosque would become larger and more ambitious than his previous ones. Architectural historians consider this mosque as Sinan's first masterpiece. Obsessed by the concept of a large central dome, Sinan turned to the plans of mosques such as the Fatih Pasha Mosque in Diyarbakır or the Piri Pasha Mosque in Hasköy. He must have visited both mosques during his Persian campaign. Sinan built a mosque with a central dome, this time with four equal half-domes. This superstructure is supported by four massive, but still elegant, free-standing octagonal fluted piers and four piers incorporated in each lateral wall. In the corners, above roof level, four turrets serve as stabilizing anchors. This coherent concept already is markedly different from the additive plans of traditional Ottoman architecture.Sedefkar Mehmed Agha would later copy the concept of fluted piers in his Sultan Ahmed Mosque in an attempt to lighten their appearance. Sinan, however, rejected this solution in his next mosques.

The period from the mid-1550s to 1570: qualification stage By 1550 Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent was at the height of his powers. Having built a mosque for his son, he felt it was time to construct his own imperial mosque, an enduring monument larger than all the others, to be built on a gently sloping hillside dominating the Golden Horn. Money was no problem, since he had accumulated a treasure from the loot of his campaigns in Europe and the Middle East.

He gave the order to his royal architect Sinan to build a mosque, the Süleymaniye, surrounded by a külliye consisting of four colleges, a soup kitchen, a hospital, an asylum, a hamam, a caravanserai and a hospice for travellers (tabhane). Sinan, now heading a formidable department with a great number of assistants, finished this formidable task in seven years. Before Süleymaniye, no mosques had been built with half cubic roofs. He got the idea of half cubic roof design from theHagia Sophia. Through this monumental achievement, Sinan emerged from the anonymity of his predecessors. Sinan must have known the ideas of the Renaissance architectLeone Battista Alberti (who in turn had studied De architectura by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius), since he too was concerned in building the ideal church, reflecting harmony through the perfection of geometry in architecture. But, contrary to his Western counterparts, Sinan was more interested in simplification than in enrichment. He tried to achieve the largest volume under a single central dome.

The dome is based on the circle, the perfect geometrical figure representing, in an abstract way, a perfect God. Sinan used subtle geometric relationships, using multiples of two when calculating the ratios and the proportions of his buildings. However, in a later stage, he also used divisions of three or ratios of two to three when working out the width and the proportions of domes, such as the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque at Kadırga.

While he was fully occupied with the construction of the Süleymaniye, Sinan or his subordinates drew up the plans and gave instructions for many other constructions. But it is highly improbable that he personall supervised the construction of the provincial assignments.

Sinan built a mosque for the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha and a funeral monument (türbe) at Silivrikapı (Constantinople) in 1551.

The next Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha gave Sinan several more commissions. In 1550 Sinan built a large inn (han) in the Galata district of Istanbul. About ten years later he built another han in Edirne, and between 1544 and 1561 the Taṣ Han at Erzurum. He designed a caravanserai in Eregli and an octagonal madrasah in Constantinople.

Between 1553 and 1555, Sinan built the Sinan Pasha Mosque at Beşiktaş, a smaller version of the Üç Şerefeli Mosque at Edirne, for the Grand Admiral Sinan Pasha. This proves again that Sinan had thoroughly studied the work of other architects, especially since he was responsible for the upkeep of these buildings. He copied the old form, pondered over the weaknesses in the construction and tried to solve this with his own solution. In 1554 Sinan used the form of the Sinan Pasha mosque again for the construction of the mosque for the next Grand Vizier Kara Ahmet Pasha in Constantinople, his first hexagonal mosque. By applying this hexagonal form, Sinan could reduce the side domes to halfdomes and set them in the corners at an angle of 45 degrees. Clearly, Sinan must have appreciated this form, since he repeated it later in mosques such as the Sokollu Mehmed PashaMosque at Kadırga and the Atik Valide Mosque at Üsküdar.

In 1556 Sinan built the Haseki Hürrem Hamam, replacing the antique Baths of Zeuxippus which are still standing close to the Hagia Sophia. This would become one of the most beautiful hamams he ever constructed.

In 1559 he built the Cafer Ağa madrasah below the forecourt of the Hagia Sophia. In the same year he began the construction of a small mosque for Iskender Pasha at Kanlıka, beside the Bosphorus. This was one of the many minor and routine commissions the office of Sinan received over the years. In 1561, when Rüstem Pasha died, Sinan began the construction of the Rüstem Pasha Mosque, as a memorial supervised by his widowMihrimah Sultana. It is situated just below the Süleymaniye. This time the central form is octagonal, modelled on the monastery church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, with four small semi-domes set in the corners. In the same year, Sinan built a funeral monument (türbe) for Rüstem Pasha in the garden of the Şehzade Mosque, decorated with the finest tiles Iznik could produce. Mihrimah Sultana, having doubled her wealth after the death of her husband, now wanted a mosque of her own. Sinan built for her the Mihrimah Camii at Edirnekapı(Edirne Gate), on the highest of the seven hills of Constantinople. He raised the mosque on a vaulted platform, accentuating its hilltop site. There is some speculation concerning the dates, until recently this was supposed to be between 1540 and 1540, but now it is generally accepted to be between 1562 and 1565. Sinan, concerned with grandeur, built a mosque in one of his most imaginative designs, using new support systems and lateral spaces to increase the area available for windows. He built a central dome of 37 m high and 20 m wide, supported by pendentives, on a square base with two lateral galleries, each with three cupolas. At each corner of this square stands a gigantic pier, connected with immense arches each with 15 large windows and four circular ones, flooding the interior with light. The style of this revolutionary building was as close to the Gothic style as Ottoman structure permits.

Between 1560 and 1566 Sinan built a mosque in Constantinople for Zal Mahmud Pasha on a hillside beyond Ayvansaray. Sinan certainly conceived the plans and partly supervised the construction, but left the building of lesser areas to less than competent hands, since Sinan and his most able assistants were about to begin his masterpiece, the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne. On the outside, the mosque rises high, with its east wall pierced by four tiers of windows. This gives the mosque an aspect

of a palace or even a block of apartments. Inside, there are three broad galleries making the interior look compact. The heaviness of this structure makes the dome look unexpectedly lofty. These galleries look like a preliminary try-out for the galleries of the Selimiye Mosque.

The period from 1570 to his death: master stage In this late stage of his life, Sinan tried to create unified and sublimely elegant interiors. To achieve this, he eliminated all the unnecessary subsidiary spaces beyond the supporting piers of the central dome. This can be seen in the Sokollu Mehmet Paşa mosque in Istanbul (1571–1572) and in the Selimiye mosque in Edirne. In other buildings of his final period, Sinan experimented with spatial and mural treatments that were new in the classical Ottoman architecture.

According to him from his autobiography "Tezkiretü’l Bünyan", his masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne. Breaking free of the handicaps of traditional Ottoman architecture, this mosque marks the climax of Sinan's work and of all classical Ottoman architecture. While it was being built, the architect's saying of "You can never build a dome larger than the dome of Hagia Sophia and specially as Muslims" was his main motivation. When it was completed, Sinan claimed that it had the largest dome in the world, leaving Hagia Sophia behind. In fact, the dome height from the ground level was lower and the diameter barely larger (0.5 meters, approximately 2 feet) than the millennium-older Hagia Sophia. However, measured from its base the dome of Selimiye is higher. Sinan was more than 80 years old when the building was finished. In this mosque he finally realized his aim of creating the optimum, completely unified, domed interior : a triumph of space that dominates the interior. He used this time an octagonal central dome (31.28 m wide and 42 m high), supported by eight elephantine piers of marble and granite. These supports lack any capitals but have squinches or consoles at their summit, leading to the optical effect that the arches seem to grow integrally out of the piers. By placing the lateral galleries far away, he increased the three-dimensional effect. The many windows in the screen walls flood the interior with light. The buttressing semi-domes are set in the four corners of the square under the dome. The weight and the internal tensions are hidden, producing an airy and elegant effect rarely seen under a central dome. The four minarets (83 m high) at the corners of the prayer hall are the tallest in the Muslim world, accentuating the vertical posture of this mosque that already dominates the city.

He also designed the Taqiyya al-Sulaimaniyya khan and mosque in Damascus, still considered one of the city's most notable monuments, as well as the Banya Bashi Mosque inSofia, Bulgaria, currently the only functioning mosque in the city. He has also built Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad across the Drina River in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is now UNESCO World Heritage Site.

At the start of his career as an architect, Sinan had to deal with an established, traditional domed architecture. His training as an army engineer led him to approach architecture from an empirical point of view, rather than from a theoretical one. He started to experiment with the design and engineering of single-domed and multiple-domed structures. He tried to obtain a new geometrical purity, a rationality and a spatial integrity in his structures and designs of mosques. Through all this, he demonstrated his creativity and his wish to create a clear, unified space. He started to develop a series of variations on the domes, surrounding them in different ways with semi-domes, piers, screen walls and different sets of galleries. His domes and arches are curved, but he avoided curvilinear elements in the rest of his design, transforming the circle of the dome into a rectangular, hexagonal or octagonal system. He tried to obtain a rational harmony between the exterior pyramidal composition of semi-domes, culminating in a single drumless dome, and the interior space where this central dome vertically integrates the space into a unified whole. His genius lies in the organization of this space and

in the resolution of the tensions created by the design. He was an innovator in the use of decoration and motifs, merging them into the architectural forms as a whole. He accentuated the centre underneath the central dome by flooding it with light from the many windows. He incorporated his mosques in an efficient way into a complex (külliye), serving the needs of the community as an intellectual centre, a community centre and serving the social needs and the health problems of the faithful.

When Sinan died, the classical Ottoman architecture had reached its climax. No successor was gifted enough to better the design of the Selimiye mosque and to develop it further. His students retreated to earlier models, such as the Şehzade mosque. Invention faded away, and a decline set in.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Mimar Sinan and his masterwork Selimiye Mosque on the reverse of the Turkish 10,000 lira banknote of 1982-1995 His

name is also given to: 

a crater on the planet Mercury.

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A Turkish state university, the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul.

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Sinan's portrait was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 10,000 lira banknotes of 1982-1995.