Mimar Sinan

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Mimar Sinan" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Mimar Sinan
Topkapi palace
Signature

Mimar Sinan (

The son of a stonemason, he received a technical education and became a military engineer. He rose rapidly through the ranks to become first an officer and finally a Janissary commander, with the honorific title of Sinan.^[1] He refined his architectural and engineering skills while on campaign with the Janissaries, becoming expert at constructing fortifications of all kinds, as well as military infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts.^[2] At about the age of fifty, he was appointed as chief royal architect, applying the technical skills he had acquired in the army to the "creation of fine religious buildings" and civic structures of all kinds.^[2] He remained in this post for almost fifty years.

His masterpiece is the

Mimar Sinan was born with the name Joseph in a small town called Ağırnas near the city of Kayseri in Anatolia (as stated in an order by Sultan Selim II).^[7] His birth is variously placed either between 1489 and 1491 or between 1494 and 1499.

Sinan's place of birth, Ağırnas, was a Greek village with no Armenian inhabitants, which some scholars argue would give more credence to the theory of him being of Greek origin.^[19] Additionally, before the Greeks evacuated the village, a Cappadocian Greek family from the village named Taşçıoğlu (Greek: Ταστσιόγλου) had claimed Sinan as a member of their own family.^[19]

Less popular theories among scholars are that Sinan was Albanian,^[17][20] or even Jewish,^[21] or Christian Turkish.^[21] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Sinan had either Armenian or Greek origin.^[8] A local tradition in the village of Shiroka Lăka holds that Sinan was of Bulgarian origin and his family came from that village.^[22] Turkish scholars have meanwhile argued that Sinan's family was Christian Turkish.^[21] In 1935, a council commissioned by the Turkish Historical Society went so far as to open up Sinan's tomb and measure his skull so as demonstrate his Turkish "racial" heritage.^[23]

Sinan grew up helping his father in his work, and by the time that he was conscripted would have had a good grounding in the practicalities of building work.^[24] There are three brief records (Anonymous Text; Architectural Masterpieces; Book of Architecture) in the library of Topkapı Palace, dictated by Sinan to his friend and biographer Mustafa Sâi Çelebi. In these manuscripts, Sinan divulges some details of his youth and military career. His father is referred to as "Abdülmennan" (literally "Servant of the Generous and Merciful One"), a title which was commonly used in the Ottoman period to define the non-Muslim father of a Muslim convert.^[9]

In 1512, Sinan was conscripted into Ottoman service under the

During the next six years, he also trained to be a Janissary officer (acemioğlan). He possibly joined Selim I in his last military campaign, Rhodes according to some sources, but when the Sultan died, this project ended. Two years later he witnessed the conquest of Belgrade. Under the new sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, he was present, as a member of the Household Cavalry, at the Battle of Mohács. He was promoted to captain of the Royal Guard and then given command of the Infantry Cadet Corps. He was later stationed in Austria, where he commanded the 62nd Orta of the Rifle Corps.^[7] He became a master of archery, while at the same time, as an architect, learning the weak points of structures when gunning them down. In 1535 he participated in the Baghdad campaign as a commanding officer of the Royal Guard. In 1537 he went on expeditions to Corfu and Apulia and Moldavia.^[26]

During these campaigns he proved himself an able architect and engineer. When the Ottoman army captured

His training as an army engineer gave Sinan an empirical approach to architecture rather than a theoretical one. But the same can be said of the great Western Renaissance architects, such as Brunelleschi and Michelangelo.

Various sources state that Sinan was the architect of at least 374 structures which included 92

The development and maturing stages of Sinan's career can be illustrated by three major works. The first two of these are in Istanbul: the Şehzade Mosque, which he calls a work of his apprenticeship period and the Süleymaniye Mosque, which is the work of his qualification stage. The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is the product of his master stage.

• Sinan's major works
• 
  Şehzade Mosque in Istanbul
• 
  Şehzade Mosque (interior)
• 
  Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul
• 
  Süleymaniye Mosque (interior)
• 
  Selimiye Mosque in Edirne

Şehzade Mosque is the first of the grand mosques created by Sinan. The Mihrimah Sultan Mosque, which is also known as the Üsküdar Quay Mosque, was completed in the same year and has an original design with its main dome supported by three half domes. When Sinan reached the age of 70, he had completed the Süleymaniye Mosque complex. This building, situated on one of the hills of Istanbul facing the Golden Horn, and built in the name of Süleyman the Magnificent, is one of the symbolic monuments of the period. The diameter of the dome, which exceeds the 31 m (102 ft) of the Selimiye Mosque which Sinan completed when he was 80, is the most outstanding example of the level of achievement reached by Sinan. Mimar Sinan reached his artistic peak with the design, architecture, tile decorations and land stone workmanship displayed at Selimiye.

Another area of architecture where Sinan produced unique designs are his mausoleums. The Mausoleum of Şehzade Mehmed is notable for with its exterior decorations and sliced dome.^{[clarification needed]} The Rüstem Paşa mausoleum is a very attractive structure in classical style. The mausoleum of Süleyman the Magnificent is an interesting experiment, with an octagonal body and flat dome. The Selim II Mausoleum with has a square plan and is one of the best examples of Turkish mausoleum architecture. Sinan's own mausoleum, which is located in the north-east part of the Süleymaniye complex on the other hand, is a very plain structure.

Sinan masterfully combined art with functionalism in the bridges he built. The largest of these is the nearly 635 m (2,083 ft) long Büyükçekmece Bridge. Other important examples are the Ailivri Bridge, the Old Bridge in Svilengrad on the Maritsa, the Lüleburgaz (Sokullu Mehmet Pasha) Bridge on the Lüleburgaz River, the Sinanlı Bridge over the river Ergene and the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge over Drina river in Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[28]

While Sinan was maintaining and improving the water supply system of Istanbul, he built arched aqueducts at several locations within the city. The Mağlova Arch over the Alibey River, which is 257 m (843 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) high, has two tiers of arches, and is one of the best examples of its kind.

At the start of Sinan's career, Ottoman architecture was highly pragmatic. Buildings were repetitions of former types and were based on rudimentary plans. They were more an assembly of parts than a conception of a whole. An architect could sketch a plan for a new building and an assistant or foreman knew what to do, because novel ideas were avoided. Moreover, architects used an extravagant margin of safety in their designs, resulting in a wasteful use of material and labour. Sinan would gradually change all this. He was to transform established architectural practices, amplifying and transforming the traditions by adding innovations, trying to approach perfection.

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

His first major commission as the royal architect was the construction of the

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.

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 Kanlıca, 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

In 1566 Sinan completed the Banya Bashi Mosque in Sofia, Bulgaria, currently the only functioning mosque in the city. His first mosque in Sofia was built in 1528; popularly known as Imaret Mosque or Black Mosque due to the dark colour of its building stone, it was damaged by an earthquake and abandoned in the 19th century.

In the 1560s he built the Kirkcesme water supply system for Istanbul. It is seen as a masterpiece of his work. It spans 55 km and includes 35 aqueduct bridges, 4 of which are notable for their height (up to 35m) as well as their length (up to 700m).^[32]

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.

He also designed the

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, 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.^{[citation needed]} Invention faded away, and a decline set in.

According to the official list of his works, the Tezkiretü'l Ebniye, during his 50 year tenure of the post of imperial architect Sinan constructed or supervised 476 buildings, 196 of which survive. He could not possibly have designed them all, but relied on the skills of his office. He took credit and the responsibility for their work. As a janissary, and thus a slave of the sultan, his primary responsibility was to the sultan. In his spare time, he also designed buildings for the chief officials. He delegated to his assistants the construction of less important buildings in the provinces.

• 94 large mosques (camii),
• 57 colleges,
• 52 smaller mosques (mescit),
• 48 bath-houses (
  hamam
  ).
• 35 palaces (saray),
• 22 mausoleums (türbe),
• 20 caravanserai (kervansaray; han),
• 17 public kitchens (imaret),
• 8 bridges,
• 8 store houses or granaries
• 7 Quranic schools (
  medrese
  ),
• 6 aqueducts,
• 3 hospitals (darüşşifa)

Some of his works:

• Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque (Azapkapı)
• Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque (Kadırga)
• Caferağa Medresseh
• Selimiye Mosque in Edirne
• Süleymaniye Mosque
• Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex
• Molla Çelebi Mosque
• Zeyrek Çinili Hamam
• Haseki Baths
• Haseki Sultan Complex
• Çemberlitaş Baths
• Piyale Pasha Mosque
• Şehzade Mosque
• Edirnekapı
• Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Üsküdar
• Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Banya Bashi Mosque in Sofia, Bulgaria
• Nışançı Mehmed Pasha Mosque
• Rüstem Pasha Mosque
• Zal Mahmud Pasha Mosque
• Kadirga Sokullu Mosque
• Koursoum Mosque or Osman Shah Mosque in Trikala
  , Greece
• Yavuz Sultan Selim Madras
• Mimar Sinan Bridge in Büyükçekmece
• Church of the Assumption in Uzundzhovo, Bulgaria
• Sulaymaniyya Takiyya in Damascus, Syria
• Khusruwiyah Mosque in Aleppo, Syria
• Oratory at the Western Wall

Sinan died in

In 1935, his remains were exhumed by a group of Turkish scholars. Proponents of the racial science popular at the time, they claimed that measurements of Sinan's skull proved that he was actually Turkish.[38] As of 2016, the skull is missing.^[39]

His name is also given to:

• a crater on the planet Mercury.
• A Turkish state university, the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and the Mimar Sinan Mosque, both in Istanbul.

Sinan's portrait was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 10,000 lira banknotes of 1982–1995^[40] and a 7 500 000 lira coin of 2001 (in the "millennium" series), also on 6 postage stamps: 100 lira 1957 (400th anniversary of the opening of the Suleymaniye Mosque), 50 lira 1988 (400th anniversary of Sinan's death) and a set of 4 issued on 14 November 2007 (60, 70, 70 & 80 Kurus - Sinan and his works).

Sinan is portrayed in Elif Shafak's 2013 novel The Architect's Apprentice, with the fictional main character becoming his apprentice.^[41]

• Walls of Jerusalem, also attributed to Sinan, along with the mosque of Haseki Sultan Imaret

Other Muslim architects of the same period

• Isa Muhammad Effendi, alleged 17th-century Persian architect
• Sedefkar Mehmed Agha (1540–1617), Albanian Ottoman architect
• Atik Sinan, 15th-century Greek Ottoman architect
• Mimar Hayruddin (born c. 1500), Ottoman chief architect

Notes

Citations

Sources

• ISBN 978-0-500-27429-3
  .
• ISBN 978-1-86189-244-7
  .
• Necipoğlu, Gülru (2007). "Creation of a national genius: Sinan and the historiography of "classical" Ottoman architecture". Muqarnas. 24: 141–183.
  JSTOR 25482458
  .

Further reading

• (in Armenian) Alboyachian, Arshag A. Patmutiwn Hay Kesarioy: teghagrakan, patmakan, ew azgagrakan usumnasirutiwn [History of Armenian Kayseri: A topographical, historical, and ethnographic study]. 2 vols. Cairo: H. Papazian, 1937.
• (in Turkish) Çelebi, Sai Mustafa (2004). Book of Buildings: Tezkiretü'l-Bünyan ve Tezkiretü'l-Ebniye (Memoirs of Sinan the Architect). Koç Kültür Sanat Tanıtım
  ISBN 975-296-017-0
• Crane, Howard; Akın, Esra;
  ISBN 978-90-04-14168-1
  .
• De Osa, Veronica (1982). Sinan the Turkish Michelangelo. New York: Vantage Press
  ISBN 0-533-04655-6
• (in German) Egli, Ernst (1954). Sinan, der Baumeister osmanischer Glanzzeit, Erlenbach-Zürich, Verlag für Architektur;
  ISBN 1-904772-26-9
• Egli, Hans G. (1997). Sinan: An Interpretation. Istanbul: Ege Yayınları.
  ISBN 978-9758070121
  .
• ISBN 978-0-86356-055-2
• ISBN 0-500-34120-6
• ISBN 978-0-688-08093-8
• Kuran, Aptullah. (1987). Sinan: The Grand Old Master of Ottoman architecture, Ada Press Publishers.
  ISBN 0-941469-00-X
• (in Turkish) Kuran, Aptullah; Ara Güler (Illustrator); Mustafa Niksarli (Illustrator). (1986) Mimar Sinan. Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfi.
  ISBN 3-89122-007-3
• Rogers, J M. (2005). Sinan.
  ISBN 1-84511-096-X
• Saoud, Rabat (2007). Sinan: The Great Ottoman Architect and Urban Designer. Manchester: Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation.
• ISSN 1301-8175
• Sezgin, A. 'Dramatizing an Architect Hero: Sinan in Fiction' in The Meeting Place of British Middle Eastern Studies: Emerging Scholars, Emergent Research & Approaches (2009), p. 119-143.
• ISBN 0-333-02901-1
  .
• Turner, J. (1996).
  ISBN 0-19-517068-7
• Van Vynckt, Randall J. (editor). (1993) International Dictionary of Architects and Architecture Volume 1. Detroit: St James Press.
  ISBN 1-55862-089-3
• The Lives of Painters, Sculptors and Architects
  . (Four volumes) Trans: A.B. Hinds, Editor: William Gaunt. London and New York: Everyman.
• Wilkins, David G. Synan in Van Vynckt (1993), p. 826.
• A Guide to Ottoman Bulgaria" by Dimana Trankova, Anthony Georgieff and Professor Hristo Matanov; published by Vagabond Media, Sofia, 2011 [1]

Tertiary Sources

• (in Armenian) Zaryan, Armen. «Սինան» (Sinan).
  Armenian Academy of Sciences
  , 1984, pp. 385–386.

• (in French) Roux, Jean-Paul (1988). "Les Mosquées de Sinan", Les Dossiers d'archéologie, May 1988, number 127.
• (in French) Stierlin, Henri (1988). "Sinan et Soliman le Magnifique", Les Dossiers d'archéologie, May 1988, number 127.
• (in French) Topçu, Ali (1988a) "Sinan et l'architecture civile", Les Dossiers d'archéologie, May 1988, number 127.
• (in French) Topçu, Ali (1988b)."Sinan et la modernité", Les Dossiers d'archéologie, May 1988, number 127.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mimar Sinan.

• Mimar Sinan founder of this Foundation - with a picture of his last will and proof of his original name (in Turkish)
• Pictures of the city of Edirne, with many pictures of the Selimiye Mosque
• Pictures of some 30 mosques by Sinan in Istanbul
• A map and a short guide for Sinan's works in Istanbul (in Turkish)
• Photos of some Sinan mosques in Istanbul
• Map of some Sinan mosques in Istanbul
• Master Builder of the 16th Century Ottoman Mosque
• Mimar Sinan Bridge in Büyükçekmece^[usurped]
• The Ottoman architect who linked East and West
• Peerless Turkish architect claimed to be headless in tomb
• Mimar Sinan's life and works (in Turkish)