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Khoca Mimar Sinan Ağa (Ottoman Turkish: خواجه معمار سنان آغا; Modern Turkish: Mimar Sinan) (c. 1490 - 1578) was the chief Ottoman architect and civil engineer for sultans Suleiman I, Selim II, and Murad III. He was responsible for the construction of more than three hundred major structures, and other more modest projects, such as his Koran schools (sibyan mektebs). Trained as a military engineer, he rose through the ranks to become first an officer and finally a Janissary commander, with the honorific title of ağa. He
learned his architectural and engineering skills while on campaign with
the Janissaries, becoming expert at constructing fortifications of all
kinds, as well as military infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and
aqueducts. 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. He remained in post for almost fifty years. His masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, although his most famous work is the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. He headed an extensive governmental department and trained many assistants who, in turn, distinguished themselves, including Sedefhar Mehmet Ağa, architect of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. He is considered the greatest architect of the classical period of Ottoman architecture, and has been compared to Michelangelo, his contemporary in the West. Michelangelo and his plans for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome were well known in Istanbul, since Leonardo da Vinci and he had been invited, in 1502 and 1505 respectively, by the Sublime Porte to submit plans for a bridge spanning the Golden Horn. According to contemporary biographer, Mustafa Sâi Çelebi, Sinan was born with the name Joseph as an Armenian or Rûm (Greek) Christian in 1489, in a small town called Ağırnas (present day Mimarsinanköy) near the city of Kayseri in Anatolia (as stated in an order by Sultan Selim II.) One
argument that lends credence to his Armenian background is a letter he
wrote to Selim II in 1573, asking the Sultan to spare his family from
the general exile of Kayseri's Armenian community. Little is known of his family background, apart from the fact that his father was a stone mason and carpenter, and Sinan (Joseph) grew up helping him in these businesses. There are three brief records in the library of the Topkapı Palace,
dictated by Sinan to his friend Mustafa Sâi Çelebi. In
these manuscripts, Sinan divulges some details of his youth and
military career. According to these documents, Sinan was the son of "Abdülmenan" (the anonym of Christian fathers whose sons were Muslim converts), but this name is also given as "Abdullah" (عبد الله, which means Servant of God in Arabic) and "Hristo" (Χρήστος, common Greek name, meaning Christ.) In 1512, Sinan was conscripted into Ottoman service via the devşirme system. He went to Istanbul as a recruit of the Janissary Corps, and was converted to Islam. Since he was over twenty-one years old, he was not admitted to the imperial Enderun School in the Topkapı Palace but was sent instead to an auxiliary school. Some records claim that he might have served the Grand Vizier İbrahim Paşa as a novice of the Ibrahim Pasha School. Possibly, he was given the Islamic name Sinan there.
He initially learned carpentry and mathematics but through his
intellectual qualities and ambitions, he soon assisted the leading
architects and got his training as an architect. 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. He was present, as a member of the Household Cavalry, in the Battle of Mohács, led by the new sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
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. 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 expedition to Corfu and Apulia and finally to Moldavia. During all these campaigns he had proven himself a trained engineer and an able architect. When the Ottoman army captured Cairo,
Sinan was promoted to chief architect and was given the privilege of
tearing down any buildings in the captured city that were not according to the city plan. During the campaign in the East, he assisted in the building of defences and bridges, such as a bridge across the Danube. He converted churches into mosques. During the Persian campaign in 1535 he built ships for the army and the artillery to cross Lake Van. For this he was given the title Haseki'i, Sergeant-at-Arms in the body guard of the Sultan, a rank equivalent to that of the Janissary Ağa. When Chelebi Lütfi Pasha became Grand Vizier in
1539, he appointed Sinan, who had previously served under his command,
Architect of the Abode of Felicity. This was the start of a remarkable
career. It was his task to supervise the constructions and the flow of
supplies within the Ottoman empire. He was also responsible for the
design and construction of public works, such as roads, waterworks and
bridges. Through the years he transformed his office into that of
Architect of the Empire, an elaborate government department, with
greater powers than his supervising minister. He became the head of a
whole Corps of Court Architects, training a team of assistants,
deputies and pupils. His
training as an army engineer gave Sinan rather an empirical approach to
architecture 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 around 360 structures
which included 84 mosques, 51 small mosques ("mescit"), 57 schools of
theology ("medrese"), 7 schools for Koran reciters ("darülkurra"),
22 mausoleums ("türbe"),
17 Alm Houses ("imaret"), 3 hospitals ("darüşşifa"), 7 aqueducts
and arches, 48 inns ("caravansary"), 35 palaces and mansions, 8 vaults
and 46 baths. Sinan, who held the position of chief architect of the
palace, which meant being the top manager of construction works of the
Ottoman Empire, for nearly 50 years, worked with a large team of
assistants consisting of architects and master builders. The
development and maturing stages of Sinan can be marked with three major
works. The first two of these are in Istanbul - Shehzade Mosque which
he calls his apprenticeship period work, Süleymaniye Mosque which
is the work of his qualification stage, and Selimiye Mosque in Edirne
the product of his master stage. Şehzade Mosque is the first of the
grand mosques Sinan has created. Mihriman 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 and the 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 31 meters at
Selimiye Mosque which Sinan completed when he was 80, is the most
significant example of the level of achievement Sinan reached in
architecture. Mimar Sinan has reached his artistic summit with the
design, architecture, tile decorations, land stone workmanship
displayed at Selimiye. Another
area of architecture where Sinan delivered unique projects are the
mausoleums. Mausoleum of Şehzade Mehmed gets attention with its
exterior decorations and sliced dome. Rüstem Paşa mausoleum is a
very attractive structure in classical style. The mausoleum of
Süleyman the Magnificent which is one of his interesting
experimentations has an octagonal body and flat dome. 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
at the north - east part of the Süleymaniye complex on the other
hand, is a very plain structure. Sinan,
in the bridges he built, has masterfully combined art with
functionalism. The largest of his work in this group is the nearly
635 meter long Büyükçekmece Bridge. Other significant
examples are Ailivri Bridge, Lüleburgaz (Sokullu Mehmet Pasha)
Bridge on Lüleburgaz River, Sinanlı Bridge over Ergene River and
Drina Bridge which became the title of the famous novel of Yugoslav
author İvo Andriç. While
Sinan was maintaining and improving the water supply system of
Istanbul, he built arched aqueducts at several locations within the
city. Mağlova Arch over Alibey River, which is 257 meters long, 35
meters high and displaying two layers of arches, is one of the best
samples 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 attempt to build an important monument was the Hüsrev Pasha mosque and its double medresse in Aleppo,
Syria. It was built in the winter of 1536 - 1537 between two army
campaigns for his commander-in-chief and the governor of Aleppo. It was
built in haste and this is demonstrated 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 Istanbul and
in the Rüstem Pasha Mosque in Tekirdağ. The inner portico traditionally has 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. Sedefhar Mehmet Ağa 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. 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 the Hagia Sophia. Through this monumental achievement, Sinan emerged from the anonymity
of his predecessors. Sinan must have known the ideas of the Renaissance
architect Leone 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 better the subordinates of his office under his supervision)
drew the plans and gave definite instructions for many other
constructions. But it is highly improbable that he supervised the
construction of any of the provincial assignments. Sinan built for the Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha a mosque and a funeral monument (türbe) at Silivrikapı (Istanbul) 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 another han in Edirne, and between 1544 and 1561 the Taṣ Han at Erzurum. He designed acaravanserai in Eregli and an octogal madrasah in Istanbul. Between 1553 and 1555, Sinan built a 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 as 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
Istanbul, his first hexagonal mosque. By applying this hexagonal form,
Sinan could reduce the side domes to half-domes 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 Pasha Mosque at Kadırga and the Atik Valide Mosque at Üsküdar. In 1556 Sinan built the Haseki Hürrem Hamam, replacing the antique Baths of Zeuxippus 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 widow Mihrimah 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 Istanbul. 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 Istanbul 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. 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 in Sofia, 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 a 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.
During
his tenure during 50 years of the post of imperial architect, Sinan is
said to have constructed or supervised 476 buildings (196 of which
still survive), according to the official list of his works, the Tazkirat-al-Abniya.
He couldn't possibly have designed them all, but he relied on the
skills of his office. He took credit and the responsibility for their
work. For, 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. He died in 1588 and is buried in a tomb in Istanbul, a türbe of his own design, in the cemetery just outside the walls of the Süleymaniye Mosque to
the north, across a street named Mimar Sinan Caddesi in his honour. He
was buried near the tombs of his greatest patrons: Sultan Süleyman and the Sultana Haseki Hürrem, Suleiman's wife. His name is also given to: a crater on the planet Mercury and a Turkish state university, the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul. Sinan's portrait was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 10,000 lira banknotes of 1982 - 1995. |