Sinan and the golden age of building (16th century)

Part oneFrom the Janissaries to chief architect

Sinan was born around 1490 in the province of Karaman in Anatolia, to a Christian family, probably Armenian or Greek. His father was a stonemason, and the boy worked beside him. At about twenty-one he was taken through the devshirme, became a Muslim and was sent to the palace schools in Istanbul, where he studied carpentry and building. Then he joined the Janissaries as a military engineer.

For almost twenty years he went on campaign with Suleiman's armies, to Belgrade in 1521, to Vienna in 1529 and against the Safavids in the east. He built bridges, repaired fortresses and in 1535 built ships to carry soldiers and guns across Lake Van. These years taught him how much weight a structure could bear before it failed, and how to command large teams of workers. In 1539 he was named chief architect of the empire, a post he held for fifty years.

Part twoThe great mosques

After 1453 the sultans had inherited a ruined city. They saw themselves as heirs to Rome, and they wanted to give Istanbul an Islamic face worthy of the capital. Sinan gave it one.

His first great imperial mosque was the Sehzade, built between 1543 and 1549 in memory of Suleiman's son Mehmed, who died young. Sinan later called it his apprentice work. Its wide prayer hall, uninterrupted by many columns, owed something to Hagia Sophia, the old church that every Ottoman architect studied. Like all of Sinan's imperial mosques, it stood in a kulliye, a complex that also held schools, a bath, a soup kitchen and lodgings.

In 1550 Suleiman ordered his own mosque, the Suleymaniye, on a hill above the Golden Horn. The mosque was finished in 1557 and the whole complex by 1559. It had madrasas, a medical school, a hospital, a caravanserai, a hammam and a street of shops, and the tombs of Suleiman and Hurrem lie in the garden behind it. It was built in about seven years. The English architect Christopher Wren later asked for details of its dome while building St Paul's Cathedral.

Sinan himself counted the Selimiye at Edirne, built between 1568 and 1575 for Selim II, as his masterpiece. Its great dome rests on eight piers, and its four slender minarets are the tallest of any Ottoman building. He had wanted the dome to rival Hagia Sophia's, and it came very close.

Part threeHow he built

Sinan is credited with 477 buildings, about 336 of them in and around Istanbul and the rest spread from Hungary and Bosnia to Syria, Iraq and Arabia. Most famous are his mosques, but the list also includes madrasas, hospitals, baths, bridges, aqueducts and caravanserais. As chief architect he was also responsible for much of the city's water supply and public works.

His mosques share certain features. Their domes seem to float without weight. Their interiors are filled with light from many windows. He built for earthquakes, with foundations and joints that could take a shock, which is why most of his buildings still stand in a city that has shaken many times. Small details show his care: in some mosques ostrich eggs were hung in the chandeliers to keep away insects drawn by the lamps.

He trained many students. The best known, Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, built the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the Blue Mosque, between 1609 and 1617, across from Hagia Sophia. Sinan died in 1588, close to the age of a hundred, and was buried in a modest tomb he designed himself, beside the Suleymaniye.

From the Quran

إِنَّمَا يَعْمُرُ مَسَـٰجِدَ ٱللَّهِ مَنْ ءَامَنَ بِٱللَّهِ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ وَأَقَامَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتَى ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَلَمْ يَخْشَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهَ ۖ فَعَسَىٰٓ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ أَن يَكُونُوا۟ مِنَ ٱلْمُهْتَدِينَ ۝١٨

The mosques of Allah should only be maintained by those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, establish prayer, pay alms-tax, and fear none but Allah. It is right to hope that they will be among the ˹truly˺ guided.

In a city that shakes, his domes still stand after four hundred years.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Hikma HistoryIs Mimar Sinan The Greatest Architect? (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Istanbul (Sehzade, Suleymaniye, Blue Mosque)
• Edirne (Selimiye)
• Lake Van
• Damascus
• Svilengrad

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter