Mimar Koca Sinan (Great Architect Sinan)
b. Anatolia, 1489;
d. Istanbul, 1588.

Sinan - The greatest of all Ottoman famous architects, whose architectural career spanned fifty years and the reigns of Suleyman the Magnificent and Selim II. His great mosques are the archetypal image of Turkish Ottoman architecture. Sinan was born of Greek Christian parents. In 1512 he was conscripted as a janissary to serve the Ottoman royal house. He became a cavalry officer, then a construction officer in the army, serving in campaigns in Eastern Europe, Rhodes, Baghdad and Persia, building bridges and fortifications. In 1538 he was appointed Architect of the Abode of Felicity. His contemporary biographer Mustafa Sai records that during his prodigious career he completed 79 mosques, 34 palaces, 33 harams, 50 chapels, 19 tombs, 55 schools, 16 almshouses, 7 madrassahs, 12 caravan serais and numerous granaries, fountains, aqueducts and hospitals. The architecture of the Ottoman Empire (1281-1924) was concerned with developing the theme of a mosque with central dome spanning a rectangular base. Domes on cubical bases had existed in Seljuq architecture (1070-1308), but it was the C6 Byzantine Cathedral of Justinian (Santa Sophia) in Istanbul that was the role model for Sinan to challenge and surpass. His aim was to create a perfectly unified interior where the central dome would hover apparently weightless over an inner space composed of continuous surfaces bathed in light. Elements of buttressing and support were mostly projected on the exteriors of Sinan’s buildings, allowing the interiors to become harmonious compositions of continuous plane and curvilinear surfaces. The exteriors of his mosques were great pyramidal compositions of dressed stone walls, piers and buttresses with lead capped domes and cupolas articulated by tall slender stone minarets numbering from one to four. His mosques were often part of a complex (kulliyah) comprising schools, baths, guesthouses and hospitals. The Shehzadeh Mosque, Istanbul (1548), described by Sinan as the work of his apprenticeship, explores the support of a central dome by four half domes and four massive free-standing piers. A different approach is used in the Mihrimah Mosque, Istanbul (1547), where the dome is supported by four great arches whose infill walls become a diaphanous screen of windows flooding the interior with light. The Mosque of Sultan Suleyman, Istanbul (1550-57), the work of Sinan’s maturity, uses the plan of Santa Sophia as a model and achieves similar proportions. The central dome is counterbalanced by two half cupolas prolonged by apsidal domes, while the arched screens of the two lateral naves allow light to the interior. The evolution of the main elements of support moving further outside the main space, to merge finally with the enclosing rectangular walls, is demonstrated in the Mosque of Sokulla Pasha, Istanbul (1572), the Mosque of Rustem Pasha, Istanbul (1564), and finally in Sinan’s masterpiece, the Mosque of Sultan Selim at Edirne (1569-75). Here the dome rests on eight arches whose supporting piers merge with the outer walls to create a huge, undivided, perfectly balanced space.

Major buildings / works:
Mihrimah Mosque, Istanbul, 1547.
Shehzadeh Mosque, Istanbul, 1548.
Mosque of Sultan Suleyman, Istanbul, 1550-57.
Mosque of Rustem Pasha, Istanbul, 1564.
Mosque of Sultan Sehm, Edirne, 1569-75.
Mosque of Sokulla Pasha, Istanbul, 1572.

Bibliography:
Ulya Vogt-Goktul, Living Architecture: Ottoman, London, 1966.
Geoffrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture, London, 1971 and 1987.
Arthur Stratton, Sinan, London, 1972.
Titus Burkhardt, Art of Islam, London, 1976.