Mimar Sinan

The complex paid for itself through its commercial properties and was administered as a charitable foundation, a vakuf, that was legally protected and could outlast the political changes happening around it.

The supreme architect of these complexes was Mimar Sinan, who served as chief Ottoman architect from the 1530s until his death in 1588 at what was reportedly close to a hundred years of age.

Sinan designed somewhere between three and four hundred structures during his career mosques, bridges, schools, caravanserais, hands, and palaces of which the Süleymaniye Mosque complex in Istanbul and the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne are generally considered his greatest works.

The Selemae in particular, completed in 1575, features a dome that Sinan himself claimed exceeded the Hagia Sophia in diameter, and the claim is close enough to accurate to be worth making.

It is a description of the world as it currently exists.

In the Balkans, communities that spent centuries navigating Ottoman authority carry that experience in their languages, their food, their architecture, their legal traditions, and in some cases their unresolved grievances.

In Istanbul, the mosques of Mimar Sinan still anchor the skyline.

The Grand Bazaar still operates.

And that paranoia extended all the way to the ruling sultans, too.

I mean, look at the baths of the sultan and the queen mother, which were designed by the legendary master architect Mimar Sinan.

Inside the sultan's bath, there is a golden lattice grill built directly into the room.

And its sole purpose was to protect the bathing sultan from being assassinated while he was naked and vulnerable.

One of my earlier novels is called The Architect's Apprentice.

It's about the life of Sinan, who was regarded as the greatest architect across the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire.

The city of Istanbul that we know today, and this is a city that has changed so many times.

It's a city of earthquakes, imagine.

But the landscape, the cityscape that we know today, we mostly owe to Sinan.

He left behind around 400 monuments across the Balkans, Istanbul, Anatolia, Asia Minor.

And at every earthquake, you see, unfortunately, modern buildings destroyed.

Sometimes demolished, you know, with cracks and nothing happens to Sinan's buildings.

Contemporaneamente, affidando la flotta da guerra al leggendario ammiraglio Hayreddin Barbarossa, la sublime porta assunse il predominio assoluto delle rotte mercantili nel Mediterraneo centro orientale, mentre a oriente le campagne contro i persiani safavidi culminarono nella presa di Baghdad e nel controllo strategico dell'accesso al Golfo Persico.

Il mecenatismo rinascimentale e l'ingegneria monumentale dell'architetto Sinan.

La straordinaria concentrazione di ricchezze provenienti dalle rotte commerciali e dai tributi dei territori annessi alimentò un fervore artistico e architettonico che trasformò il profilo urbano di Costantinopoli.

L'incontro tra la visione imperiale del sultano e il genio costruttivo del capo architetto Sinan diede alla luce capolavori senza tempo, primo fra tutti il monumentale complesso della moschea Süleymaniye, inaugurata nel 1557 dopo Cristo sulla terza collina della città.

Non si trattava di una semplice area di culto, bensì di un polo civile articolato che inglobava quattro collegi universitari di diritto e medicina, un ospedale pubblico gratuito con farmacia annessa, un refettorio per i bisognosi, bagni termali e una vasta biblioteca.

La grandiosità delle cupole emisferiche, la perfezione acustica ottenuta incastonando vasi di terracotta nella muratura e la raffinata decorazione in ceramiche di Iznik dai motivi floreali turchesi e rossi resero la capitale ottomana il baricentro culturale dell'intero bacino Mediterraneo.

The design is credited to Sinan.

Mimar Sinan, the court architect, born around 1488 or 1490, died 1588.

He's the greatest Ottoman architect of the century.

The Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul is his.