Mimar Sinan

Koca Mimar Sinan Agha (April 15, 1489 - July 17, 1588) was the Ottoman chief architect for sultans Selim I, Suleiman I, Selim II and Murad III. His masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, although his most famous work is the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. Sinan also was one of the first earthquake engineers in the world.

Sinan was born a Christian in Anatolia in a small town called Ağırnas near the city of Kayseri, either of Greek [1] or Armenian [2]origin (it is impossible to tell as only religious information was recorded in Ottoman censuses). In 1511, he was conscripted into Ottoman service and he went to Istanbul as a recruit and converted to Islam under the devshirme system. He served the Grand Vizier İbrahim Paşa as a novice of the Palace School. There he was given the Islamic name Sinan. Three years later he, a skilled architect and engineer, took part in Selim's military campaigns into the east as part of the engineering corps. 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. He was also appointed commander of an infantry division, but was, at his own request, transferred to the command of the artillery instead. During a Persian campaign in 1535 he built ships for the army 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.

Sinan's first work was the Şehzade Mosque, which he built in 1548. He started building the Süleymaniye Mosque in 1550, with construction completed in 1557. Before Süleymaniye, no mosques had been built with half cubic roofs. He get the idea of half cubic roof design from the Hagia Sophia. He also built many mosques and other buildings in and around Istanbul, including the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, Rüstem Pasha Mosque in Istanbul, Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Edirnekapi, and Kadirga Sokullu Mosque in Istanbul. 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.

According to him from his autobiography “Tezkiretü’l Bünyan”, his masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne. While it was being built, the Christian architects saying of "You can never build a dome larger than the dome of Hagia Sophia and specially as Muslims" was his main motivation while building that mosque. While when it was completed, Sinan claimed that it had the largest dome in the world leaving Hagia Sophia behind, the reality was that the dome height from the ground level was lower and the diameter almost identical to the milenium-older Hagia Sophia. He was 80 years old when he finished Selimiye.

Sinan is said to have constructed and founded

94 great mosques (cami),
57 universities,
52 smaller mosques (mescit),
41 bath-houses (hamam).
35 palaces (saray),
22 mausoleums (türbe),
20 caravansary (kervansaray; han),
17 public kitchens (imaret),
8 bridges,
8 store houses and
7 schools (medrese),
6 aqueducts,
3 hospitals (darüşşifa),

He died in 1588 and is buried in a tomb just outside the walls of the Süleymaniye Mosque to the north, across a street named Mimar Sinan Caddesi in his honour. He is also honored with a crater on Mercury named after him (see List of craters on Mercury).

Works

File:Sinan.jpg

Mimar Sinan on the old Turkish Lira banknote

Books

Guler, Ara; Burelli, Augusto Romano; Freely, John (1992). Sinan: Architect of Suleyman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Golden Age. WW Norton&Co. Inc. ISBN 0-500-34120-6

Çelebi, Sai Mustafa (2004). Book Of Buildings : Tezkiretü'l Bünyan Ve Tezkiretü'l-Ebniye (Memoirs Of Sinan The Architect). Koç Kültür Sanat Tanıtım ISBN 9752960170

Aptullah Kuran Sinan

Gülru Necipoglu The Age of Sinan, 2005

J.M. Rogers. Sinan. 2005. I.B. Tauris ISBN 184511096X.

External links