Sunday’s Zaman , Turkey
Sept 13 2009
Ä°stanbul — the mosques Sinan didn’t build
So great is the hold on the imagination of the great Ottoman architect
Sinan that it’s sometimes easy to run away with the idea that most of
Ä°stanbul’s great mosques were his handiwork.
But however prolific an architect he was, Sinan was responsible for
only 24 of the mosques, and even some of those that most dominate the
skyline were actually designed by other hands.
When the Ottomans rode into Constantinople on May 29, 1453 they were a
Muslim army occupying what had been a Christian city, so one of the
most pressing tasks facing them was to establish a network of places
to pray. The easiest way to do this was to adapt the existing churches
into mosques; a mere three days after the conquest, Sultan Mehmet II
was able to attend Friday prayers in what had been the church of Hagia
Sophia but had been hastily converted into a mosque. Other churches
were soon adapted to serve the needs of their new congregations with
the addition of mihrabs and minarets, but within just a few years, the
first purpose-designed mosques, often following designs developed in
Bursa, the original Ottoman capital, were starting to spring up.
These early Ä°stanbul mosques are often overlooked because they
lack the size and splendor of their newer counterparts. However, some
are fine buildings in their own right that deserve more attention than
they receive. Take the Murat PaÅ?a Camii at YusufpaÅ?a,
for example. Built in 1473, just 20 years after the conquest, it’s
squeezed into a piece of land between the tramway and the metro, which
means that most passers-by are in too much of a hurry even to glance
at its attractive brick-and-stone-striped facade. Or the
Ä°Å?hakpaÅ?a Camii on Aybıyık Caddesi
right in the heart of tourist Ä°stanbul. Built in 1482, it’s
stuck on a busy corner behind a high wall, missed by most people in
their rush to reach Topkapı Sarayı despite its
impressive age.
Mahmut PaÅ?a Camii
Tucked away out of sight near the Grand Bazaar is the Mahmut
PaÅ?a Camii that dates back to 1462. It’s well worth visiting
not just because it was built less than 10 years after the conquest
but because the tiled tomb of the great Grand Vizier Mahmut
PaÅ?a behind it is a one-off in Ä°stanbul that looks as if
it has somehow strayed here from Central Asia. More conspicuous is the
Firuz AÄ?a Camii on busy Divan Yolu close to the Sultanahmet
tram stop, which was built in 1491. With its triple-arched portico and
single dome and minaret, it’s an exquisite example of the Bursa
architectural style prevailing before grand courtyards and multiple
minarets became fashionable.
But the first of the really important mosques was, of course, the
Fatih Camii, named after Sultan Mehmet II, who instructed that work
should begin on replacing the huge Church of the Holy Apostles that
had stood on the site almost as soon as he had found his way around
his new capital. The mosque was the work of a much less well known
Sinan, Atik Sinan, about whose life we know almost nothing. As the
almost certainly apocryphal story goes, he was rewarded for his
efforts by having his hands chopped off in 1471 when the sultan
realized that the dome of Hagia Sophia still outstripped that of his
new mosque. He was buried in the grounds of the Kumrulu Mosque in
Karagümrük.
The Fatih Camii is an enormous complex, currently undergoing
restoration, and is virtually enclosed by medreses (theological
schools) and other outbuildings that testify to its role as the local
social center. It was badly damaged by an earthquake in 1766 and had
to be extensively rebuilt, which leaves the Beyazıt Camii
beside the Grand Bazaar as the oldest of the early imperial mosques
that is still virtually unchanged. This mosque was built between 1501
and 1506 by Yakub-Å?ah ibn Sultan-Å?ah, a little known but
probably Turkish architect who appears to have taken Hagia Sophia (Aya
Sofya) as his model. Like the Fatih Camii, it was built on a huge
scale, and like the Fatih Camii it was given a marvelous porticoed
courtyard, a feature that Mimar Sinan went on to perfect in the
Å?ehzadebaÅ?ı Camii and others of his masterpieces.
During the latter part of the 16th century, architecture in
Ä°stanbul was utterly dominated by Koca Mimar Sinan. There are,
however, one or two large mosques of that date that were not his
handiwork; for example, the lovely NiÅ?ancı Mehmet
PaÅ?a Mosque in Karagümrük looks like a Sinan
building but appears instead to be the work of an unknown
architect. There are also several surviving mosques that were the
handiwork of Davut AÄ?a, who was a pupil of Sinan’s. It was
Davut AÄ?a, for example, who began work on the Yeni Camii at
Eminönü in 1597, although work soon stopped again, and
the mosque was not completed until 1663, by which time the architect
in charge of things was Mustafa AÄ?a. Davut AÄ?a was also
responsible for the lovely Cerrah PaÅ?a Camii, which he
completed in 1593.
Mehmet AÄ?a’s masterpiece
Of course the most famous mosque in all Ä°stanbul has to be the
Sultanahmet Camii, better known to most visitors as the Blue
Mosque. With its extraordinary six minarets and its wonderful cascade
of silvery domes and semi-domes, this is a building which completely
dominates the city skyline. It was the masterpiece of one Mehmet
AÄ?a (c.1540-1617), another student of Sinan’s, who designed it
for the youthful Sultan Ahmet I between 1609 and 1616, reputedly
bringing about the collapse of the Ä°znik tile business in the
process since the tile makers, obliged to work for the sultan for
minimal wages, soon made their escape to Kütahya.
Skipping forward a century, we come to the period when the West
started to assert its influence on Ä°stanbul and the mosques
started to take on baroque flourishes, especially under the
stewardship of Mehmet Tahir AÄ?a, whose work is on display in
the Ayazma Camii in Ã`sküdar, in the Beylerbeyi Camii, and
in the newly and beautifully restored Laleli Camii. The Laleli Camii
still retains features of the older models in its stripy brickwork and
sizeable courtyard, but within another 100 years the mosques had shed
the bricks and courtyards, and acquired a new look in which lofty
arched windows were the most conspicuous feature. Several of these
grand 19th-century mosques were designed by the Balyans, a family of
Turkish-Armenian architects who were also responsible for the
Dolmabahçe Sarayı: Krikor Balyan designed the Nusretiye
Camii at Tophane between 1822 and 1826, while his grandsons Hagop and
Sarkis Balyan are thought to have been behind the Valide
Sultan Camii, built in 1871 and currently undergoing restoration in
Aksaray. Another grandson, Nikogos, drew up the designs for the
Dolmabahçe Camii in 1853.
Unfortunately since the 19th century, mosque architecture has gone
into a sharp decline. The twin stars of the First National
Architecture movement, Vedat Tek and Kemalettin Bey, tried their hands
at mosque design, Tek behind the post office in Sirkeci and Kemalettin
on the waterfront in Bebek, but neither of these buildings is
especially original or distinctive. For that accolade one would have
to head straight to the edge of the Karacaahmet Cemetery behind the
HaydarpaÅ?a train station to visit the newly opened
Å?akirin Camii, whose interior was designed by Zeynep
FadıllıoÄ?lu, a woman better known for her work on
high-society restaurants. With its sweeping Guggenheim-style dome, its
arched mihrab of turquoise and gold and a chandelier of dripping
plastic, it was always going to have the traditionalists raising
eyebrows. But when most new mosque designs simply parody Sinan motifs
in cheap concrete, it’s surely a joy to be able to point to at least
one 21st-century mosque that stands out as a true original.
13 September 2009, Sunday
PAT YALE Ä°STANBUL