Davut Pasha Mosque, Istanbul

Davut Pasha Camii on the Seventh Hill is the earliest extant mosque of known date from Beyazit II's reign; grand vezir Davut Pasha built it, and an Arabic inscription over the door gives the date as A.H. 480 (1485) ¹.

The porch's five-domed roof fell but four of its six granite columns still stand and the domes and arches are well restored; the plan is simple — a square chamber under a large blind dome, the mihrab in a five-sided apse projecting from the south wall, and two pairs of small rooms east and west that sheltered itinerant dervishes ². Its distinction is the beautiful shallow dome — distinctly less than a hemisphere, like Yavuz Selim Camii — with magnificently bold stalactite pendentives carried far down the corners of the walls ³. Behind, a topsy-turvy graveyard surrounds the founder's octagonal türbe with its odd eight-segment dome; across the street the külliye's medrese survives nearly ruinous among houses, while its imaret and mektep have disappeared ³.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 210–211 (Davut Pasha Camii).
• The "A.H. 480" date is reproduced as printed in the source (likely an OCR or inscription misprint for a later hijri year).
• Record created in this batch.