Haseki Hürrem Mosque, Istanbul

Haseki Hürrem Camii was the first monumental mosque complex Sinan built in Istanbul, on the lower slope of the Seventh Hill near the Marmara shore, for Süleyman's wife Roxelana, known in Turkish as Haseki Hürrem ¹. The complex included a mosque, medrese, primary school, imaret and hospital; Kuran dates the mosque, medrese and school to 1538–9, the imaret to 1548–9, and the hospital, begun 1550, completed 1558 — the year Roxelana died ¹.

The mosque itself is modest for so grand a foundation: originally a small square room under a dome on stalactited pendentives behind a five-bay porch; in 1612 an identical second room was added to the east, the east wall removed for a great arch on two columns and the mihrab moved ². The medrese across the street has an imperial-scale courtyard with twenty columns of granite, Proconnesian marble and verd antique, unique lozenge and lotus-flower capitals ³. The darüşşifa, built around a portico-less octagonal courtyard, has been well restored and is once again a working hospital ⁴. The imaret still fed some five hundred poor people daily until the early 1970s ⁵.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 233–237 (Haseki Hürrem Camii).
• Record created in this batch.