Mahmut Pasha Mosque, Istanbul

Mahmut Pasha Camii is the earliest of Istanbul's three veziral mosques from Mehmet the Conqueror's time, in the market quarter on the Second Hill's shore; the grand vezir Mahmut Pasha built it in 1462, nine years after the Conquest, and it is one of only two 'Bursa style' mosques in the city ¹.

A five-bayed porch — its original columns replaced by ungainly baroque octagonal piers in restoration — leads through a portal into a narthex, a rare feature found only here and in Beyazit II's mosque ². The plan closely resembles Bursa's Hüdavendigâr: a rectangular hall divided by an arch into two square chambers under equal domes, flanked by barrel-vaulted passages giving access to three small dervish-hospice rooms on each side ². Behind the mosque in a small graveyard stands the founder's octagonal türbe, dated 1474 — the year Mahmut Pasha was executed — its exterior encased in blue and turquoise tile mosaic ³. The Conqueror put his vezir to death in 1474, holding him responsible for the death of his son Prince Mustafa; Freely quotes the contemporary historian Kritovoulos's glowing portrait of the man ¹.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 138–140 (Mahmut Pasha Camii and its türbe).