Süleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul

The Süleymaniye is the city's second-largest imperial mosque complex after Fatih Camii and by far the most magnificent; Sinan built it for Süleyman the Magnificent — construction began in 1550, the mosque itself finished in 1557 and the attendant buildings years later — and for Freely it is incontestably the most important Ottoman building in Istanbul ¹.

The mosque stands in the centre of a vast outer courtyard of 216 by 144 metres walled on three sides, with the tombs of Süleyman and Roxelana behind it and the little darülkura beyond; around the court the complex folded in seven medreses — Evvel, Sâni, Sâlis, Râbi'a, the darülhadis and the medical school — plus the darüşşifa hospital, imaret, caravanserai, hamam, and, in the north-east corner, the triangular garden-türbe of Sinan himself ². Evliya Çelebi relays that ten Frankish visitors skilled in geometry stood a full hour biting their fingers in astonishment before the arches that carry the dome ³.

The interior is of a severely simple grandeur; only the south wall is enlivened by colour — stained-glass windows by the glazier Şarhoş Ibrahim and the earliest known Iznik tiles, leaf and flower motifs in turquoise, deep blue and red on white ⁴. Mihrab and mimber are restrained works in Proconnesian marble, the inscriptions are by the celebrated calligrapher Ahmet Karahisarı and his pupil Hasan Çelebi, and the four great monolithic columns of Theban and Syenitic granite include the notorious Column of Virginity that Pierre Gilles saw being transported ⁵.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 260–268 (Süleymaniye chapter: külliye, courtyard, interior).
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