Yeni Cami (New Mosque of the Valide Sultan), Istanbul

Yeni Cami — more correctly the New Mosque of the Valide Sultan — dominates Eminönü at the old-city end of the Galata Bridge; it was built in two phases some six decades apart, each sponsored by a valide sultan ¹.

The first phase began in 1597 under valide sultan Safiye, mother of Mehmet III, who appointed Davut Ağa as architect, succeeded after his death by Dalğıç Ahmet Çavuş until 1603; Safiye meanwhile expropriated and demolished site buildings — including a Karaite Jewish quarter (its people resettled at Hasköy) and the old Venetian concession — while Saray factions criticised the enormous cost ². Mehmet III died in December 1603, Safiye was relegated to the Old Palace, and work stopped; the half-built mosque decayed for more than half a century until valide sultan Turhan Hadice, mother of Mehmet IV, visited the ruins in 1661 and resolved to rebuild it. Completed in 1665, it was dedicated on 31 October in a ceremony attended by the sultan, grand vezir Köprülü Fazıl Ahmet Pasha and the French ambassador ³.

The mosque's plan replicates Sinan's Şehzade: cruciform with semidomes on both axes, corner cupolas, octagonal turrets over the four great piers, and a dome 17.5 metres across rising 36 metres ⁴. Dependencies include the Mısır Çarşısı (Spice Bazaar) — so named because endowed with Cairo imposts — the founder's türbe holding Turhan Hadice, Mehmet IV and five later sultans, a sebil, Ahmet III's 1725 library, and the muvakkithane that Mahmut II converted in 1813 into the mosque astronomer's house for regulating prayer times ⁵.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 349–356 (Yeni Cami chapter: history, courtyard, interior, Spice Bazaar, türbe, sebil).
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