Religious Art & Worldviews · Artists
Chief architect of the Ottoman sultans for fifty years, builder of the Süleymaniye and the Selimiye — the classical Ottoman mosque perfected.
Tagged: Architecture Early Modern Liturgical Ottoman Architecture Muslim Sunni Islam
Sinan, a Christian-born recruit who rose through the Janissaries to become the sultan's chief architect, designed more than three hundred buildings. His career is an escalation: the Şehzade as apprenticeship, the Süleymaniye as journeyman work, the Selimiye at Edirne — his own words — as the masterpiece.
The pictured Selimiye (1568–1574) sets its dome on eight piers in a single unbroken space, the mihrab lit like a stage: Ottoman architecture's answer to Hagia Sophia, built a thousand years after it.
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