The Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque is an Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 mosque

Mosque

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...

 located in the Kadirga neighborhood of the Fatih

Fatih

Fatih is a municipality and district in Istanbul, Turkey that encompasses most of the peninsula coinciding with historic Constantinople. In 2009, the district of Eminönü, formerly a separate municipality located at the tip of the peninsula, was merged into Fatih...

 district of Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

.

History

The Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque was designed by Ottoman imperial architect Mimar Sinan for Grand Vizier

Grand Vizier

Grand Vizier, in Turkish Vezir-i Azam or Sadr-ı Azam , deriving from the Arabic word vizier , was the greatest minister of the Sultan, with absolute power of attorney and, in principle, dismissable only by the Sultan himself...

 Sokollu Mehmet Pasha (husband of one of the granddaughters of Sultan

Sultan

Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...

 Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman I was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in the East, as "The Lawgiver" , for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system...

, Princess Esmahan. Its building took place from 1571 to 1572. The mosque is officially named after Princess Esmahan, but is more commonly known for its association with her far more famous husband.

Exterior

The mosque is noted for its architecturally challenging location on a steep slope. Sinan resolved this issue by fronting the mosque with a two-story courtyard. The bottom story (now in ruins) was divided into shops, whose rents were intended to help support the upkeep of mosque. The upper story with an open colonnaded courtyard had the spaces between the columns on three sides walled off to form small rooms, each with a small window, fireplace and niche to store bedding, forming the living accommodations for a madrasah

Madrasah

Madrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...

. Instruction for students was given in the prayer hall itself, or in the dershane, a large domed room over the western staircase. The fourth side of the courtyard is the mosque itself, which is designed as a hexagon inscribed in a rectangle, topped by a dome with four small semi-domes in the corners.

Interior

The interior of the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque is famous for its large quantities of exquisite İznik tiles

Iznik pottery

İznik pottery, named after the town in western Anatolia where it was made, is highly decorated ceramics that was produced between the late 15th and 17th centuries....

, set in a very wide variety of blue and green floral designs, with panels of calligraphy

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...

 in white letters on a blue field. The interior columns make use of polychrome marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

. The minbar

Minbar

A minbar is a pulpit in the mosque where the imam stands to deliver sermons or in the Hussainia where the speaker sits and lectures the congregation...

is made of white marble with a conical cap, sheathed in turquoise tiles, which also frame the mihrab

Mihrab

A mihrab is semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla; that is, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca and hence the direction that Muslims should face when praying...

. The windows above the mithrab are stained glass. Above the door, framed by a gold design, is a fragment of the Kaaba

Kaaba

The Kaaba is a cuboid-shaped building in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and is the most sacred site in Islam. The Qur'an states that the Kaaba was constructed by Abraham, or Ibraheem, in Arabic, and his son Ishmael, or Ismaeel, as said in Arabic, after he had settled in Arabia. The building has a mosque...

 in Mecca

Mecca

Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...

; other fragments of this black stone are in the minbar and mihrab.

External links

• Sokullu Mehmet Pasha Camii (Kadirga), at "Respect to Sinan" (www.sinanasaygi.org)
• Gallery of Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque in Fotopedia