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This short
article introduces a longer one by Dr. Rabah Saoud on the life and
works of the Turkish famous architect of the 16th century.
Mimār Koca Sinān,
the "Great Architect Sinān", was born in Anatolia, Turkey in 1489;
he died in Istanbul in 1588. Generally considered the greatest of
all Ottoman architects, his career spanned about 50 years since he
was appointed chief royal architect to the Ottoman court by Sultan
Suleyman I in 1539. His buildings, mainly his great mosques, are the
archetypal image of Turkish Ottoman architecture.
During his long
career Sinān built hundreds of buildings including mosques, palaces,
chapels, tombs, schools, almshouses, schools, caravan serais,
granaries, fountains, aqueducts and hospitals. Of this diverse group
of works, his mosques have been most influential. In his mosques'
design, Sinān exerted his inventive experimentation with centralized
domed spaces, often compared with parallel developments in
Renaissance Italy. Further, he produced monuments in which the
central dome appearted weightless and the interior surfaces bathed
in light. He often designed his mosques as part of a complex
comprising schools, baths, guesthouses and hospitals.
A tentative
biography
The life story of
Sinān is somewhat complex and full of uncertainties. The successful
career of this great architect and his genius have prompted great
interest among historians of architecture and of Islamic
civilisation in the Ottoman period. Some of these scholars
constructed his life story linking it very much to his Christian
origin. As narrated in these sources, his parents are of Christian
origins, his father being a stonemason and a carpenter from Greece,
or Serbia, or may be Austria. According to these sources, Sinān
learnt his father's trade at his youth but he was snatched from his
family and taken to work for the Caliph court. With the skills
learnt at an early age, he quickly developed his career of architect
from his military service at the Janissary Corps.
To bring a balanced
approach to the real life of this astonishing personality, one has
to dig into Turkish sources which consist mainly of his personal
biography written by his friend of youth Sai Mustafa Celebi in three
texts: Tezkiret ül Bünyan, Tezkiret ül Ebniye and Tuhfet
ül Mimarin. These valuable documents were published by Apdullah
Kuran in 1987 (see bibliography). An important source also (the
entry on "Sinān" by Dogan Kuban in a recent collective work of a
team of Turkish academics, The Great Ottoman Turkish Civilisation,
2000) sheds some light on Sinān's biography.
On the basis of the
results of this extended scholarship, we gain a more accurante
picture on the circumstances that surrouded the life of our great
architect. Sometimes in 15th century Ottoman Caliphate, a Greek
Christian embraced Islam and became known as ‘Abd al-Mannān, the
servant of the Bestower. According to Tezkiret ül Bünyan,
‘Abd al-Mannān chose this name in praise of God who made him a
Muslim. He was a stonemason and a carpenter living at Kaysari,
central Anatolia. On April 15, 1489 ‘Abd al-Mannān was granted a
baby son whom he called Sinān.
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Figure 1.
Gülru Necipoglu, The Age of Sinan:
Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton
University Press, 2005). An historical and sociological tour
de force, an authority in the study of Sinān and of Islamic
art and architecture. |
From an early age,
Sinān followed his father footsteps and learnt the skills of his
trade. When he reached 21 years of age, he was recruited by the
Devshirme into the Janissary Corps within the reign of Sultan
Selim I (1512-20). When he was a conscript (acemioglan),
Sinān mentioned that he was willing to learn carpentry. Kuban
suggested that Sinān built ships, wooden bridges and probably all
sorts of temporary wooden constructions. These skills were further
developed during his military service as he participated in a number
of Ottoman campaigns including Belgrade (1521), Vienna (1529) and as
far as Baghdad (1535). He distinguished himself, particularly, in
the campaigns of Belgrade and Rhodes (1522), showing bravery and
steadfastness that he was promoted to "zenberekdji bashi", a
chief firework operator.
In 1534, Sinān
participated in the Persian war and showed great effective skills in
the battle of Lake Van when he devised ferries for the crossing of
the army through the lake. In another campaign, at Wallachia (now
Romania), Sinān built a bridge across the Danube for the crossing of
the army. This brought him fame and admiration, promoting him to the
chief of military constructions and expanding his carpentry skills
to masonry. He gained great experience from this having the
opportunity to build or repair bridges, defences and castles. Since
then, his talent attracted the Ottoman Sultans who took him as their
chief architect for the construction of mosques, schools and other
civic buildings.
The Legacy of
Sinān and his architectural's contribution
The training Sinān
had in the Janissary Corps and the contact he made with a wide range
of architectural experiences broadened his vision and developed his
skills. His travels with the army through a vast geographical region
extending along the Mediterranean Basin from Anatolia to Italy and
the Adriatic coast to Central Europe, and from Azerbijan to Baghdad
in Asia enriched his architectural knowledge and provided him with a
wealth of ideas, resources and solutions. The synthesis of this
knowledge was reflected in his famous constructions as seen in his
chief work the Suleymaniyye Mosque (1550-1557).
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Figure 2.
Sinan depicted preparing the grave of Suleyman
the Magnificent by Nakkash Osman. Repainted by Ilhan Goksen.
Kayseri Selcuklu-Osmanli Mimarisi ve Bezemeleri, Ord. Prof.
Dr. A. Süheyl Ünver Nakishanesi Yorumuyla, (ed. by. Nil Sari and
others). Kayseri, 2006. |
Sinān's biographer
Sai Mustafa Celebi, who was his friend, counted some 343 buildings
as shown in the table below. However, the three sources mentionned
above (Tezkiret ül Bünyan, Tezkiret ül Ebniye, Tuhfet ül Mimarin)
together listed a staggering total of 477 buildings. In geographical
terms his work stretched over most of the regions of the Ottoman
Caliphate including, for example, the Mosque of Khorsaw Pasha in
Aleppo, the Mosque of Sultan Suleyman in Damascus, the dome of the
sanctuary of Al-Haram Al-Shareef in al-Quds and the school of Sultan
Suleyman in Makkah, Mosque of Mehmed Pasha in Sofia and in
Herzegovina, Mosque of Mustapha Pasha in Ofen (Budapest), and the
Palace of Mehmed Pasha in Sarajevo.
As established in
the article "Sinān" in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (first
edition, Leiden, 1934, p. 428), the legacy of Sinān amounts to about
330 buildings, including mosques (jāmi' and masjid),
schools (general schools or madrasa as well as Quranic schools),
palaces, baths, mausoleums, public kitchens, rest houses or
caravansaries, bridges, aqueducts, hospitals and store houses (makhzan).
For an accurate
evaluation of Sinān's architectural contribution, the reader is
advised to consult the bibliography below and in particular the
valuable publication of the Journal of the Islamic Environmental
Design Research Centre and the authoritative book published by
Gülru Necipoglu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the
Ottoman Empire (Figure 1).
Sinān has been
compared to Michelangelo of the European Renaissance that was
nicknamed Michelangelo of the Ottomans. His works in Suleymaniya
Mosque (1550-56) at Istanbul and Selimye Mosque (1551-74) at Edirne
are the finest and often compared to Renaissance works of Florence,
especially those of Alberti (1404- 1472). Kostof extended this
comparison to Renaissance Venice.
by: FSTC Limited
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