Şehzade Mosque

The mosque is entered through a marble-paved colonnaded forecourt with an area equal to that of the mosque itself.[10] The courtyard is bordered by a portico with five domed bays on each side, with arches in alternating pink and white marble. At the center is an ablution fountain (şadırvan), which was a later donation from Sultan Murat IV.[11]

Sinan added domed porticos along the lateral façades of the building (on the northeast and southwest sides) that help to conceal the supporting buttresses o the structure and to give the exterior a greater sense of monumentality.[12][13] The twin minarets, attached to the mosque, have two balconies with muqarnas sculpting and interlacing geometric decoration in low relief carved on their shafts. This level of decorative detail on minarets is particular to this mosque and was rarely repeated in later Ottoman mosques.[11] While mosques sponsored by other members of the royal family sometimes had two minarets, the Şehzade Mosque is the only non-sultanic mosque designed by Sinan with two minarets that each had two balconies.[14]

• Exterior of the mosque
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  Main gate to the courtyard
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  The mosque courtyard
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  Entrance to the mosque from the courtyard
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  View of the mosque's northeast side and its external portico
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  View of the mosque's southeast side (behind the mihrab)
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  Details of the minarets

Cross section and plan by Cornelius Gurlitt, 1912

The mosque has a square plan covered by a central dome flanked by four half-domes, with four smaller domes occupying the corners. The central dome is supported by four pillars at its corners. It has a diameter of 19 metres (62 ft) and a height of 37 metres (121 ft).[15]

View of the dome and semi-domes of the mosque

This design represents the culmination of the previous domed and semi-domed buildings in Ottoman architecture, bringing complete symmetry to the domed designs that earlier Ottoman architects had experimented with.[16] An early version of this design, on a smaller scale, had been used before Sinan in the Fatih Pasha Mosque in Diyarbakır, dated to 1520 or 1523.[17][18]

In addition to the layout's symmetry, Sinan's early innovations are evident in the way he organized the structural supports of the dome. Instead of having the dome rest on thick walls all around it (as was previously common), he concentrated the load-bearing supports into a limited number of buttresses along the outer walls of the mosque and in four pillars inside the mosque itself at the corners of the dome. This allowed for the walls in between the buttresses to be thinner, which in turn allowed for more windows to bring in more light.[12] Sinan also moved the outer walls inward, near the inner edge of the buttresses, so that the buttresses themselves would be less noticeable from the inside (on the outside, he added porticos to conceal them, as mentioned above).[12] The four heavy pillars supporting the dome were a drawback of the design because they distracted from the unity of the space, but Sinan tried to compensate for this by giving them irregular shapes that make them appear less massive.[11]

• Interior of the mosque
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  Interior view
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  Dome and semi-domes
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  The central dome
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  View of the mihrab and minbar
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  Detail of one of the main pillars
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  Details above the main entrance

Sinan considered the Sehzade Mosque his "apprentice" work and was not satisfied with it.[6][19][20] During the rest of his career he did not repeat its layout in any of his other works. He instead experimented with other designs that seemed to aim for a completely unified interior space and for ways to emphasize the visitor's perception of the main dome upon entering a mosque. One of the results of this logic was that any space that did not belong to the central domed space was reduced to a minimum, subordinate role, if not altogether absent.[21]

Despite Sinan's opinion, the symmetrical design of the Şehzade Mosque, with its central dome and four semi-domes, proved popular with later architects in the Ottoman Empire. It was repeated in classical Ottoman mosques built after Sinan, such as the Sultan Ahmed I Mosque, the New Mosque at Eminönü, and the 18th-century reconstruction of the Fatih Mosque.[22][23] It is even found in the 19th-century Mosque of Muhammad Ali in Cairo.[24][25]

There are five mausoleums (türbe) in the funerary garden to the south of the mosque. The earliest and largest is that of Şehzade Mehmed which has a Persian foundation inscription over the entrance with a date of 1543–44.[27] The mausoleum is an octagonal structure, with a fluted dome, polychrome stonework and a triple-arched portico. The interior walls are covered with multi-coloured cuerda seca tiles and the windows have stained glass.[28][lower-alpha 1] An unusual feature is the rectangular wooden throne over Mehmed's sarcophagus which symbolized his status as the heir apparent. Within the mausoleum there are also the tombs of Mehmed's daughter Hümaşah Sultan and his youngest brother Şehzade Cihangir (d. 1553). The identity of the fourth sarcophagus in not known.[32]

• Mausoleum of Şehzade Mehmed
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  Exterior of the Mausoleum of Şehzade Mehmed
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  View of the tombs inside the mausoleum
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  View of the tiled walls and the wooden throne above Mehmed's cenotaph
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  View of the dome
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  Detail of the cuerda seca tiles

To the south of the Şehzade mausoleum is the smaller octagonal türbe of Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha, which was also designed by Sinan. The inscription gives the year as AH 968 (1560–61). Rüstem Pasha was the husband of Mihrimah, the daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent. Like the Rüstem Pasha Mosque it is decorated with a large number of underglazed Iznik tiles.[33][34] By the gate to the complex is the türbe of Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, son-in-law of Murat III, who died in 1603.[35] The türbe was designed by Dalgıç Ahmed Çavuş, and almost equals that of Şehzade Mehmed in design and use of tiled decoration.[36]

• Other mausoleums
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  Mausoleum of Rüstem Pasha
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  Interior of Rüstem Pasha's mausoleum
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  Mausoleum of Ibrahim Pasha
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  Entrance to Ibrahim Pasha's mausoleum
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  Interior of Ibrahim Pasha's mausoleum

It was said that the "green column" standing at the edge of the cemetery wall of Sehzade complex facing Şehzade Mosque and the street was erected at the location deemed to be the center of Istanbul.[37][38]