Mimar Sinan: The Albanian Master Architect Of The Ottoman Empire

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• published: 02 Jun 2015
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Koca Mi'mâr Sinân Âğâ (Ottoman Turkish: معمار سينان‎; Modern Turkish: Mimar Sinan, , "Sinan the Architect") (c. 1489/1490 – July 17, 1588) was the chief Ottoman architect (Turkish: mimar) and civil engineer for sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III. He was responsible for the construction of more than 300 major structures and other more modest projects, such as his Islamic primary schools (sibyan mektebs). His apprentices would later design the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Stari Most in Mostar, and help design the Taj Mahal in the Mughal Empire. The son of a stonemason, he received a technical education and became a military engineer. He rose rapidly through the ranks to become first an officer and finally a Janissary commander, with the honorific title of ağa. He refined his architectural and engineering skills while on campaign with the Janissaries, becoming expert at constructing fortifications of all kinds, as well as military infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts. At about the age of fifty, he was appointed as chief royal architect, applying the technical skills he had acquired in the army to the "creation of fine religious buildings" and civic structures of all kinds. He remained in this post for almost fifty years. His masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, although his most famous work is the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. He headed an extensive governmental department and trained many assistants who, in turn, distinguished themselves, including Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, architect of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. He is considered the greatest architect of the classical period of Ottoman architecture, and has been compared to Michelangelo, his contemporary in the West. Michelangelo and his plans for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome were well known in Istanbul, since Leonardo da Vinci and he had been invited, in 1502 and 1505 respectively, by the Sublime Porte to submit plans for a bridge spanning the Golden Horn. According to contemporary biographer, Mustafa Sâi Çelebi, Sinan was born in 1489 (c. 1490 according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1491 according to the Dictionary of Islamic Architecture and sometime between 1494 and 1499, according to the Turkish professor and architect Reha Günay) with the name Joseph. He was born either an Armenian, Cappadocian Greek, Albanian, or a Christian Turk in a small town called Ağırnas near the city of Kayseri in Anatolia (as stated in an order by Sultan Selim II). One argument that lends credence to his Armenian or Greek background is a decree by Selim II dated Ramadan 7 981 (ca. Dec. 30, 1573), which grants Sinan's request to forgive and spare his relatives from the general exile of Kayseri's Armenian communities to the island of Cyprus; while Godfrey Goodwin stated that "after the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1571, when Selim II decided to repopulate the island by transferring Rum (Orthodox Christian) families from the Karaman Eyalet, Sinan intervened on behalf of his family and obtained two orders from the Sultan in council exempting them from deportation." According to Herbert J. Muller he "seems to have been an Armenian — though it is almost a criminal offense in Turkey today to mention this probability." Lucy Der Manuelian of Tufts University suggests that "he can be identified as an Armenian through a document in the imperial archives and other evidence." The scholars who support the thesis of his Cappadocian Greek background have identified his father as a stonemason and carpenter by the name of Christos (Greek Χρήστος), a common Greek name. It is certain that both his parents were of the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, since the Ottoman archives of that epoch recorded only information about the religion of the population, as the concept of ethnicity was irrelevant to the religion-based Ottoman Millet system. It is possible that his Orthodox Christian parents (father and mother) were of different ethnic backgrounds, as the areas near Ağırnas in the Sanjak of Kayseriyye (corresponding to the present-day Kayseri Province) within the Karaman Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire had a large community of Greeks and Armenians during the Ottoman period, and intermarriages were not uncommon. Several scholars have cited Sinan's possible Albanian origin. According to the British scholar Percy Brown and the Indian scholar Vidya Dhar Mahajan, the Mughal Emperor Babur was very dissatisfied from the local Indian architecture and planning, thus he invited "certain pupils of the leading Ottoman architect Sinan, the Albanian genius, to carry out his architectural schemes."