Mihrimah Sultan Mosque, Edirnekapı

History

The Mihrimah Sultan Mosque at Edirnekapı is the second of two Istanbul mosques commissioned by Mihrimah Sultan, daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent and Hürrem Sultan (the first is in Üsküdar). Building permission was confirmed in 1563, and by spring 1566 the mosque was finished — still in Suleiman's lifetime, but after the death of her husband, Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha (1561). The mosque stands at the summit of Istanbul's Sixth Hill, the highest point of the old city, and dominates its skyline from the landward side. It was badly damaged by the earthquakes of 1719, 1766 and 1894, when the minaret collapsed halfway; it was restored in 1956–57 and 2007–2010. The külliye includes the mosque, a madrasa, baths, a mausoleum, and shops whose rental income supported the complex.

Architecture

The mosque body is essentially a cube topped by a hemispherical dome approximately 20 m in diameter and 37 m high. The dome is carried by four corner towers — not by interior columns — and the tympana on each of the four sides are pierced by three rows of windows, with an additional row at the drum. The absence of interior columns creates an uninterrupted spatial volume. Of the stained glass, only the windows in plaster frames on the mihrab wall are considered original. The mosque has only one minaret — unusual for an imperial foundation of this scale. Structurally, the mosque is recognised as Sinan's most direct precursor to the Selimiye in Edirne: he was testing maximum dome span supported only by peripheral towers, pushing the walls almost entirely towards fenestration.

Photographs

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org
• tr.wikipedia.org
• kuku.travel
• trthaber.com
• kulturelmiras.ibb.istanbul
• islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
• relife.global
• Google Maps