Selimiye Mosque
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Sinan was about 80 when he built the Selimiye, which he called his masterwork after the ลehzade, his apprentice work, and the Sรผleymaniye, his journeyman work.
- Sinan's biographer records his boast that this dome stands six cubits higher and four cubits wider than that of Hagia Sophia.
- Two of the minarets contain three separate spiral staircases, so three muezzins could climb to the three balconies without ever meeting.
- According to legend, the site was once a tulip garden whose owner refused to sell, and Sinan carved an upside-down tulip on the muezzins' platform to mark her stubbornness.
- The dome rests on just eight piers linked by arches, the most accomplished version of the eight-support plan Sinan developed over his career.
- The mosque appeared on the reverse of Turkey's 10,000 lira banknotes issued between 1982 and 1995.
- The complex around the mosque includes two madrasas, an elementary school and a long covered market known as the arasta.
Why it is worth it
The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is the building its architect considered his masterpiece. Mimar Sinan, the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, built it for Sultan Selim II between 1568 and 1575, and it is widely regarded as the summit of Ottoman โ and much of Islamic โ architecture. Selim chose Edirne, the former capital and his favourite city, rather than Istanbul, and the mosque was paid for in part from the spoils of the conquest of Cyprus. The sultan died in 1574 without seeing it finished.
Sinan's aim was to match the dome of Hagia Sophia, and here he finally did: the hemispherical dome spans about 31 metres and rises some 42 metres, carried on eight massive piers that are partly merged into the outer walls. Because the thrust is hidden in buttresses, the walls between could be opened with row upon row of windows, and the prayer hall is flooded with light. At its centre, directly beneath the dome, stands the muezzins' platform, raised on low arches โ an unusual placement that Sinan never repeated, making the dome the undisputed focus of the space.
Look for the details. The mihrab sits in a deep apse lit from three sides, so that the Iznik tiles around it glow in daylight; the sultan's private loge in the corner is lined with more of these tiles, some of which were taken to Russia after the war of 1877โ1878. Outside, four identical minarets, among the tallest the Ottomans ever built at nearly 71 metres, stand at the corners of the prayer hall and frame the dome from every direction. On the orders of Atatรผrk, damage from the artillery of the 1913 siege was deliberately left visible as a warning to later generations.
The mosque, together with its religious schools, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. The former medreses now house a foundations museum and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts of Edirne, and the mosque's hilltop site makes it visible across the whole city.
Getting there
The mosque stands in the centre of Edirne, close to the borders with Greece and Bulgaria. The nearest airport is Alexandroupoli (AXD) in Greece, about 104 km away; the nearest in Turkey is Tekirdaฤ รorlu (TEQ), about 129 km.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Selimiye Mosque is an Ottoman imperial mosque, located in the city of Edirne, Turkey. It was commissioned by Sultan Selim II and was built by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan between 1568 and 1575. It was considered by Sinan to be his masterpiece and is one of the highest achievements of Islamic architecture as a whole and Ottoman architecture in particular. The mosque, together with its kรผlliye, was included on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2011.
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