Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque, Kadırga

Interesting facts

The complex includes a dervish lodge with twenty cells, a rare surviving example of a lodge from the classical Ottoman period.

The madrasa had sixteen small domed rooms for students, arranged in an L-shape around the courtyard.

Visitors enter by a staircase that passes directly beneath the madrasa's domed teaching hall before emerging into the courtyard.

Although the mosque was a joint foundation with his wife Ismihan Sultan, only Sokollu Mehmed Pasha is named on the foundation inscription.

The Iznik tiles, made with the underglaze technique at the height of the workshops' production, cover the qibla wall and all six pendentives.

The sheikh appointed to the lodge died in 1574 before it was finished, showing that the lodge was completed later than the mosque.

The fragments of the Kaaba are set in gilded frames, including one placed under the conical cap of the minbar.

Rare original painted decoration from the sixteenth century still survives above the north entrance vestibule and on the gallery ceilings.

Why it is worth it

On a steep slope in the old quarter of Kadırga in Istanbul, the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque hides one of the most beautiful tiled interiors of the Ottoman world behind a modest courtyard. It is a work of Mimar Sinan, chief architect of the Ottoman court, built for the Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and his wife Esmahan Sultan, a daughter of Selim II and granddaughter of Suleiman the Magnificent.

Work began around 1568 and was completed in 1571 or 1572. Sinan had to fit the mosque onto a steep site, and he solved it by fronting the prayer hall with a two-storey courtyard. The lower storey was given over to shops whose rents supported the mosque; on the upper storey the spaces between the columns of the arcade were walled off to make small rooms, with windows, fireplaces and niches, for the students of the madrasa. At the centre of the courtyard stands a fountain for ablutions, its onion-shaped dome carried on twelve columns, and a single minaret rises at the northeast corner.

Inside, the prayer hall is planned as a hexagon set within a rectangle, covered by a single dome 13 metres across and 22.8 metres high, with four small half-domes in the corners. The walls are famous for their Iznik tiles, with flowering designs in blue, red and green, and panels of white calligraphy in thuluth script on a blue ground. The tall marble minbar wears a conical cap sheathed in tiles, and stained glass fills the windows above the mihrab. Small fragments said to come from the Black Stone of the Kaaba in Mecca are set above the entrance, in the minbar and in the mihrab. The walls themselves are of granite and marble, and the interior columns are of coloured marble.

Getting there

The mosque stands in the Kadırga neighbourhood of Fatih, Istanbul's historic peninsula, about 1.4 km from Eminönü. The nearest airport is Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport (SAW), about 31 km away on the Asian side; Istanbul Airport (IST) serves the city from the European side.

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From the encyclopaedia

Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque is a 16th-century Ottoman mosque in the Kadırga neighborhood in Fatih district, Istanbul, Turkey. It was commissioned jointly by the grand vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and his wife Ismihan Sultan. It was designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan and completed in 1571/2. The mosque is noted for the fine quality of the Iznik tiles that decorate the interior walls.

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Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia