He was born 533 years ago he met the architect Sinan, the founder of the Ottoman architectural identity

On the 533rd anniversary of his birth, which falls today, Friday, we review in this report the life and achievements of the most famous Ottoman and Islamic architects, Sinan Pasha, and his role in establishing a distinctive and special architectural identity for the Ottoman civilization, which witnessed its heyday in the 99 years of his life.

Despite the passage of 434 years since the death of the most famous and most ingenious of the Ottoman architects, the memory of the architect Sinan Pasha is still immortalized until today, through his architectural monuments, which numbered about 476 buildings (between construction and design), of which 196 buildings have reached our time. .

During the past year, his stone house in which he was born, in Kayseri in central Turkey, received nearly 70,000 visitors. The house turned into a museum in 2004, which is one of the monuments that commemorate the hero of our story in this report.

Many Western historians sang in praise of him. Here is the Russian orientalist Vasily Barthold, in his book The Islamic Civilization, who says of him: "The works executed by Architect Sinan were not less technically than European architectural works in the Renaissance." While the German scientist and professor of the history of architecture at the University of Vienna H. Klok said: "Sinan is artistically superior to Michelangelo, the owner of the largest artistic name in European civilization."

Birth and upbringing

According to most historians, Sinan Pasha was born into a Christian family in the village of Agranas of the Ottoman state of Qaraman (currently Kayseri) on April 5, 1489 during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II. He was among the Christians recruited by the state, known as "Aldoshirameh", and converted to Islam at the age of 23 during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I.

His family moved to Istanbul when he was young, and there Sinan joined the Ajami Oglaner Primary Military School, where he learned reading, writing and applied sciences, then joined the Janissaries while Sultan Selim I prepared to launch a military campaign against the Safavids.

During his participation in the military campaigns against Egypt, the Safavids and Eastern Europe, the star of Sinan emerged, who succeeded in constructing bridges and building ships, and won the admiration, appreciation and confidence of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who granted him the position of "chief architect" to separate the architect Sinan from the army and dedicate his life to architecture.

365 architectural monuments

Mimar Sinan continued as chief architect for 49 years during the reigns of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan Selim II, and Sultan Murad III.

During that period, Sinan Pasha left behind him 365 architectural monuments around the world, represented in 92 large mosques, 52 small mosques, 55 schools, 7 houses for memorizing the Holy Quran, 20 mausoleums, 17 emirate houses, 3 hospitals, 6 waterways, 10 bridges, 20 inns, 36 palaces, 8 storehouses, and 48 bathrooms.

In addition to his important works in the expansion of the Grand Mosque and its monuments in Jerusalem and Damascus, its effects are spread throughout the lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire. He has three works that represent the most important stages of his career: Shehzade Mosque in Istanbul in 1548, which represents the stage of his apprenticeship, the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul in 1557, which represents the stage of maturity, and the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne in 1575, which represents the stage of professorship.

Sulaymaniyah Mosque Sinan's masterpiece

Architect Sinan Pasha built the Suleymaniye Mosque between 1550 and 1557 in honor of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and it is considered one of the most important examples of classical Ottoman architecture overlooking the Bosphorus in the Sulaymaniyah region.

Just as Sinan excelled in acoustics engineering inside the mosque, he mastered integrating his architectural art with symbols and dates belonging to Sultan Suleiman I (the legal), most notably the mosque containing 4 minarets containing 10 balconies, indicating that the legal is the fourth sultan since the conquest of Istanbul, and the tenth among the sultans of the state. Ottoman.

Sinan's creativity was not limited to design and construction, but he was a scientist with building materials and their shelf life. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this is what the Turkish engineers found when they began restoring the Suleymaniye Mosque a few years ago. When they removed the stones of one of the arches to replace them with a new one, under the stones was found a message written in Sinan script placed inside a bottle explaining the place from which the stones were brought and the method of re-installing them.

Which indicates that Sinan was fully aware that his mosque would remain steadfast against the factors of time and the earthquakes of Istanbul, in addition to knowing that the time would come to repair some parts, so he left his message in the place he expected that it would need restoration in the future.