Sinan

Sinan (1489-1588), the greatest architect of the early Ottoman Empire in Constantinople (now İstanbul). Credited with over 300 buildings, he designed mosques, tombs, palaces, and municipal buildings, as well as such public works as aqueducts and fountains. As chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, he was responsible for building mosques in the newly conquered (1453) Christian city of Constantinople. He took as his model Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom), the 1,000-year-old domed Christian basilica, the greatest building of the Byzantine Empire. In adapting Hagia Sophia's axial plan—a central-domed square with two flanking half domes—Sinan created a new type that was completely square, surmounted by one immense central dome set on a high drum and ringed by numerous smaller domes, and flanked at the corners by minarets. In his masterpiece, the huge Suleimaniye Mosque (1550-1557) in İstanbul, he achieved the effect of a light, disembodied interior through the use of 138 arched windows, rich marble sheathing, continuously alternating planes and curved surfaces, and stalactite decorations that mask structural elements. This form set the style for mosques throughout the later Ottoman Empire. See also Islamic Art and Architecture.