Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City (59 page)

Taking the street parallel to the Golden Horn, one soon comes to a crossroads where stand several classical türbes. The finest and most elaborate of these is that of Ferhat Pa
ş
a, octagonal in structure with a richly decorated cornice and polychrome voussoirs and window-frames.

Further up the street that leads back towards Eyüp Camii two classical türbes of great simplicity face one another. The one on the left is that of Sokollu Mehmet Pa
ş
a, built by Sinan in about 1572; it forms part of a small külliye. Elegant and well-proportioned, it is severely plain, but the interior contains some interesting stained glass, partly ancient and partly a modern imitation but very well done; alternate windows are predominantly blue and green. A little colonnade attaches the türbe to the dershane of the very fine medrese of the complex. Notice the handsome identical doorways of the two buildings, differing only in that the rich polychrome work of the türbe is in verd antique, that of the dershane in red conglomerate marble. The dershane also has stained glass windows, but they are modern and not so good as those in the türbe. Its dome is supported on squinches of very bold stalactites. The opposite door leads into the medrese courtyard, long and narrow, its colonnade having ten domes on the long sides, only three on the ends. The building has been well restored and is used as a children’s clinic: it is so pretty and charming, with a delightfully well-kept garden, that it must almost be a pleasure to be a patient! In the little garden of the türbe are buried the family and descendants of Sokollu Mehmet, and just beyond the graveyard is a building in the same style as the dershane: this is the dar-ül kura or school for the various methods of reading the Kuran. This little complex as a whole is certainly one of Sinan’s most attractive.

Sokollu Mehmet Pa
ş
a was perhaps the greatest and most capable of the long line of able grand vezirs of the sixteenth century. He was the son of a Bosnian priest and was born in the castle of Sokol, “the falcon’s nest”, in Bosnia. But he was taken in the dev
ş
irme and brought up in the Palace School at the Saray. He married the princess Ismihan Sultan, daughter of Sultan Selim the Sot. His outstanding genius brought him early preferment and he successively held the posts of Lord High Treasurer, Grand Admiral, Beylerbey of Rumelia, Vezir, and finally Grand Vezir, a position which he held continuously for 15 years under three sultans, Süleyman, Selim II and Murat III, from 1564 to 1579, in which year he was murdered in the Divan itself by a mad soldier. Posterity owes him three of the most beautiful architectural monuments in Istanbul: the present complex, the mosque at Azap Kap
ı
, and – most beautiful of all – the mosque at Kadirga Liman under the Hippodrome; all were the work of Sinan.

The türbe across the street from Sokollu’s is that of Siyavu
ş
Pa
ş
a, austere like the other but adorned within by inscriptions and pendentives in excellent Iznik tiles. It is also by Sinan; Siyavu
ş
outlived Sinan by a dozen years and died in 1601, but he seems to have had Sinan build this türbe originally for some of his children who died young, and then was finally buried there himself. Still another türbe by Sinan is to be found half-way up a narrow and picturesque little alleyway beside the türbe of Siyavu
ş
that leads back towards the mosque of Eyüp through a forest of tombstones. This is the tomb of Pertev Pa
ş
a, of a very unusual design, rectangular and more like a house than a tomb. It was originally divided into two equal areas each covered by a dome of wood exquisitely painted; this survived until 1927 when it fell victim to neglect. Inside are still to be seen some charming marble sarcophagi of Pertev and his family.

One has now come full circle back to the north gate of the courtyard of Eyüp Camii. If one crosses the court and takes the inner of the two roads parallel with the Golden Horn, one soon comes to the second group of buildings that make Eyüp illustrious. The first, K
ı
z
ı
l Mescit, is perhaps hardly worth a visit though it has been reasonably well restored. Built in 1581 by Kiremitçi Süleyman Çelebi, it is of the simplest type, a rectangular room of stone and brick with a tiled roof and a brick minaret. A little farther on, on the opposite side of the street stands the mosque of Silahi Mehmet Bey, also of the simplest type but nearly a century older than the other and with a fascinating minaret. This is hexagonal in shape, built of stone and brick and without a balcony, but instead a sort of lantern with six windows and a tall conical cap. There are in the city three or four other minarets with this lantern arrangement, but this is much the most striking and pretty.

Opposite Silahi is the grandest and most interesting mosque in Eyüp, that of Zal Mahmut Pa
ş
a, a mature but unique work of Sinan. Its date of construction is unknown; that usually given, 1551, is at least 20 years too early, and a date in the mid 1570s seems most probable. Zal was a rather unsavoury character: when in 1553 Süleyman had his son Mustafa put to death, it was Mahmut (who got his forename Zal from that of a Persian hero famous for his Herculean strength) who finally overcame the young princes resistance and strangled him. Later he married the Princess
Ş
ah Sultan, sister of Selim the Sot, as a reward, it is said, for having smoothed that princes path to the throne by the elimination of his brother. In 1580, Zal and his wife died in a single night.

A fine view of the south façade of the building may be had from the garden of Silahi Camii which is a little higher. With its four tiers of windows and its great height and squareness it looks more like a palace than a mosque. The north façade is even more towering, for the mosque is built on a slope and supported on vaulted substructures in which rooms for the lower medrese have been made. The mosque is constructed of alternate courses of stone and brick. A handsome porch of five bays gives access to the interior. This is a vast rectangular room; the massive dome arches spring on the east from supports in the wall itself, on the west from thick and rather stubby pillars some distance in from the west wall; galleries supported on a rather heavy arcade, some of whose arches are of the ogive type, run round three sides. The walls, which rise in a rectangle to the full height of the dome drum, are pierced with many windows and in spite of the width of the galleries provide plenty of light. The general effect of the interior is perhaps a little heavy but nonetheless grand and impressive: and it is quite different from that of any other mosque.

The leaves of the main entrance door are fine inlaid work in wood, as are the mimber and mahfil in carved marble. The only other remaining decoration is some excellent faience in the mihrab; perhaps there was once more tile work which has perished, for Evliya tells us that “architectural ornaments and decorations are nowhere lavished in so prodigal a way as here”; and he calls it “the finest of all the mosques in the Ottoman empire built by vezirs,” and adds: “the architect Sinan in this building displayed his utmost art.” The mosque was for many years in a state of near ruin but has now been very well restored.

The complex includes two medreses, like the mosque itself built of stone and brick, one round three sides of the main courtyard, the other on a lower level to the north, enclosing two sides of the türbe garden. They are both extremely picturesque and irregular in design. In the upper medrese most of the south side consists of a building without a portico, which looks rather like an imaret and may perhaps have served as one. The dershane is not in the centre of the west wall but has been shifted to near the north end, and the last arches of the portico on this side are smaller than the others. There is no obvious reason for any of these abnormalities but they have a certain charm, enhanced by the ogive arches of the arcade. At the north-east corner a long flight of steps leads down to the garden of the türbe. The lower medrese partly encloses two sides of it. It is an octagonal building of the usual type in which are buried Zal and his wife.

A door in the east wall of the türbe garden leads to another külliye of a very different type, one of the most delightful of the smaller baroque complexes. It consists of an elaborate türbe and mektep with a sebil on the street and a çe
ş
me in the garden. It was built at the end of the eighteenth century by
Ş
ah Sultan, a sister of Selim III. The undulating façades of the türbe and the amusing turned back staircase of the mektep are very charming.

One now returns to the inner street along which there are two or three buildings that are worth at least a glance. One comes first to the small mosque of Cezari Kas
ı
m Pa
ş
a, erected in 1515. It has a pretty porch with four handsome antique columns of red granite, and the balcony of the minaret is supported on an unusual zigzag corbel. A little further down the street is the mosque of the Defterdar (Lord High Treasurer) Mahmut Efendi; it is also ancient in foundation, but wholly rebuilt in the eighteenth century and of little interest in itself. In the garden is the founder’s curious open türbe with a dome supported on arches with scalloped soffits.

This completes our stroll to Eyüp, after which we walk back to the iskele to take a ferry back along the Golden Horn to the Galata Bridge.