Did one man really build a dome to beat Hagia Sophia? The Ottoman architect Sinan said he did. This is the Selimiye Mosque, in Edirne, and Sinan called it his masterpiece.
Edirne is a former capital of the Ottoman Empire. Around 1568, Sultan Selim the Second ordered a great mosque on a hilltop above the city. Sinan was already around eighty. He described his career in three stages, apprentice, journeyman and master, and he placed this mosque in the last.
His plan was bold. A single huge dome rests on eight pillars, so the prayer hall opens into one vast space. The dome is about thirty-one metres across. Sinan wrote that he had made it wider and higher than the dome of Hagia Sophia.
Modern measurements tell a more complicated story. The two domes are very close in width, and sources give slightly different figures for both. Hagia Sophia's dome stands higher above the floor, but it is flatter, so what Sinan meant is still debated.
Four slender minarets, about seventy metres tall, frame the dome from the corners of the prayer hall. Inside, the muezzin platform stands right under the dome, a placement Sinan never repeated, and Iznik tiles decorate the mihrab and the sultan's loge.
The mosque was completed around 1575, shortly after Sultan Selim died. Around it stand Islamic schools, a covered market and a library. In 2011, UNESCO listed the mosque and its complex as a World Heritage Site.
The Selimiye Mosque was built at the peak of Ottoman military and cultural power. Sultan Selim II, the son and successor of Suleiman the Magnificent, chose Edirne instead of Istanbul (the Ottoman capital) as the location to build his own sultanic mosque. The reasons for this decision are a matter of debate among historians. Selim II appeared to have a passion for the city, having served as its governor between 1548 and 1550, and he visited it frequently after becoming sultan. Edirne, a former Ottoman capital, was also one of the most important cities in the empire and a major stop on the imperial highway between Istanbul and the Balkan provinces. Other motivations may have included the fact that there were no more prominent hilltop sites in Istanbul available for the construction of an imperial mosque complex – at least not without resorting to mass expropriations. At the time of the mosque's commission, Selim II had also not commanded a victorious military campaign, which Islamic scholars of the time considered to be a requirement for building a sultanic mosque in Istanbul.
In March 1568, Selim II had asked Sinan to renovate the city's Old Mosque. Plans for a new imperial mosque, located on the hilltop above the Old Mosque, were probably begun around the same time. Construction on the mosque was begun in 1568 or 1569 (976 AH) and completed in 1574 or 1575 (982 AH). The mosque's construction and its waqf (charitable endowment) were ultimately funded with the help of the sultan's share of the spoils from the successful conquest of Cyprus, which was completed in 1571 with the surrender of Famagusta. Selim II died in December 1574, before he was able to see the mosque fully completed.
Later history
The mosque underwent its first repairs by Sinan in 1584, after minor damage caused by lightning. An earthquake in 1752 also caused minor damage. In 1808 some of the calligraphic decoration in the mosque was restored and a roof was added over the courtyard fountain, though it has since disappeared. During the reign of Abdülmecid I (1839–1861), the mosque's interior was re-plastered and its decoration redone, in a style partially imitating the former ornamentation.
In 1865, Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i Faith, arrived with his family to Edirne as a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire and resided in a house near Selimiye Mosque, which he visited often until 1868. It was at Selimiye mosque where he was supposed to have had an open debate with Mírzá Yaḥyá Núrí (also known by the title of Ṣubḥ-i-Azal), an important event in the split of Bábism, which ultimately resulted in the formation of the Baha'i Faith guided by Baha'u'llah and of Azalism guided by Mírzá Yaḥyá.
During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, some of the decorative tiles on the walls of the sultan's loge were looted and transferred to Moscow. During the siege of the city in 1913, the dome of the mosque was damaged by artillery fire. On the orders of Atatürk, traces of the damage were left unrestored, as a reminder and warning to future generations. Soon after, at the end of the Second Balkan War, some of the mosque's oldest carpets were stolen by retreating Bulgarian troops.
The mosque underwent restorations between 1954 and 1971, and some parts were also restored between 1982 and 1984. The mosque was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 10,000 lira banknotes of 1982-1995. In late 2021 another comprehensive restoration project on the mosque began, scheduled to be completed by 2025.
Influence on later mosques
The design of the Selimiye Mosque has influenced the architecture of some later mosques. The form of the Laleli Mosque in Istanbul, built in the 18th century in an otherwise Ottoman Baroque style, is based on that of the Selimiye Mosque. The modern Sabancı Merkez Mosque in Adana, completed in 1998, was modelled in part on the Selimiye Mosque. The Nizamiye Mosque in South Africa is modeled on the Selimiye Mosque. Despite being 80% of the size of the Selimiye, the Nizamiye Mosque is the largest in the Southern hemisphere.
Architecture and design
The mosque
The mosque is widely regarded as Sinan's crowning masterpiece, and Sinan himself regarded it as his best work. The main building consists of two equal parts: a rectangular courtyard and a rectangular prayer hall, each measuring about 60 by 44 metres (197 by 144 ft).
Courtyard
The mosque's courtyard forms a dramatic approach that helps to frame the view of the main dome from outside. The central outer gate on the northwest side of the courtyard is unusually simple, as the customary muqarnas canopy is replaced by a simple round arch. Inside, the courtyard is surrounded by four porticos of arches and domes. The southeastern portico, immediately preceding the entrance to the prayer hall, is significantly taller than the other three porticos in order to match the great height of the mosque itself. This portico is composed of three wide arches with two very small arches between them, a configuration vaguely resembling a triumphal arch and very different from the earlier monumental portico designed by Sinan for the Süleymaniye Mosque. The façades above these arches are decorated with two marble circles inscribed with quotes from the Qur'an. The large lower windows around the courtyard are surmounted by decorative lunettes, except for the two windows on either side of the entrance portal, which are set below muqarnas niches instead. The lunettes of the windows on the prayer hall side are filled with Iznik tiles painted with calligraphy.
The marble shadirvan or ablutions fountain in the center of the courtyard, made of carved and pierced stone, is one of the finest examples of its kind from this period, but it lacks the usual roof and canopy. Doğan Kuban believes that this indicates it was never completed, while Gülru Necipoğlu states that this merely further emphasizes the view of the mosque's main dome above.
The entrance portal to the mosque's prayer hall has a more typical muqarnas canopy, while the dome covering the space in front of it is heavily fluted and decorated. The wooden doors of the entrance are said to have been taken from the Ulu Cami (Great Mosque) of Birgi.
Prayer hall and main dome
The prayer hall's interior is notable for being completely dominated by a single massive dome, whose view is unimpeded by the structural elements seen in other large domed mosques before this. This design is the culmination of Sinan's spatial experiments, making use of the "octagonal baldaquin" design he had experimented with earlier. In this design the main dome is supported by a system of eight pillars incised in a rectangular shell of walls. This was the most effective available method of integrating the round dome with the rectangular hall below while minimizing the space occupied by the supporting elements of the dome.
Mihrab, religious furnishings, and decoration
The mihrab is set back from the rest of the prayer hall, standing in an apse-like projection with enough depth to allow for window illumination from three sides. This has the effect of making the tile panels of its lower walls sparkle with natural light. The tiles on either side of the mihrab are excellent examples of Iznik tilework. The mihrab itself is made of marble and is a good example of Ottoman stone-carving in this period, with a muqarnas hood and an inscription band. The mihrab decoration culminates above in a curved triangle set between two alems (a type of finial on a flagpole).
The History, Architecture and later sections are adapted from the Wikipedia article “Selimiye Mosque, Edirne”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full article. Text has been shortened.
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