Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque

Mosque · KadırgaIstanbul, Türkiye

Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque sets four fragments of the Kaaba's Black Stone into its fabric — over the door, in the mihrab, on the minbar, and beneath the minbar's cone. Mimar Sinan built it in the early 1570s for İsmihan Sultan, daughter of Sultan Selim II, and her husband, the grand vizier whose name it carries. The site is a steep Kadırga hillside, so Sinan terraced the whole complex into the slope: you enter from the street below and climb a stair that passes beneath the medrese's lecture hall, surfacing in a courtyard ringed by student cells, the prayer hall facing you. Inside, a single dome rests on six supports, leaving the floor open and calm. The İznik tiles belong to the workshops' finest decade, when a thick tomato red first held its colour under the glaze. They climb the mihrab wall and spread into the pendentives — turquoise, cobalt and that red woven into carnations and tulips. Light falls through coloured glass onto the painted dome. Today it remains a working neighbourhood mosque, little visited, its shaded courtyard one of the quietest corners of the old city to sit with Sinan's tilework.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Look up, not just ahead — the celebrated panels crown the mihrab, but the same tomato red blooms overhead in the pendentives, where most visitors never think to raise their eyes.
The gallery keeps the oldest paint — the woodwork beneath the muezzin's platform preserves original sixteenth-century painted decoration; almost all such colour elsewhere in the city is modern repainting.
Between prayers — the room is small, and away from prayer times it often stands empty, the whole tiled interior briefly yours.
Trust the slope, not the map — Kadırga is a working quarter of tangled lanes; the complex hides behind a modest wall and only shows itself once you are through the door and up the stair.

Things to do

1
Hunt for the four stones
Four splinters of the Black Stone that pilgrims touch at Mecca are set into this mosque, brought back during an Ottoman repair of the Kaaba. The first sits above the entrance doorway. The second is in the mihrab, the niche in the wall that shows the direction of Mecca. The last two are on the minbar, the stepped pulpit beside it: one on its body and one beneath its conical cap. Touch nothing, simply find the four in order. Each was placed where worshippers naturally look or reach, so that anyone who could never travel to Mecca could still stand beside a piece of it.
2
Read the mihrab wall in morning light
Stand back from the mihrab and let your eye climb the tile panels — carnations, tulips and cypress in cobalt, turquoise and raised red. Come earlier in the day, when low light rakes across the glaze and lifts the red slip into a faint relief you can almost feel from where you stand.
3
Come in through the street door and up the stair
Find the modest street door on the lower side and climb the stair that passes beneath the medrese's lecture hall. Pause as you surface into the arcaded courtyard among the student cells, then cross to the prayer hall, so the full sweep of tilework opens on you all at once rather than piece by piece.