Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque

Mosque · KadırgaIstanbul,Türkiye

A small Istanbul mosque terraced into a Kadırga slope by Sinan, its walls carrying İznik tile from the workshops' finest decade, with four Kaaba stones.

Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque is a small hillside mosque in Kadırga whose walls carry İznik tile from the workshops' finest decade. The tiles climb the mihrab wall and spread into the pendentives: turquoise, cobalt and a thick tomato red woven into carnations and tulips. Light falls through coloured glass onto the painted dome. A single dome rests on six piers, so the floor stays open. Four fragments said to come from the Kaaba's Black Stone are set into the fabric. 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 slope, so Sinan terraced the whole complex into it. The complex reaches three different streets at three different levels, and the medrese cells still ring the courtyard above. It is still prayed in by the quarter around it, little visited, and its shaded courtyard is one of the quietest corners of the old city.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The mihrab itself is bare marble — in a room sheathed in pattern, the one surface you face during prayer was left plain, and the tile stops at its frame.
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 quarter of tangled lanes, and the complex hides behind a modest wall until you are through the door and up the stair.

Things to do

1
Hunt for the four stones
Start above the entrance door as you come in, then find the second in the mihrab. The last two belong to the minbar: one over its little door, one tucked under the conical cap at the top of the stair. Look only — nothing here is meant to be touched.
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.