creation of a national genius 141

GÜLRU NEC~POÅLU

CREATION OF A NATIONAL GENIUS: S~NAN AND THE

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF “CLASSICAL” OTTOMAN ARCHITECTURE
The insistence of canonical twentieth-century his- ing Western architectural tradition, which culminates
toriography on the Turkishness of “classical” Otto- with modernism (fig. 1).
man architecture, codified during Sinan’s tenure as In global surveys of art and architecture that con-
chief royal architect (1539–88), has masked its more tinue to classify Islamic visual culture as a medieval
inclusive “Rumi” visual identity.1 A combination of tradition, early modern monuments such as those
Orientalist and nationalist paradigms has hindered a of Sinan do not appear where they chronologically
fuller understanding of the ways in which the chief belong, namely, in the “Renaissance” period. A case
architect’s monumental mosque complexes, the ulti- in point is Frederick Hartt’s Art: A History of Painting,
mate icons of the Ottoman “classical style,” mediate Sculpture, Architecture (1976), which includes the Otto-
among the Islamic, Byzantine, and Italian Renaissance man mosques of Istanbul in an “Islamic Art” chapter
architectural traditions.2 Defying standard classifica- placed under “The Middle Ages.” Hartt acknowledges
tions based on a Eurocentric East-West divide, Sinan’s the innovative transformation of Byzantine and Sasa-
domed central-plan mosques have also been consigned nian prototypes in early Islamic architecture, thanks
to an architectural limbo in global art histories because to the “natural mathematical bent of the Arabs” whose
until recently the Renaissance and early modernity “highly developed aesthetic sense produced an art of
were defined as exclusively Western phenomena.3 abstract architectural decoration.” But he dismisses
With a few exceptions, such as Spiro Kostof’s A His- the Ottoman mosques of Istanbul as uninventive vari-
tory of Architecture (1985), which compares Sinan with ations of Hagia Sophia and overlooks the simultane-
his Italian contemporaries in a chapter on early mod- ous emulation in Renaissance Italy of Justinian’s cel-
ern Istanbul and Venice, survey books have generally ebrated church. This double standard denies creative
tended to insert the entire Islamic tradition after the agency to the so-called “later Muslim” period, when,
“Early Christian and Byzantine” period.4 This prac- in his interpretation, the classical Mediterranean her-
tice is rooted in the nineteenth-century conceptualiza- itage becomes the exclusive preserve of Renaissance
tion of Islamic architecture as an offshoot of the late Europe: “The Ottoman Turks…were by no means as
antique Mediterranean heritage transformed under inventive as their Arab predecessors…Hugely impressed
the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates into a non-West- by Hagia Sophia…the Ottomans confined themselves
ern medieval tradition particularly notable for its to producing innumerable replicas of Justinian’s mas-
ornamental character. The essentialization of “Sara- terpiece in large, medium, and small sizes.”6
cenic” or “Mahometan” architecture as a “non-histor- Hartt’s ethnicized aesthetic judgment echoes nine-
ical style” permanently fixed in a medieval past finds teenth-century Orientalist paradigms that doubly essen-
ultimate expression in Banister Fletcher’s A History of tialized the Islamic tradition of architecture by partition-
Architecture on the Comparative Method (1896), where it ing it into ahistorical “schools” reflecting ethno-racial
is grouped with other non-Western styles (Indian, Chi- character traits (Arabian, Moorish, Persian, Turkish,
nese, Japanese, Central American) that emphasize “dec- and Indian). In this hierarchy, the “Turks” occupied
orative schemes” unlike those of Europe, “which have the lowest position among those “races” that embraced
progressed by the successive solution of constructive Islam, being “the most stolid and least refined, and the
problems.”5 In Fletcher’s famous “Tree of Architec- least capable consequently of elaborating such an art
ture,” the “Saracenic style” and its timeless compan- as we find in all other countries subject to this faith.”7
ions stand in stark contrast to the historically evolv- Since the medieval period was privileged as a “clas-

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 142 gülru nec~poÅlu
Renaissance Italy. Thanks to their anxiety regarding
“influence,” nationalist counternarratives equally failed
to come to terms with this architectural dialogue.
My paper focuses on the dominant discourses of
selected late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
texts, produced by a heterogeneous group of Euro-
pean and Turkish authors, that have contributed to
the methodological impasses of Sinan scholarship.
In these texts, the person of the chief architect and
the stylistic “character” of his mosques constitute the
focal point of narratives—ideological and often driven
by presentist concerns—that negotiate the contested
origins and originality of classical Ottoman/Turkish
monumental architecture as a site of national iden-
tity. Starting with the emergence of such narratives
during the late Ottoman period, I turn to their subse-
quent reframing in the early republican era (1923–50)
and conclude with their persisting echoes in canon-
ical publications that proliferated in the second half
of the twentieth century.8

DESIGNATION OF S~NAN AS ARCHITECTURAL

GENIUS IN THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD

Sinan was first hailed as the ingenious codifier of an

original dynastic style, worthy of universal status, in
the Uª¢l-i Mi{m¸rº-i {Osm¸nº (Fundamental Principles
of Ottoman Architecture): a monograph in Turkish,
French, and German commissioned by imperial com-
mand for the 1873 Vienna International Exposition
(fig. 2, a and b). Prepared under the supervision of
~brahim Edhem Pasha (Minister of Trade and Public
Works) by a cosmopolitan committee of Ottoman
bureaucrats, artists, and architects, this publication
indirectly responded to Orientalist discourses that
denied artistic creativity to “the Turks”; its authors
Fig. 1. “The Tree of Architecture.” (After Banister Fletcher,
A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method [New York
adopted the current European conceptualization of
and London, 1924], iii) artistic styles as embodiments of “national character”
to negotiate a higher status for Ottoman architecture.9
Singling out its stylistic constants, corresponding to the
venerable character traits of a proto-national dynasty,
sical age” when the norms of typically Islamic archi- they defined architectural style as a historically evolv-
tecture supposedly became fixed, the monuments of ing imperial dynastic tradition, labeled “Ottoman”
“later Muslim” dynasties were often ranked as deriva- (Osmanlæ).10
tive regional variants of already established prototypes. This “invention of tradition” attempts to rectify the
Hence, Orientalist paradigms failed to historicize Si- prevailing pejorative assessments of “Turkish” archi-
nan’s renewed early modern dialogue with the classi- tecture articulated in such publications as Charles
cal Mediterranean heritage of the “lands of Rum”—a Texier’s Description de l’Asie Mineure, faite par ordre du
heritage that was concurrently being reinterpreted in gouvernement français de 1833 à 1837 (1839–49). Echoing

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 creation of a national genius 143

a b
Fig. 2, a and b. Front and back cover of Marie de Launay, Pietro Montani, et al., Uª¢l-i Mi{m¸rº-i {Osm¸nº = L’architecture otto-
mane = Die ottomanische Baukunst (Istanbul, 1873).

the Napoleonic paradigm of the Description de l’Égypte into a Muslim sanctuary, Texier describes two sixteenth-
(1809–28), which initiated an ideological discourse on century examples (works of Sinan) constructed in this
the extinction of the “Arab” architectural genius in manner in Üsküdar:
Egypt under the yoke of the “Ottoman Turks,” Texi-
These monuments were built in a period when Turk-
er’s book makes the following judgment on the “char- ish architecture abandoned the Arab school, of which
acter of Turkish mosques” in Bursa: it had been an original reflection, only to throw itself
For a long time it has been said that the Ottomans (Osman- into a bastard architecture that is neither Muslim nor
lis) do not have an architecture particular to their nation Christian.12
(nation); being tribes with tents, they remained strang- Universal expositions intensified the rivalry between the
ers to the art of construction, and their public edifices
“Arab” and “Turkish” schools of architecture, associated
are the works of foreigners, Arab and Persian architects
respectively with the semi-autonomous Egyptian state
initially, and Greek architects afterwards. No other type
and its Ottoman overlord. An important turning point
of edifice provides better proof of this fact than their
was the Paris Exposition of 1867, attended by Sultan
religious monuments.”11
Abdülaziz and the Viceroy of Egypt, ~sma{il Pasha, who
Observing that all later mosques in the Ottoman had just received the title of Khedive as a mark of
Empire “imitated” Hagia Sophia after its conversion increased Egyptian autonomy. The catalogue L’Egypte à

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 144 gülru nec~poÅlu
l’Exposition universelle de 1867, commissioned by ~sma{il ornaments are characterized by the “most fantastic
Pasha from Charles Edmond, explicitly criticizes “the forms intimately blended, as if by a miracle, with the
Turks” for “their inability both to invent their own art regular figures of geometry.”20 Salaheddin Bey’s cat-
and to assimilate the art of others with intelligence and alogue, by contrast, emphasizes the primacy of ratio-
taste.” The “Turkish” mosques of Istanbul are described nal architectural principles to counter the widespread
as “mere copies of Hagia Sophia,” distinguished from presumption “that there exists no Ottoman art, and
Byzantine churches only by minarets and walls decorated that all Oriental productions are due to caprice, at
with “arabesques” and inscriptions: “After having stolen times most extravagant.”21
the Arab genius, [the Turks] let it die.”13 The contention of principled rationality is further
The tripartite periodization of this catalogue, written elaborated in the Uª¢l, which responds to depreciatory
by French savants steeped in the Napoleonic tradition of character evaluations of “Turkish” architecture colored
the Description de l’Égypte, relegates the “Muhammedan” by Western colonial ambitions in the disintegrating
(Mahométane) architecture of the “Arab race” to Egypt’s territories of the late Ottoman Empire, where Euro-
medieval past, which is framed by the ancient and pean powers were positing themselves as protectors of
modern eras.14 Following a biological trajectory of the Arab artistic genius “all but extinguished” under
birth, growth, and decay—which is reversed by artistic the “barbarism” of the Turks. Its four parts consist of
rebirth under the present regime—“Muhammedan” a historical overview of stylistic evolution; a theoreti-
architecture enters into a period of deplorable decline cal section on fundamental architectural principles; a
with the subjugation of the Arab race by the Osman- description of selected sultanic mosques, mausoleums,
lis, a “foreign race” of Turkish conquerors who from and public fountains in Ottoman capital cities (Bursa,
the sixteenth century onwards “remained strangers to Istanbul, and Edirne); and a chapter on the rules of
the intellectual conquests made in the world.”15 Com- ornament subordinated to architectonic forms. The
paring the first mosques along the Nile to the first Uª¢l proudly proclaims the participation in world civ-
Gothic cathedrals on the banks of the Seine, Edmond ilization of the Ottomans’ rationalist school of archi-
portrays medieval Egypt as the epicenter from which tecture, which, with its flexible universal characteris-
“Muhammedan” architecture spreads to other regions tics, is adaptable to the modern age. The preface of
(Syria, Iran, Sicily, Africa, Spain, and Turkey).16 Like- the publication states that Ottoman monuments, espe-
wise, the modern Egypt of Muhammad {Ali and his cially mosques, embody “architectural forms conceived
grandson ~sma{il Pasha, faithful followers of Napo- in a particular style conforming to the approved dis-
leon, who made “the Oriental genius return to itself,” positions of the Ottoman nation.” Thanks to consis-
is destined to initiate “the rest of the Orient to mod- tent “rules,” architecture made extraordinary progress,
ern civilization.”17 and eminent architects like Sinan emerged, “extend-
La Turquie à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, a cata- ing their reputation throughout the world.” The pur-
logue commissioned from Salaheddin Bey by Sultan pose of the Uª¢l is to demonstrate the “superiority of
Abdülaziz, prefigures the Uª¢l (written for the same Ottoman architecture” and introduce to the world its
sultan in 1873) by highlighting the rational construc- masters and masterpieces; the latter are illustrated by
tion principles of Ottoman architecture. Hence it is drawings destined to serve as a basis of instruction for
unlike Edmond’s text, which foregrounds the ornamen- “modern architects.”22
tal character and “charming fantasy” of Arab architec- Like Edmond’s catalogue, which boasts about the
ture, governed by “the arbitrary and the capricious.”18 spread of Arab architecture from Egypt to other coun-
Singling out the “arabesque” as the principal character- tries, the Uª¢l claims that the Ottoman school of
istic of Egypt’s medieval “Muhammedan” monuments, architecture was disseminated as far as India by Si-
Edmond asserts that they lack the “rules and princi- nan’s pupils (allegedly invited by the Mughal emperor
ples” that govern Western architecture, for they rely on Babur, who passed away in 1530, long before the ten-
chance rather than reason.19 The “gracious geometry ure of the chief architect). According to this anachro-
of imagination and the delirium of algebra” embodied nistic claim, repeated in later publications, these pupils
in “arabesques” is, in Edmond’s view, prefigured by included Mimar Yusuf, who built the world-renowned
the character of the Prophet Muhammad, which com- palace-forts of Agra, Lahore, Delhi, and Kashmir.23 The
bines “enthusiasm with calculation.” Imprinted with Uª¢l’s historical overview of stylistic evolution, written
the “Arab spirit” of the “race of Muhammad,” these by the Ottoman bureaucrat Victor Marie de Launay

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 creation of a national genius 145
(who once frequented courses in the École des Beaux da Vignola’s Renaissance treatise on orders, La regola
Arts), constructs, as did Edmond’s catalogue, a biolog- delli cinque ordini (Rome, 1562).28
ical trajectory of birth, growth, and decay, followed by Although Montani makes no reference to the Ital-
rebirth under the present regime.24 According to de ian Renaissance, he explicitly differentiates Ottoman
Launay, Sinan’s style corresponds to a golden age fall- architecture from styles—namely, the Byzantine, Gothic,
ing between the rise and the decline of the dynasty, Arab, Persian, Indian, and Chinese—that “lack orders”
which is currently being revitalized by Sultan Abdülaziz, and rely on conventional forms whose adjunction
the patron of a “neo-Ottoman” architectural renais- depends on the architect’s “caprice.” The “princi-
sance. Sinan is identified as the most ingenious of pal character” of the high Ottoman style perfected
all Ottoman architects, and his codification of dynas- by Sinan is its “noble severity.” This style stands out
tic style coincides with the zenith of imperial glory from its Arab, Persian, and Arabo-Indian (arabo-indi-
under Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver (le législateur, r. ens) counterparts in its restrained richness of orna-
1520–66). This internally evolving style originates in ment, created by decorators conforming to the “archi-
fifteenth-century Bursa after initial fourteenth-century tect’s conception” and “never guided by the caprices
experiments with a hybrid “semi-Byzantine” manner of chance.”29 By implication, it is superior to other
and develops further in early-sixteenth-century Istan- schools of Islamic architecture judged by European
bul. The “school of Sinan,” it is argued, is perpetu- authors to be fancifully ornamental and hence irratio-
ated until the mid-seventeenth century, after which, nal in comparison to Western architecture.30
from the eighteenth century onwards, the “rationality The characteristics of the high Ottoman style, which
of art” and the “purity of Ottoman architectural taste” echo Western classical norms of beauty, are embodied
become entirely “denatured” and “depraved” by the in the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosques, the master-
indiscriminate infiltration of Western influences. In pieces chosen by the authors of the Uª¢l as exemplars
this narrative of dynastic self-representation, then, the of Sinan’s incomparable “genius” (figs. 5, a–d, and
sixteenth-century purification of hybridity in Sinan’s 6).31 The monographic descriptions of these mosques
rational style gives way to a loss of purity and hence of emphasize two additional fundamental principles of
national character, only to be revived by the “renais- Ottoman architecture: scenic siting and the perfect
sance of Ottoman architecture” under the illustrious unity of the whole.32 The Selimiye, which represents
patronage of the currently reigning sultan.25 the culmination of Sinan’s style, is judged superior not
The theoretical section, written by Pietro Montani only to the Süleymaniye but also to all other “Islamic
(Montani Efendi), a Levantine Italian artist-architect monuments.” With its “great sobriety and the exqui-
raised in Istanbul, portrays Sinan as the “legislator of site purity of its ornamentation,” it is a monument
national architecture,” who renews the style developed in which “the whole and the details are conceived in
by his predecessors “with a novel purification of forms, a particularly majestic, noble, and severe style” that
fixing their proportions and supplementing them with nevertheless “does not exclude richness and above all
new ones.”26 It is Sinan who codifies the three archi- grace.” This “masterpiece par excellence of the illus-
tectural orders (corresponding to Doric, Ionic, and trious master Sinan, the author of so many master-
Corinthian) on which the proportional system of the pieces,” is therefore “rightly considered the marvel of
high Ottoman style is allegedly based, orders comple- Ottoman architecture: a marvel of appropriate pro-
mented by a fourth semi-order in the “Gothic man- portions, of severity and majesty of style, of gracious
ner” that gives flexibility to details (fig. 3, a–d). The simplicity and purity of ornamentation.”33
“module” used for determining the harmony of propor- The Uª¢l contributed to Sinan’s international fame
tions in this system, which is “richer” than the Gothic by publishing as an appendix the Tezkiretü’l-Ebniye,
mode of construction and more “elastic” than the clas- one of the versions of the Turkish autobiography the
sical orders, is derived from the width of the capital chief architect dictated to the poet-painter Mustafa
(fig. 4).27 Thus the style legislated by Sinan implicitly Sa{i. (The abbreviated French and German transla-
parallels that of the high Renaissance, which is based tions of this autobiographical text include only a list
on the module and orders. In fact, later nationalist of numerous collaborative monuments claimed by
critics of the eclectic “neo-Ottoman renaissance” style Sinan as his own works).34 The appended autobiog-
promoted by the Uª¢l would accuse Montani Efendi of raphy is not analyzed in the Uª¢l, which simply men-
deriving the Ottoman orders from Giacomo Barozzi tions Sinan’s training in the Janissary corps prior to

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 146 gülru nec~poÅlu

a b

Fig. 3, a–d. Pietro Montani, representations of the Ottoman orders: a. L’ordre échanfriné. b. L’ordre bréchiforme. c. L’ordre crystal-
lisé. d. L’ordonnance à faisceaux. (After Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, “Théorie de l’architecture ottomane,” pls. 2, 4, 6, 3)

his building, over the course of his long life, count- this text would leave a lasting imprint on subsequent
less monuments to “glorify the Ottoman dynasty, his Turkish publications, which in the wake of ethno-
fatherland, and Islam.” The authors of the Uª¢l do not centric nationalism at the turn of the century began
attempt to identify the chief architect’s ethnic origin, to trace the evolution of the Ottoman architectural
apparently deeming it irrelevant because of the multi- style, perfected by Sinan, to that of the “Seljuk Turks”
ethnic inclusiveness of the Ottoman polity.35 Nor do in Anatolia, who are hardly mentioned in the Uª¢l.37
they allude to Sinan’s competitive dialogue with Hagia The cult of Sinan was nurtured by his self-mytholo-
Sophia in the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosques, a gizing autobiographies, which were likely inspired by
dialogue to which the chief architect explicitly refers the lives of Italian Renaissance architects and were
in his autobiographies, which also testify to his rivalry written, according to his own words, to leave the per-
with his Ottoman predecessors and his contempo- manent mark of his name and reputation “on the
raries in Renaissance Europe. The dynastic proto- pages of time.” These widely circulating autobiograph-
nationalism of the Uª¢l’s narrative of stylistic evolu- ical texts, through which the chief architect self-con-
tion, tracing an internal process of purification that sciously participated in the Renaissance discourse
crystallizes in the rational school of Sinan, entirely on creative genius, played a pivotal role in directing
sidesteps the much-maligned “influence” of Hagia the focus of early historical studies on his life and
Sophia.36 As we shall see, the rationalist paradigm of works (fig. 7, a–b).38 One such example is the late

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 creation of a national genius 147

c d

Fig. 3.

Ottoman intellectual Ahmed Cevdet’s preface to the Christo, and describing the budding carpentry skills
Tezkiretü’l-Büny¸n, another version of the chief archi- of the child prodigy: “When it came to games, he only
tect’s autobiographies, published in 1897. Paraphras- derived pleasure from getting hold of carpentry tools
ing the Uª¢l’s historical overview, the preface fabri- with which he would create in their backyard now a
cates a biography of Sinan based on a primary source chicken coop, now a pool fountain, occupying himself
in Arabic (Quy¢d¸t-i Mühimme) supposedly written in with architectural tasks like repairing water channels.”39
the chief architect’s lifetime, which not surprisingly Cevdet also gives such precise information about the
disappeared shortly thereafter. This purported source chief architect’s physiognomy and character that one
allowed Cevdet to invent colorful details missing from might think he knew him personally:
Sinan’s laconic autobiographies, which mention only
his recruitment as a Janissary cadet (acemi oqlan, nov- Sinan the Great was tall and thin, with a heavy beard and
ice boy) from the Kayseri region, without providing moustache, black eyes, a wheat-colored complexion, and
a handsome face; he was a conversationalist, very gener-
clues about his ethnic origin and childhood before
ous, charitable to the poor, and capable of composing
he converted to Islam and was trained as a carpen-
poetry; he knew Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Greek,
ter at the school of novices in Istanbul. The Quy¢d¸t
and he was very brave and courageous.40
conveniently fills in the blanks by providing Sinan’s
exact birthday, identifying by name his Greek father, This verbal portrait of the chief architect as a fully

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 148 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 4. Pietro Montani, capital of the crystallized order by Sinan. Top: view of the capital. Center: plan of the same capital.
Bottom: base. (After Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, “Théorie de l’architecture ottomane,” pl. 8)

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 creation of a national genius 149

Fig. 5a. Pietro Montani, plan of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, built by Sinan in 1550–57. (After Marie de Launay et
al., Uª¢l, “Mosquée Suleïmanié,” pl. 1)

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 150 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 5, b–c. Pietro Montani, sections of the Süleymaniye Mosque. (After Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, “Mosquée Suleïmanié,”
pls. 2 and 3)

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 creation of a national genius 151

Fig. 5d. Pietro Montani, elevation of the Süleymaniye Mosque. (After Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, “Mosquée Suleïmanié,”
pl. 4)

acculturated Greek-born Ottoman hints at a growing manifestation of Sinan’s “genius,” Gosset detected in
anxiety about his cultural identity. Cevdet’s preface its forms the spirit of Greek humanism: thanks to
attempts to reclaim the artistic agency of Sinan as the refined taste of its details and its “observation of
the Ottomanized chief architect of a multiethnic and the principle of the Greeks that man is the king of
multilingual empire whose monuments, in the con- creation,” the Selimiye’s grandiose dimensions in his
tested terrain of architectural history, continued to be opinion do not crush but rather enhance the dig-
attributed to “foreign” Greek architects. For instance, nity of the viewer and elevate the soul to the highest
Auguste Choisy’s L’art de bâtir chez les Byzantins (1883) thoughts.43
had recently characterized the monumental imperial Die Baukunst Konstantinopels (1907), by the German
mosques of “Sinan the Greek” as the last representa- architectural historian Cornelius Gurlitt, was the ear-
tives of Byzantine architecture, which imitated Hagia liest European monograph to acknowledge the orig-
Sophia for the “new masters” of Constantinople. Shortly inality of the “Turkish” school of architecture that
thereafter, Alphonse Gosset’s Les coupoles d’Orient et emerged after the fall of Byzantium. Written at the
d’Occident (1889) repeated the stereotyped view of the height of the Ottoman-German alliance, thanks to
Ottomans as “shepherds and warriors without any art which the author obtained special permission to draw
or artists of their own.”41 According to this publication, and photograph Istanbul’s mosques, this book ends
Sultan Süleyman’s “Greek architect Sinan” improved with a picture of the Kaiser Wilhelm II Fountain at
the longitudinal plan of Hagia Sophia with more “ratio- the Hippodrome, completed in 1901—a Byzantinizing
nal” solutions in centrally planned domed mosques German neo-renaissance monument commemorating
through “his avid search for perfection, much like the emperor’s 1898 visit to the city—which Wilhelm
his predecessors from the age of Pericles.”42 Intensely presented as a gift symbolizing his friendship with Sul-
admiring the Selimiye Mosque as the most remarkable tan Abdülhamid II (figs. 8 and 9).44 Noting the lack of

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 152 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 6. Marie de Launay, plan of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, built by Sinan in 1568–74. (After Marie de Launay et al.,
Uª¢l, “Mosquée Selimié,” pl. 1)

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 creation of a national genius 153

Fig. 7, a and b. Miniature painting and detail: funeral procession of the deceased Sultan Süleyman, showing Sinan holding
a wooden cubit measure and overseeing construction of the sultan’s mausoleum behind the qibla wall of the Süleymaniye
Mosque. Seyyid Lokman, T¸rikh-i Sul«¸n Sulaym¸n, ca. 1579. The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, ms. T. 413, fol. 115v. (Photo
© The Chester Beatty Library)

monumentality in late Byzantine and early Ottoman they deserve, comparable to the grand achievements
domed sanctuaries, Gurlitt regards the grand scale of of the Italian Renaissance:
the imperial mosques in Constantinople as an achieve-
We have been enthusiastic in our praise of Italy, a coun-
ment to be marveled at. Although he repeats Cevdet’s
try that at the end of the fifteenth century resurrected
account of Sinan’s parentage as the Greek-born son
the art of ancient Rome after this achievement had lain
of Christo, he attributes the success of the imperial dormant for over a thousand years. During the same
style not to the ethnic origin of its architects but to period, however, buildings were erected on the Bospho-
their rigorous training in the educational institutions rus that have been belittled for the simple reason that
of the Ottoman state, which produced great statesmen they were replicas of Hagia Sophia. Yet it is no less a
and “creative geniuses” like Sinan, who commanded renaissance of astounding individuality that sprang up
the guilds of building crafts as chief royal architect.45 from the soil made fertile by the spirit of ancient Greece.
Gurlitt finds the domed mosques of the Ottoman cap- The revival of ancient perceptions of shape and form
ital, which in his view have not received the attention occurred here with the same freedom, independence,

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 154 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 9. Photograph of the Kaiser Wilhelm II Fountain at the

Hippodrome, Istanbul. (After Gurlitt, Die Baukunst Konstan-
tinopels, pl. 39a)

Fig. 8. Title page from Cornelius Gurlitt, Die Baukunst Kon-

stantinopels (Berlin, 1907).

Fig. 10a. Plan of the Süleymaniye Mosque and the mausoleums of Sultan Süleyman and his wife. (After Gurlitt, Die Baukunst
Konstantinopels, pl. 19h)

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 creation of a national genius 155

Fig. 10b. Section of the Süleymaniye Mosque and elevation and section of the mausoleum of Sultan Süleyman. (After Gurlitt,
Die Baukunst Konstantinopels, pl. 19i)

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 156 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 10c. Plan of the domical superstructure and elevation of the Süleymaniye Mosque. (After Gurlitt, Die Baukunst Konstan-
tinopels, pl. 19n)

Fig. 11. Plan and section of the Øehzade Mehmed Mosque in Istanbul, built by Sinan in 1543–48. (After Gurlitt, Die Baukunst
Konstantinopels, pl. 18a)

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 creation of a national genius 157

Fig. 12, a and b. Sections of the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha complex in Istanbul, built by Sinan, 1568–71, and elevation of the
north courtyard facade with upper madrasa, portal, shops, and public fountain. (After Cornelius Gurlitt, Die Baukunst Kon-
stantinopels, pls. 26f, 26c)

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 158 gülru nec~poÅlu
and boldness, with the same artistic and creative force, TURKIFICATION OF SINAN IN THE EARLY
that was shaping the culture on the opposite shores of REPUBLICAN ERA
the Adriatic Sea.46
Babinger’s call for interdisciplinary cooperation was
Gurlitt’s richly illustrated survey of Byzantine and Otto- not embraced until the founding of the Turkish Repub-
man monuments in Constantinople not only includes lic in 1923 provided a fresh impetus for the nascent
Sinan’s major imperial complexes, which feature monu- field of Turcology, now actively cultivated by the new
mental mosques with domes raised on four piers, but nation-state. Around that time, the Austrian art his-
also his smaller domed edifices with hexagonal and torian Heinrich Glück invited Babinger to submit an
octagonal support systems (figs. 10, a–c; 11; and 12, article about primary written sources on Ottoman court
a and b). He thus initiated the still-pervasive classi- architects and artists for the first volume of Jahrbuch
fication of the chief architect’s mosques in terms of der asiatischen Kunst (1924).50 Glück was a pioneer in
domed baldachins resting on varied support systems, the field of “Turkish art,” launched by the studies
always designed to create centrally planned communal of his teacher, mentor, and collaborator Josef Strzy-
spaces for the ritual needs of Muslim congregations. gowski, the director of the Institut für Kunstgeshichte
Another lasting legacy of Die Baukunst Konstantinopels at the University of Vienna, who himself had sought
was its focus on the clarity and unity of Sinan’s “con- Asiatic origins for the “Northern” Germanic art of
ception of space,” a focus resonating with the spatial Austro-Hungary and Germany. Attempting to counter
preoccupations of modernist European architecture the Eurocentric “humanist bias” that privileged the
at the turn of the twentieth century.47 “Southern” Greco-Roman tradition and the late antique
Following his compatriot’s lead, the German Ori- Mediterranean origins of Islamic art, Strzygowski’s
entalist Franz Babinger was the first historian to draw controversial ethno-racial theories emphasized the west-
international attention to Sinan, with a 1914 article ward dissemination of “Aryan” artistic forms through
on the “Turkish Renaissance.” In it, Babinger paid the nomadic migrations of the Turks, who had gen-
tribute to the chief architect as the Greek-born mas- erally been dismissed as “barbarians.” The expansive
ter of a sixteenth-century renaissance initiated under geographical scope of this pan-Germanic perspective,
embracing much of Eurasia, upgraded the artistic status
the patronage of Sultan Süleyman, when central-plan
of Turkic peoples to that of mediators between East
domed sanctuaries comparable to those of Bramante,
and West.51 Foregrounding the importance of Turko-
Giuliano da Sangallo, Baldassare Peruzzi, and Michel-
Iranian artistic syntheses catalyzed by the Turkic migra-
angelo came into being. Babinger proposed that the
tions, Strzygowski declared that “the Turks played the
“greatest Ottoman architect” Sinan, who remained
same role in Asia as the Germans did in Europe.”52 Not
practically unknown in Europe, be given deserved
surprisingly, his theories struck a chord with nationalist
global recognition with a scholarly monograph on his
sentiments in the newly founded Turkish Republic,
life and works. For this urgent task Babinger enlisted
which was searching for its own cultural roots in the
the interdisciplinary cooperation of art historians, with eastern homelands of the Turks. Among Strzygowski’s
their newly developed universal techniques of formal disciples, Ernst Diez and Katharina Otto-Dorn would
analysis, and Orientalist historians, who possessed the eventually hold prominent teaching positions at the
linguistic skills required for research in the “astound- Universities of Istanbul and Ankara during the 1940s
ingly rich” Turkish archives. As a starting point, he and 1950s, following their colleague Glück’s premature
compiled an inventory of the chief architect’s oeuvre death in 1930 at the age of forty.53
based on Cevdet’s edition of the Tezkiretü’l Büny¸n, The earliest monograph on “Turkish art” was Glück’s
unsuspectingly repeating the fabricated biograph- Türkische Kunst (1917), based on an inaugural lecture
ical details of its preface.48 A year later, Babinger that he delivered in Istanbul for the founding of the
would coin the nickname “Ottoman Michelangelo” short-lived Hungarian Institute, which closed down
for Sinan, who was soon transformed into the sym- in 1918 upon the defeat in the First World War of
bol of a newly born nation-state’s creative spirit as the the allied Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.
“Turkish Michelangelo.”49 This booklet reflects the Institute’s particular inter-
est in Turkish culture at a time when the cultural
roots of Hungary were being sought in Central Asia;

Book 1.indb 158 9/20/2007 9:17:03 PM

 creation of a national genius 159
its planned publications also included monographs Vienna.57 Strzygowski’s article for Türkiyat Mecmuasæ,
on Turkish architecture and translations of primary titled “The Turks and the Question of Central Asian
sources on the lives of Ottoman artists and architects. Art,” adapts theories he developed in 1917 for a new
Glück portrays the Turks as transmitting visual culture audience. He not only recommends the creation in
across the Eurasian lands via westward migrations that Ankara of a national museum of “Turkish art” of all
culminated in the formation of Anatolian Seljuk and periods but also announces his desire, fueled by the
Ottoman art. Arguing that successive Turkic dynasties foundation of the republican regime, to write a grand
kneaded with their own national “spirit” the diverse survey of the arts of the Turks from their ancient ori-
traditions they encountered in lands extending from gins to the present.58
China to Europe, Glück attributes originality to the Glück’s article, titled “The Status of Turkish Art in
artistic syntheses that emerged from this process of cre- the World,” similarly declares his intention to prepare
ative “transformation,” often disparaged as “imitation.” a comprehensive survey in collaboration with his col-
He highlights the agency of patrons and “national art- league Mehmed Aga-Oglu, an Azerbaijani Turk who
ists” like Sinan, who stamped each new artistic synthe- trained in Turcology at the University of Moscow (1912–
sis with the unchanging imprint of the “Turkish spirit.” 16) before emigrating to Istanbul. Subsequently sent
Like Gurlitt, Glück credits the Ottomans with reviv- to study in Germany and Austria as the future direc-
ing the idea, dormant for a thousand years, of build- tor of the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in Istan-
ing monumental structures in the manner of Hagia bul, Aga-Oglu was appointed to the position he had
Sophia; he views this renaissance as rooted in earlier been groomed for upon obtaining his doctorate with
Turkic experiments with domed spaces.54 Strzygowski in 1927. Glück’s article, written the same
The role of Sinan as the creator of a new concep- year, is a revised version of the inaugural lecture he
tion of centralized domed space is also articulated in had delivered a decade earlier at the Hungarian Insti-
Glück’s Die Kunst der Osmanen (1922)—an expanded tute, now inflected with a more pronounced ethno-
version of his essay, “Türkische Dekorationskunst” racial emphasis.59 It cites as new evidence for the Turk-
(1920), which stresses the “national internationalism” ishness of Istanbul’s mosques an article published by
(nationalen Internationalismus) of Ottoman architec- Aga-Oglu in 1926 “disproving” the influence of Hagia
ture and architectural decoration, along with the cos- Sophia on the mosque of Mehmed II (1463–70), the
mopolitanism of Istanbul’s court culture manifested first in a series of sultanic complexes culminating with
by invitations extended to such artists as Gentile Bel- those built by Sinan. Glück agrees with Aga-Oglu’s
lini. According to Glück, Sinan’s national school of assessment of this mosque as a direct descendant of
architecture, with its distinctive mode of decoration the indigenous Anatolian Seljuk and early Ottoman
epitomized in floral tile revetments, has an interna- architectural traditions. Moreover, he now claims a
tional dimension, for it fuses Eastern and Western tra- Turkish ethnic origin for Sinan, citing another arti-
ditions more than any other school of Islamic archi- cle published in 1926 by Aga-Oglu, “proving” that the
tecture.55 chief architect’s grandfather was a Turk.60
Emphasizing the simultaneously international and The interdisciplinary collaboration between Glück
national character of “Turkish art,” Glück’s publica- and Babinger was cut short by the controversy sparked
tions found an enthusiastic reception in early repub- by Aga-Oglu’s article on Sinan’s ethnicity, which chal-
lican Turkey, with its modernist mission to join the lenged Babinger’s subscription to the unsubstantiated
European cultural sphere coupled with its desire to view that the chief architect’s father was a Greek named
preserve an individual identity, increasingly defined Christo (a name supposedly mentioned in the Quy¢d¸t-i
in ethno-racial terms. Around 1926–27, Fuat Köprülü, Mühimme).61 Aga-Oglu based his own argument on an
the leading nationalist historian of Turkic literature equally suspicious source, however—a marginal note
and culture, asked both Glück and Strzygowski to con- in a manuscript by Örfi Mahmud Agha (d. 1778), the
tribute articles on the subject of “Turkish art” to Tür- T¸rºkh-i Edirne (History of Edirne), which happened
kiyat Mecmuasæ (a journal Köprülü published as the to mention the Turkish name of Sinan’s grandfather,
director of the Turcology Institute of Istanbul Uni- who allegedly trained him in carpentry:
versity).56 In those years, he also envisioned invit- The talented Master Sinan Agha b. Abdülmennan, who
ing Glück to teach at Istanbul University and send- built the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, was a pious old
ing Turkish students to study with Strzygowski in man who lived more than a hundred years. Whenever he

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 160 gülru nec~poÅlu
Turkish historians subsequently demonstrated that
the marginal note was indeed a forgery, perhaps per-
petrated by the owner of the manuscript, the retired
doctor and amateur architectural historian Tosyavizade
Rifat Osman Bey.64 Rifat Osman’s 1927 article in Millî
Mecmua (National Journal), commemorating the 339th
anniversary of the death of the “Great Turk Mimar
Koca Sinan b. Abdülmennan” mentions not only the
marginal note quoted above but also the preface of
another source in the same manuscript (a compos-
ite version of the chief architect’s autobiographies)
according to which Sinan was not a convert (dev×irme)
but instead came to Istanbul with his father, a scribe
in the retinue of an officer sent to recruit Christian
Janissary cadets from Kayseri. Rifat Osman points out
that the information provided by the latter source
is at odds with other versions of Sinan’s autobiogra-
phies, which refer to his Christian dev×irme origin. Hop-
ing that new sources discovered in the future might
resolve such contradictory evidence, he ridicules those
who wish to invent a non-dev×irme, Muslim identity for
Sinan.65 The same article furthermore brings to light
an “authentic” portrait of the venerable chief archi-
tect in old age, signed by the late artist Hasan Riza,
who is said to have copied it from an Italian engraving
made during the sitter’s lifetime (fig. 13). This visual
counterpart to Cevdet’s “verbal portrait” of Sinan is
yet another manifestation of the obsession with the
persona of the beloved national architect.66
Rifat Osman dedicated his article to the recently
deceased Mimar Kemalettin Bey, a leader of the “First
Fig. 13. Portrait of Sinan, signed by the artist Hasan Riza. (After
National Movement” in architecture, which rejected
Tosyavizade Rifat Osman Bey, “~rtihâlinin 339’uncu Sene-i
the eclectic revivalist style promoted by the Uª¢l in
Devriyesi Münâsebetiyle Büyük Türklerden Mimar Koca Sinan
favor of a more purist Turkish idiom inspired by
b. Abdülmennân,” Millî Mecmua 7, 83 [1927]: 1339)
Seljuk and Ottoman forms. An ardent admirer of
Sinan, Kemalettin not only named one of his sons
came to Edirne, he would stay in the Mirmiran quarter, after the chief architect but also wished to be buried
at the house of my grandfather Abdullah Agha, who was next to him. As the director between 1909 and 1919
the Kethüda of the Old Palace. One night he drew the of constructions and restorations at the Superinten-
plans and calculations of the noble [Sokollu] mosque in dency of Charitable Foundations (Evkaf Nezareti),
Lüleburgaz. On that occasion, Master Sinan recounted to Kemalettin trained a generation of architect-restorers
my grandfather how he received the tools of his trade in (such as Sedat Çetinta×, Ali Saim Ülgen, and Ekrem
his youth from the workshop of his grandfather, Togan
Hakkæ Ayverdi), who were among the first to restore
Yusuf Agha, who was a master carpenter.”62
and prepare measured drawings of Ottoman monu-
Babinger’s rebuttal in 1927 insisted on Sinan’s identity ments and to write on national architecture.67 Emerg-
as a Greek convert (dev×irme) and questioned the ing during the first decades of the twentieth century,
authenticity of the marginal note quoted above, written this indigenous tradition of architectural historiogra-
by a late-eighteenth-century author whose grandfather phy, much like the scholarship of art historians belong-
could hardly have been a contemporary of the chief ing to Strzygowski’s circle, was dominated by formal
architect.63 analysis.68 It was largely the product of individuals

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 creation of a national genius 161

Fig. 14. Map of Central Asia showing the place of origin and spread of the Turks. (After Celâl Esad Arseven, Türk San’atæ
[Istanbul, 1928], 12, fig. 5)

trained as architects and artists, who elaborated on servile imitation of Persian, Arab, and Byzantine art.”70
the rationalist paradigm of the Uª¢l with new obser- Between 1920 and 1941, Arseven intermittently taught
vations based on the first-hand study of national mon- courses on architectural history and urbanism at the
uments, and was often fuelled by critical responses to Academy of Fine Arts, where he developed the concep-
the “detractors” of “Turkish art.” tual framework of his second book, Türk San’atæ (Turk-
A pioneer of this native tradition of nationalist ish Art), published in 1928. This is the first survey by
historiography was Celâl Esad (Arseven): a polymath a Turkish scholar to trace the eastern Turkic origins
educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul (fig. 14) of the art and architecture of “Turkey” (Tür-
(founded in 1883), where the Uª¢l was being used as kiye), the shrunken territory of the new nation-state.
a textbook.69 His Constantinople de Byzance à Stamboul Criticizing the European concept of “Islamic art” as
(1909) is the earliest book by a Turkish author on the tantamount to classifying the whole Western tradition
Byzantine and Ottoman monuments of the imperial as “Christian art,” Arseven once again seeks to dis-
capital: appended to it is a short biography of Sinan, prove the presumption that the Turks merely copied
identified as the son of Christo. Its section on Otto- “Arab, Persian, and Byzantine art.” He argues that it
man architecture, mostly derived from the Uª¢l, aims is a “national duty” to rectify the lack of recognition
to demonstrate the distinctive “national character” of of “Turkish art” and proposes the establishment of a
“Turkish art,” which is “in Europe falsely considered a committee to remedy the paucity of documentation.71

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 162 gülru nec~poÅlu
Arseven cites the works of Strzygowski, Glück, Diez, vations, and ornament “rescued from exaggerated
and Aga-Oglu as models for future research on the forms.” The distinctive characteristics of this style—
“national” (millº)and “individual” (×ahsº) character of refinement, simplicity, rationality, sincerity, nobil-
“Turkish art.”72 He adopts and illustrates with a map ity, and dignity—are none other than the ones high-
(fig. 14) their paradigm of migrations that give rise lighted forty-five years earlier in the imperial discourse
to original artistic syntheses created by the interac- of the Uª¢l as markers of proto-national dynastic iden-
tion of foreign and national artists under the patron- tity; they are now recast as Turkish qualities embody-
age of Turkish dynasties. Nevertheless, he rejects the ing a modernist spirit awaiting reinvigoration under
“exaggerated role” attributed by European scholars the Westernizing Republic of Turkey.76
to Byzantine and Armenian elements in the Anato- Criticizing the predominant focus of the Uª¢l on
lian Seljuk synthesis and approvingly cites Aga-Oglu’s mosques, Arseven draws attention to their multifunc-
view that Hagia Sophia exerted no influence on the tional dependencies, which embody urban design
mosque of Mehmed II in Istanbul.73 Arseven’s Türk principles, and to secular building types. He declares
San’atæ traces the evolution of “Turkish art” in three that the modern age must invent an entirely new,
phases, from ancient and medieval Asiatic origins to nonrevivalist art inspired by the national “spirit” of
the present. In his opinion, the latest Anatolian phase, the past, which since the eighteenth century, with
encompassing the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, con- the infiltration of foreign European influences, has
stitutes a “continuous style” culminating with Sinan’s steadily declined. Arseven’s modernist discourse is
masterpieces, which are “without doubt” the highest built into his elaborate periodization of Ottoman
achievement of “Turkish art.”74 architecture (slightly revised in the 1939 French edi-
Arseven refers to Sinan as the “greatest master of tion of his book, indicated in brackets), which cul-
Turkish architecture,” who perfects the “classical style” minates in the “New Turkey Period”: he labels these
of the “Ottoman Turks” (a still-prevalent denomina- “Bursa Period, 1325–1480” [“Style de Brousse, 1325–
tion that anachronistically ethnicizes the Ottomans). 1501”]; “Classical Period, 1480–1603” [“Style classique,
He considers there to have been only two unrivaled 1501–1616”]; “Renovation Period, 1603–1702” [“Style
architectural geniuses of the sixteenth century, “Sinan classique rénové, 1616–1703”]; “Tulip Period, 1702–
in the East” and “Michelangelo in the West.” He is the 30”[“Style Tulipe, 1703–30”]; “Baroque Period, 1730–
first to use the term “classical period” for the zenith 1808” [“Style Baroque, 1730–1808”]; “Empire Period,
of Ottoman architecture, which achieves “simplicity 1808–50” [“Style Empire et pseudo-Renaissance, 1808–
and beauty” by passing previous foreign influences 84”]; and “Revivalist Period, 1850–1923” [“Style néo-
through a corrective “filter.” Thanks to its harmonious classique, 1875–1923”].77 This dynamic succession of
volumetric massing and the subordination of its orna- period-styles, echoing those of Europe and integrated
ment to structural rationalism, the “purified” classical with the evolutionary rhythms of Western civilization,
Ottoman synthesis is superior to the hybrid medieval stands in marked contrast to the essentialist frameworks
style of the Anatolian Seljuks, which is characterized by of Orientalist publications that denied modernity to
unseemly heavy proportions and an exaggerated deco- the “Islamic other.” By adapting the Uª¢l’s rise-and-
rative emphasis. Arseven’s preoccupation with “purifi- decline paradigm to the new context of the Turkish
cation” echoes the general obsession of an entire age Republic, Arseven attempts to legitimize the progres-
in which late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sive modernist agenda of the nation-state on both the
nationalisms exalted ethnic/national purity (in such political and the artistic front.78
realms as race, language, history, culture, and art) Although Arseven notes the dissemination of the
as an ideal.75 Moreover, his teleological view of the “classical style” in the Balkans and the Arab provinces
Seljuk period as a less developed precursor of the Otto- of the Ottoman Empire (and supposedly as far as India
man era, within which the essentialized “classical age” by way of Sinan’s students), his book focuses on mon-
reigns supreme, finds a direct corollary in nationalist uments within modern Turkey.79 The geographical
history writing in the early Turkish Republic. In an spread and regional diversity of the Ottoman archi-
expanded edition of his book Arseven later explains tectural heritage over three continents would also be
that he chose the term “classical style” (klâsik üslûb) distorted by the nationalist historiographies of other
because in Europe it denotes a “high style” based on nation-states (both Christian and Muslim) that had
rational principles consistently applied to plans, ele- partitioned the empire’s formerly unified territories;

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 creation of a national genius 163
these new polities tended to delegitimize the Ottoman
past by casting it as an artistically inferior period of
detested foreign “occupation.” By contrast, the Anato-
lia-centered secular Republic of Turkey, founded on
the contracted heartlands of the empire with a rev-
olution that terminated the Ottoman regime, stood
out as the only modern nation-state to embrace the
architectural legacy of the past: the “Rumi” legacy of
a multinational dynastic empire, which now came to
be reconceptualized as “Anatolian Turkish.”80
With the inauguration in 1931 of the Turkish His-
tory Society (Türk Tarih Kurumu), an institution cre-
ated to construct a nationalist historiography demon-
strating “the service of the Turks to civilization,” the
subject of “Turkish art” moved to center stage of offi-
cial attention.81 In 1935, the director of the society,
Afet [~nan], proposed the publication of a monograph
on the national chief architect, and her proposal was
approved by the founder of the Republic, Mustafa
Kemal [Atatürk], who wrote the instruction: “Make
Sinan’s statue!” (fig. 15). Atatürk also expressed his
desire that the Süleymaniye Mosque be restored and
its multifunctional dependencies transformed into a
commemorative urban complex named “Sinan Sitesi”
after the chief architect. This desire would be realized
only partially: the mosque was renovated and one of its
madrasas converted into a public manuscript library.
The long-delayed statue, not sculpted until 1956, was
ceremonially erected in front of the Ankara Univer-
sity Faculty of Language and History-Geography dur- Fig. 15. Atatürk’s handwritten instruction to the Turkish History
ing the four hundredth anniversary of the inaugura- Society, dated Aug. 2, 1935: “Make Sinan’s statue!” (After Afet
tion of the Süleymaniye Mosque (fig. 16).82 ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan [Ankara, 1956], frontispiece)
After Atatürk’s death in 1938, the Sinan monograph
failed to materialize due to the Second World War,
although several publications eventually grew out of the monuments of his students in India. The second
it from the 1960s through the 1980s.83 Planned as a volume, on architectural history, would be illustrated
two-volume work in French and Turkish, the book with specially prepared drawings and photographs; it
had been assigned to an interdisciplinary committee would feature chapters on architecture as a fine art,
of prominent historians, anthropologists, and architec- the art-historical analysis of Sinan’s works, their com-
tural historians. Like the multilingual Uª¢l, it was to parison to contemporary monuments of world archi-
be an official publication commissioned by the state tecture, and their interpretation in Turkish and Euro-
to address an audience both at home and abroad. The pean publications and would end with a comprehensive
first volume, on historical context, would include sec- bibliography.84
tions on the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century cultural A bilingual brochure published in 1937, on the
history of the Ottoman Empire, the Janissary institu- occasion of the Second Congress of Turkish History,
tion, the ethnology of Muslim and Christian Turks included abstracts written by the respective supervisors
in Anatolia, the ethnic origin of Sinan, his private of each volume, the historian Fuat Köprülü and the
and public life, the inventory of his monuments, crit- French architectural historian Albert-Louis Gabriel.85
ical editions of his autobiographies and waqfiyyas, the Trained as an architect-archaeologist, Gabriel taught
school of Sinan and architects trained by him, and in the Faculty of Letters of Istanbul University between

muqarnas24-1_CS2_necipoglu.indd 163 25-9-2007 11:09:21

 164 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 16. Marble statue of Sinan, sculpted by Hüseyin Ankay in 1956 (After ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan, pl. 4]

Book 1.indb 164 9/20/2007 9:17:13 PM

 creation of a national genius 165

Fig. 17. Typological chart of mosque plans. (After Albert Gabriel, “Les mosquées de Constantinople,” Syria 7 [1926]: 362)

1926 and 1930 and subsequently served as the first with their “eminent place in global art history.” His
director of the French Institute of Archaeology until masterpieces, erected via a sophisticated centralized
1956. He was a trusted friend of Köprülü and the cel- “organization of labor,” would be presented not only
ebrated author of Monuments turcs d’Anatolie (1931– as the manifestations of a single architect’s extraor-
34).86 His abstract explains that the volume on archi- dinary talent but also as “the symbol of the funda-
tectural history was to show how Sinan’s works embody mental characteristics of the Turks and their high-
“national traditions and constitute an integral part est aspirations.” The analysis of Sinan’s oeuvre would
of the Turkish patrimony.” Despite the geographi- thus bring to light a great achievement in the art of
cal spread of his works in the Balkans, Anatolia, and humankind, reflecting “not only the genius of an
Syria, the monograph would focus on Sinan’s mas- individual man, but also the eternal virtues and mer-
terpieces in Edirne and particularly in Istanbul, with- its of a nation.”87
out neglecting provincial monuments. Major mosque The monograph, then, envisioned the chief archi-
complexes were to be fully documented and comple- tect’s simultaneously global and national style (rep-
mented by selected examples of other building types resenting the supreme embodiment of the merits of
such as masjids, madrasas, caravansarays, bridges, and a dynastic empire in the Uª¢l) as a collective artistic
fountains. (The absence from this list of Sinan’s pal- achievement of the Anatolian Turks. Gabriel had writ-
aces and kiosks was perhaps due to the paucity of sur- ten an article along the same lines in 1936, glorify-
viving examples, which enhanced the traditional focus ing Sinan as a “creative genius” whose masterpieces,
on public monumental architecture.) The evolution imprinted by the “Turkish spirit,” were far from pas-
of the chief architect’s style would be traced to Ana- tiches of Hagia Sophia. Ten years earlier, he had
tolian Seljuk and early Ottoman prototypes in order detected in the chief architect’s oeuvre an ethos com-
to identify the “original character” of his works, along parable to that of the European Renaissance, rooted in

Book 1.indb 165 9/20/2007 9:17:13 PM

 166 gülru nec~poÅlu
volumes, each assigned to a different group of spe-
cialists, echoes the division of labor Babinger had pre-
viously envisioned for his own unrealized Sinan mono-
graph. Such a nonintegrated approach, relegating to
historians the study of texts as repositories of back-
ground information, would largely be maintained by
future generations of formalist architectural histori-
ans, whose primary methodological tool became that
of style and typology.
Köprülü’s abstract explains the purpose of the his-
torical volume: to analyze, on the basis of written
sources, the organization of labor and the political,
cultural, and socio-economic contexts within which
“our national architecture and great national architect”
flourished. Sinan’s biography would be derived from
his autobiographies and other primary sources, repro-
duced in an appendix (fig. 18). The planned inclu-
sion of a section on the ethnology of Anatolia signals
the official agenda of propagating Sinan’s identity as
a Christian Turkish dev×irme who converted to Islam
upon being recruited as a Janissary cadet. In 1936 a
member of the historical committee, Ahmet Refik
(Altænay), had published an imperial decree dating
to 1573, which recorded the Turkish names of some
of Sinan’s Christian relatives living in the villages of
Kayseri.90 At the 1937 Congress of Turkish History,
another member of the historical committee, Hasan
Fehmi Turgal, brought to light additional documents
showing the prevalence of Turkish names in the Chris-
tian village of Aqærnas, in Kayseri, where, according to
Fig. 18. Sinan’s signature and the imprint of his seal on an archival sources, Sinan was born.91 The historian Ræfkæ
archival document. (After Fuat Köprülü and Albert Gabriel,
Melul Meriç, who had been appointed to write Sinan’s
Sinan, Hayatæ, Eserleri = Sinan, sa vie, son oeuvre [Istanbul, 1937],
biography for the historical volume, used these doc-
back cover)
uments in a 1938 article to support the view that the
chief architect was recruited from Aqærnas as a Chris-
the reinterpretation of antique models from the past tian Turk. He convincingly demonstrated the unreli-
in “modern works.”88 According to Gabriel’s abstract, ability of texts used (and almost certainly invented)
his “rigorously documented” volume, which would fea- by Cevdet and Osman Rifat to construct fictive biog-
ture contributions of other architects-cum-architectural raphies of Sinan. Nevertheless, Meriç’s own assertion
historians (S. Çetinta×, A. S. Ülgen, and S. H. Eldem), that Turkish names were adopted only by the Christian
aimed to disprove “prejudiced” assessments by non- Turks of the Kayseri region, and not by their Greek
experts, based on “false postulates.” Its architectural and Armenian neighbors, was at best an unsubstanti-
drawings, to be prepared with “scrupulous exactitude,” ated hypothesis. The search for the controversial eth-
would probably have featured comparative typologi- nic origin of Sinan (whether Greek, Armenian, or
cal charts, like those included in Gabriel’s 1926 arti- Turkish) was largely a misguided exercise, given the
cle classifying the plan types of Istanbul’s mosques, racial pluralism of the Ottoman state. The still-unre-
which initiated the taxonomical gaze of subsequent solved controversy is based on the assumption of an
studies (fig. 17).89 The clear-cut separation of his- “ethnic purity” difficult to imagine in the intermixed
torical documentation and formal analysis into two Greek, Armenian, and Christian Turkish populations

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 creation of a national genius 167
of the Kayseri region, whose shared naming practices phalic Turkish race” (Brakisefal Türk ærkæ).95 In those
further complicate the problem.92 years such architectural journals as Arkitekt, Mimar-
The ongoing preoccupation with the Turkishness of læk, and Mimar continued to regularly commemorate
Sinan and of his style is manifested in a fictionalized Sinan, on the anniversary of his death, as the role
biography of him written “in the manner of a histor- model of modern successors “bearing the blood and
ical novel” by Afet ~nan, the director of the Turkish genius of the master.”96
History Society, who had initially conceived the mono- In their readings of Sinan’s architecture through
graph project. Even though Meriç had proved the the lens of modernism, highlighting its perfect balance
fabricated nature of documents “discovered” by Cev- between form and function along with its “rational-
det and Rifat Osman, she indiscriminately uses them ism” and “purism” transcending decorative impulses,
to embellish the childhood portrait of the national these professional journals would leave an imprint
genius as a Christian Turk.93 She imagines in vivid on subsequent scholarship. The European professors
detail how Sinan’s grandfather Doqan Yusuf Agha of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Istan-
interrupts his work on carpentry and holds the new- bul also inscribed the chief architect’s works within
born baby in his arms, as his tears of joy fall and modernist narratives.97 For instance, a 1938 textbook
dry on the infant’s cheeks. Instead of merely con- on global architectural history, Mimari Bilgisi (Knowl-
structing chicken coops and fountains, little Sinan edge of Architecture), written by the German architect
absorbs artistic influences from the physical land- Bruno Taut for the students of the Academy, presents
scape of the Anatolian terrain, such as the power- a functionalist interpretation of Sinan’s style, char-
ful silhouette of Mount Erciyes, whose form he later acterizing it as achieving an ideal harmony between
mimics in the mountainlike pyramidal massing of the proportional form and rational construction. Taut
Süleymaniye Mosque (fig. 19). Another influence on regards Roman and Byzantine architects as mere engi-
his style, constituting a geographically and ethnically neers in comparison to Sinan, who as a genius of the
defined Anatolian Turkish synthesis, is the cultural art of proportion aestheticizes engineering technique
landscape of Seljuk monuments in nearby Kayseri and both internally and externally in his domed mosques.
Konya, which Sinan avidly studies and sketches when- Visually improved by soaring minarets, Hagia Sophia
ever his grandfather goes to repair their woodwork is only a “prelude” to the mosques of Sinan, under
(fig. 20). On these occasions, the talented boy helps whom domed construction reaches the highest degree
the old man, who in turn teaches him history lessons. of development and flexibility in world history.98
At the Karatay Khan, for instance, he tells Sinan: “This Sinan also occupies a prominent position in another
building is a monument of our ancestors, the Seljuks. textbook for Turkish students, written by Ernst Diez
Like us they, too, came from the east. They settled soon after he founded (in 1943) the art history depart-
here, built these monuments, and left them to us.” ment of Istanbul University, where he taught courses
As Sinan prepares to leave Aqærnas for Istanbul with on Islamic and Turkish art. Translated into Turkish
his father Katip Abdülmennan (the scribe of a Janis- by his pupil Oktay Aslanapa (who had just received
sary recruitment officer), his grandfather kisses his a doctoral degree at the University of Vienna), it
forehead and encourages him to build masterpieces was published in 1946 under the title Türk Sanatæ:
that emulate Seljuk monuments in the sultan’s ser- Ba×langæcændan Günümüze Kadar (Turkish Art: From
vice: “Our tribal ancestors came here in migrations. the Beginning to the Present). Its preface laments
We kept alive our lineage with our names and mother the lack of a comprehensive survey comparable to
tongue. Now most of these Turks are accepting the Arthur Upham Pope’s A Survey of Persian Art from Pre-
religion of Islam and creating civilized works (medenî historic Times to the Present (1938–39). Diez explains
eserler). I want to see you also as a person serving this that his own modest volume aims to supplement the
race and the Turkish being!”94 only existing survey of “Turkish art,” written by Arse-
In promoting its racial theories, the Turkish His- ven, which had been reprinted in 1939 in a revised
tory Society went so far as to exhume Sinan’s body French edition with new drawings, charts of typolog-
from his tomb in 1935 to measure his skull. In 1944, ically classified mosque plans, and additional pho-
the architect Bedri Uçar proudly announced that tographs. Diez’s textbook reproduces some of these
the Society’s anthropological research had proven charts (fig. 21) and supplements them with others.
Sinan’s skull to be characteristic of the “brachyce- Like his Turkish predecessor, he criticizes the mono-

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 168 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 19. View of Mount Erciyes from the village of Aqærnas, Sinan’s birthplace, painted by Ahmed Çalæ×el in 1955, compared
to a photograph showing the silhouette of the Süleymaniye Mosque. (After ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan, frontispiece)

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 creation of a national genius 169

Fig. 20. Photographs of the Sultan Khan in Aksaray, Konya. (After ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan, 23)

lithic term “Islamic art” and traces the evolution of World War, he explicitly rejects a race-based defini-
the Turkish “national style” (millî üslup) in architec- tion of “national style” and regards sultanic mosques
ture and the arts from ancient Asiatic tribal origins built after the conquest of Constantinople as “the
to the present, focusing primarily on the Anatolian children of Hagia Sophia.” It is the adoption of this
Seljuk and Ottoman periods.99 monument by the sultans as a “symbol of imperial
Unlike Arseven, however, Diez (who was initially rule” that engenders a renaissance in the Golden
trained as a Byzantinist before turning to the study Horn, born from the eastern Roman architectural
of Islamic art) aims to integrate the Turkish artis- tradition and characterized by an innovative concep-
tic tradition within a more universal Mediterranean tion of space and light that represents the last step in
perspective. In his book, written during the Second the evolution of Islamic mosque architecture. Elabo-

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 170 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 21. Typological chart of Ottoman mosque plans by Arseven. (Reproduced in Ernst Diez, Türk Sanatæ [Istanbul, 1946],
169, fig. 123)

rating on the “Turkish Renaissance” paradigm initi- tect’s mosques as variations of square, hexagonal,
ated by Gurlitt and further developed by Glück (with and octagonal support systems.102 He observes that
whom, in 1925, he had coauthered Die Kunst des Islam the “classical style” of the school of Sinan, “a term
in the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte series), Diez argues used by Turkish scholars,” presents parallels with six-
that the Ottomans, whose empire approximated that teenth-century Italian Renaissance architecture, even
of the Romans, needed “architectural representa- though artistic exchanges with the West were not as
tion” on a monumental scale, unlike their Anatolian strong at that time as in later periods. This is an allu-
Seljuk predecessors, who were content to build rela- sion to the term klâsik üslûb, coined by Arseven, who
tively small structures. In his view, the imperial “state wrote that the school of Sinan was “an entirely sepa-
architecture” of the Ottomans is not purely Turkish rate movement from the European Renaissance, for
but rather a creative synthesis of Byzantine, Iranian, art in Turkey had not yet submitted itself to any for-
and Islamic traditions.100 eign influence.” Unlike his Turkish colleague, Diez
Referring to Sinan as the “greatest Turkish archi- emphasizes the shared roots of Ottoman and Italian
tect,” Diez accepts the “evidence” presented by Aga- Renaissance architecture in the Roman imperial tradi-
Oglu concerning the chief architect’s ethnic origin as tion and attributes their similarities to a “period style”
a Turk (although in a later article, published after he (Zeitstil) mediating between “East and West.”103
left Turkey, he states that Sinan was either Greek or Pointing out that Ottoman architects “gazed with
Armenian, but more likely Armenian).101 Like Gur- one eye to Hagia Sophia and the other eye to Europe,”
litt, Diez classifies the plan types of the chief archi- Diez ranks the perfectly centralized early-seventeenth-

Book 1.indb 170 9/20/2007 9:17:24 PM

 creation of a national genius 171
century Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built by a student of to the Üç Øerefeli Mosque (commissioned by Mehmed
Sinan in a style comparable to the “European Baroque,” II’s father prior to the encounter with Hagia Sophia)
above all other sultanic mosques in Istanbul. Despite as one of the precursors of Sinan’s “classical style,”
the innovations of this mosque, however, he observes which reaches its climax with the Selimiye, a master-
that Sinan’s successors perpetuated his legacy until piece that “overshadows all monuments in the world,
the mid-seventeenth century, when reactions to his including the Pantheon and St. Peter’s in Rome.”107
“serious style” opened the gate to detrimental Euro- The continuing anxiety about “influence” and the
pean influences manifested in the hybrid works of preoccupation with Turkishness, however, hindered
non-Turkish architects (Italian, Greek, and Arme- further research on intercultural exchanges and artistic
nian), which hastened the demise of “national archi- parallels with Italy. The intentional cross-references of
tecture.” Admitting that he has not visited the Selimiye Sinan’s sultanic mosques to Hagia Sophia also resisted
in Edirne due to the war, Diez states his preference for in-depth analysis. The stifling political correctness of
the spatial effect of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque over nationalist discourses had the effect of marginalizing
that of Hagia Sophia or the Süleymaniye, an effect the architectural history of the “lands of Rum,” situ-
that to him demonstrates the superiority of a central- ated at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, as a nar-
ized plan with four half domes over a layout with only rowly circumscribed field increasingly dominated by
two half domes (fig. 22).104 This judgment subverts native scholars. Whether conceptualized as an Anato-
the dominant view that the “classical style” of Sinan’s lian Turkish synthesis confined to the territorial bor-
mosques, reaching perfection in the Selimiye, repre- ders of the nation-state, or as a pan-Turkic synthesis
sents the highest achievement of Ottoman architec- rooted in distant Asiatic origins, the “classical style”
ture. Diez was so heavily criticized by Turkish schol- of Sinan was often framed within separatist narratives
ars for foregrounding the influence of Hagia Sophia of architectural nationalism.108
and emphasizing the Armenian and Byzantine ingre- The need to demonstrate the national character
dients of Anatolian Seljuk architecture that he left for of “Turkish art” is reiterated in Arseven’s three-vol-
Vienna in 1948.105 ume Türk Sanatæ Tarihi: Men×einden Bugüne Kadar (His-
The revised and expanded edition of his book, pre- tory of Turkish Art: From Its Origins to the Present),
pared in 1955 by Aslanapa (now the coauthor), omits published in fascicules between 1954 and 1959 as an
controversial passages such as those espousing the expanded version of his 1939 L’art Turc. The preface
Turkish ethnic origin of Sinan and characterizing sul- announces the foundation in 1951 of the Institute of
tanic mosques as the “children of Hagia Sophia” and Turkish Art History at the Fine Arts Academy to fur-
more emphatically stresses Italian Renaissance paral- ther cultivate this undervalued field. The first two vol-
lels. The new edition includes additional sections on umes, on architecture and architectural ornament,
the Karamanid principality (based on a book Diez are once again dominated by the Ottoman period.109
coauthored with Aslanapa and Koman in 1950) and Arseven revises his former periodization by giving an
other monuments from the Beylik period that dia- even more prominent position to the “classical style”
chronically bridge the Seljuk and Ottoman periods. (now dated between 1501 and 1703) codified by Sinan.
The Beylik-period monuments of Western Anatolia, He no longer regards the Sultan Ahmed Mosque as
with their new emphasis on space, classicizing motifs the initiator of the “renovation period”; instead, it
inspired by local antique ruins, and Italianate fea- represents a less successful continuation of Sinan’s
tures disseminated by trade relations, are seen as hav- style, which impresses Europeans thanks to its dec-
ing initiated a fourteenth-century “renaissance” that orative exuberance (apparently an allusion to Diez’s
constitutes yet another trans-Mediterranean “period professed preference for the “Baroque” character of
style.”106 On the other hand, the fifteenth-century this mosque).110
mosque of Mehmed II, now identified as the first mon- Arseven censures Diez’s definition of sultanic
umental central-plan structure after Hagia Sophia, is mosques as the “children of Hagia Sophia” and his
credited with launching in Istanbul a “renaissance negative assessment of the Süleymaniye as “untenable
of antique architecture” parallel to that of Rome. Si- views regrettably included in a textbook that instills
nan’s subsequently built central-plan domed mosques Turkish youth with an inferiority complex.” He states
are likewise compared to projects developed in Rome that Sinan did not “imitate” Hagia Sophia, but rather
for St. Peter’s. The expanded section on Edirne refers “corrected and improved its errors and shortcomings”

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 172 gülru nec~poÅlu

Fig. 22. Typological chart comparing the plans of the Ayasofya, Süleymaniye, Yeni Valide, and Sultan Ahmed mosques in
Istanbul. (After Ernst Diez, Türk Sanatæ [Istanbul, 1946], 196, fig. 138)

Book 1.indb 172 9/20/2007 9:17:27 PM

 creation of a national genius 173
in masterpieces that brought the internal evolution of architecture” in their original “conception of space.”
Turkish architecture to its highest point of maturity. Distancing himself from discourses on the origins of
Nor was Sinan influenced by the European Renaissance the “classical style” of Ottoman architecture, he crit-
manner, which only infiltrated the national tradition icizes both the biases of Western scholars (who con-
of architecture after the eighteenth century: “In the sider this style an imitation of Hagia Sophia, consti-
meantime, Turkish architecture evolved according to its tuting an inferior branch of Islamic architecture) and
own character, following traditions developed in Ana- the chauvinism of nationalist paradigms that insist on
tolia” and some ideas inspired by the dome of Hagia tracing its roots to ancient Asiatic sources. He con-
Sophia. Accepting the official view of Sinan’s origin tends that one must first understand the nature of the
as a Christian Turk, Arseven argues that his architec- “Seljuk-Turkish” and “Ottoman-Turkish” architecture
tural genius could not have soared to such heights of Anatolia before attempting to search for distant ori-
without the contributions of his predecessors and tal- gins in the East.115 Kuban’s preference for defining the
ented assistants, whom he directed in the manner of “character” of the classical Ottoman style as an Ana-
an “orchestra conductor.”111 Like the unrealized mono- tolian Turkish synthesis stamped by an early modern
graph commissioned by the Turkish History Society, Mediterranean spirit is nevertheless implicitly embed-
Arseven’s revised book represents Sinan’s oeuvre as an ded in a discourse of national identity. His compar-
embodiment of national values that the Turks should ison between Ottoman and Italian Renaissance reli-
be proud of: a collective achievement reflecting the gious monuments aims to highlight their differences
“highly refined aesthetic sensibilities” of the society rather than the parallels attributed by Diez to a Zeitstil
in which the chief architect flourished.112 shared across the Mediterranean. These differences,
The 1950s marked the emergence of specialized according to Kuban, underscore the separate identity
architectural history books that initiated a break of classical Ottoman architecture as an independent
between architecture and the arts; this dichotomy regional-geographical synthesis that, contrary to Diez’s
thereafter became normative in most surveys.113 The view, is not “influenced” by Europe.116
earliest monograph on the chief architect, Sinan: Der Focusing on the contemporaneous development
Baumeister osmanischer Glanzzeit, was published in 1954 of light-filled, domed central-plan religious monu-
by the Vienna-trained Swiss architect Ernst Egli, a for- ments in Renaissance Italy and the Ottoman Empire,
mer professor of the Academy of Fine Arts. Tracing Kuban’s comparative analysis of inner space highlights
the specifically Turkish character of Sinan’s mosques the uniqueness of Sinan’s mosques, with their hemi-
to the cube-and-dome combination in Anatolian Seljuk spherical superstructures resting on square, hexago-
architecture, Egli argues that “Hagia Sophia came less nal, and octagonal support systems and their rational
as a revelation than as an incentive for further effort.” construction system minimizing the role of ornament.
Commenting on the futility of the debate on ethnic Kuban argues that since the Italian Renaissance and
origin, he positions Sinan’s works within the Turkish- the Ottoman architectural traditions both synthesize
Islamic cultural sphere, for “no one can deny that he diverse influences (including Byzantine and medieval
grew up in Turkish surroundings, or that his career prototypes), each synthesis must be judged positively
was confined to the Turkish-Ottoman and Islamic on its own terms. His comparative strategy thus vindi-
worlds.”114 cates the original character of Ottoman religious archi-
Another monograph, published in 1958, is Doqan tecture by giving a new twist to the rationalist para-
Kuban’s Osmanlæ Dinî Mimarisinde ~ç Mekân Te×ekkülü: digm of the Uª¢l, embraced in Arseven’s definition of
Rönesansla bir Mukayese (Formation of Inner Space in the “classical style.” Kuban’s Turkification and Ana-
Ottoman Religious Architecture: A Comparison with tolianization of the Ottoman architectural synthesis
the Renaissance). Kuban, who was trained as an archi- is further crystallized in a 1967 article titled “Mimar
tect at Istanbul Technical University (where he subse- Sinan and the Classical Period of Turkish Architec-
quently became a renowned professor and the chair ture,” which portrays the chief architect as the “symbol
of Architectural History and Restoration) explains of the classical period of Anatolian Turkish architec-
in his preface that he adopts an “empirical method” ture” and a “central issue of national culture.” Aim-
of formal comparison to demonstrate the distinctive ing to show how Sinan “combined a national synthe-
character of Ottoman mosques, which depart from sis with a universal world view” that bridged Asia and
the “predominantly decorative approach of Islamic Europe, this seminal article sets the tone for Kuban’s

muqarnas24-1_CS2_necipoglu.indd 173 25-9-2007 11:10:35

 174 gülru nec~poÅlu
future monographs on the chief architect, which reject Soliman et l’architecture ottomane (1985), which, after
biased Western interpretive frameworks in favor of an briefly tracing the evolution of Seljuk and early Otto-
“empirical” method of formal analysis.117 man architecture, primarily focuses on the “style of
Sinan.” It ends with a chapter on the “apotheosis of
the Selimiye,” which represents the “affirmation of an
CANONIZATION OF SINAN IN THE SECOND entirely Turkish style” and constitutes a masterpiece
HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY that “comes closer to the monuments of the Italian
Renaissance than to those of classical Byzantium.”122
After the 1950s the linear evolution of national archi- Commemorating the 400th anniversary of the chief
tecture from the Seljuk and Beylik periods through architect’s death, Aptullah Kuran’s 1986 Mimar Sinan
the Ottoman period became normative in surveys of (translated in 1987 as Sinan: The Grand Old Master of
Turkish art and architecture, which canonized Sin- Ottoman Architecture) is the first scholarly monograph
an’s “classical style” as the undisputed apex of artistic to present a chronologically organized stylistic analysis
achievement in the “lands of Rum,” whose focal point of Sinan’s oeuvre, to which is appended a catalogue of
was modern Turkey. Dedicated to Albert Gabriel, “the his complete works as listed in the autobiographies.123
great friend of Turkey and eminent historian of its The late 1980s and 1990s also saw an unprecedented
art,” Suut Kemal Yetkin’s L’architecture turque en turquie boom in the publication of monographs and confer-
(1962) is one of the surveys in which the tripartite ence proceedings on the chief architect, which raised
periodization Seljuk–Beylik–Ottoman is naturalized as Sinan scholarship to a sophisticated level of formal
a teleological, uninterrupted diachronic sequence, with analysis that muted earlier ideological controversies.124
its discontinuities, ruptures, and external connections The sterilized narratives of these studies have tended
deliberately masked. As Robert Brunschvig’s preface to recycle old information in new guises, without
aptly notes, this sequential scheme, which rarely refers advancing fresh interpretive perspectives. Often con-
to parallels with other regions and nearly denies “for- centrating on canonical “masterpieces” and adopting
eign influences,” contributes to the homogeneity of a linear model of stylistic evolution perfected in the
the subject, constituting an “orthogenetic” evolution centralized plan of the Selimiye mosque, they gen-
with “ethnic and geographic” determinants.118 erally overlook Sinan’s experimentation with varied
Aslanapa’s Turkish Art and Architecture (1971), pub- spatial concepts and minimize the aesthetic role that
lished soon after he founded the chair of Turkish and his autobiographies assign to ornament and epigra-
Islamic Art at Istanbul University in 1963, inserts the phy. Kuban even goes so far as to argue that “deco-
same tripartite scheme within a broader Islamic geogra- ration had absolutely no influence on the architec-
phy encompassing other “Turkish” dynasties (Karakha- tural design” of Sinan, whose style “reflects a purism
nid, Ghaznavid, Great Seljuk, Zengid, Tulunid, Mam- that is not to be seen in Europe until the twentieth
luk): a pan-Turkic gaze that departs from his teacher century.”125
Diez’s legacy of emphasizing European Renaissance Perpetuating formalist methodologies launched by
parallels.119 Godfrey Goodwin’s A History of Ottoman the founding figures of the field of “Turkish art,” these
Architecture (1971), on the other hand, adopts the books are only rarely informed by text-based research
Uª¢l’s paradigm of dynastic evolution by inscribing and interdisciplinary approaches.126 Just as interest in
the “classical style” within a biological scheme of rise- Sinan has faded among historians, monographs by
and-decline in which Sinan’s works occupy the high- architectural historians have generally remained out
est point.120 The chief architect also forms the central of touch with new empirical and theoretical devel-
focus of a 1975 multi-author survey, Türk Mimarisinin opments in the field of Ottoman history, where for
Geli×imi ve Mimar Sinan (The Development of Turk- quite some time such essentialized constructs as the
ish Architecture and the Architect Sinan), edited by rise-and-decline paradigm and the “classical age” have
Metin Sözen, which subdivides the “architecture of been critically scrutinized. With a few exceptions, these
Turkey” into three periods: Pre-Sinan, Sinan, and monographs interpret Sinan’s works as self-referential
Post-Sinan.121 manifestations of his creative genius, playing down the
The graduation of the chief architect to interna- agency of his patrons along with the historical, socio-
tional fame was signaled by the emergence of lavishly political, economic, religious, cultural, and aesthetic
illustrated coffee-table books, such as Henri Stierlin’s contexts in which the individualized programs and

Book 1.indb 174 9/20/2007 9:17:29 PM

 creation of a national genius 175
codes of his “classical style” came into being.127 sance: Cultural Exchanges with the East (London, 2005).
As noted in recent revisionist critiques of Ottoman 4. Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (New
York and Oxford, 1985), 453–83. The most recent exception
architectural historiography, the disjunction between is a survey that integrates Islamic monuments from different
architecture and history has facilitated the appropri- periods within chronologically ordered synchronic chapters
ation and instrumentalization of Sinan’s legacy for following a “timeline” model: see Francis D. K. Ching, Mark
different purposes.128 When considered as part of an M. Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya Prakash, A Global History of
Architecture (New Jersey, 2007). The Ottoman Empire is repre-
international Islamic visual tradition, the chief archi-
sented here (437–40, 529–31) with selected buildings (includ-
tect’s oeuvre has once again been admired for its for- ing the Süleymaniye complex, built by Sinan), grouped in
mal qualities and inventively varied domed spaces tran- two chapters on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For
scending the specificities of meaning negotiated in the standard classification of “Islamic Art” under “The Mid-
particular contexts, whether interpreted from a secu- dle Ages,” often following “Early Christian and Byzantine
Art,” see H. W. Janson, History of Art (Englewood Cliffs, NJ,
lar perspective or as a timeless spiritual expression of and New York, 1973), 185–94; Horst de la Croix, Richard G.
God’s oneness (tawhºd).129 The abstraction of Sinan’s Tansey, and Diane Kirkpatrick, Gardner’s Art through the Ages,
works into an autonomous evolution of style and plan 2 vols. (New York, 1991), 1:354–77; Frederick Hartt, Art: A
types has thus lent itself equally well to diverse visions History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, 2 vols. (New York,
1976), 1:280–92.
of universalism, divorced from context. Nevertheless,
5. Cited from the ninth edition of Sir Banister Fletcher, A His-
the lingering echoes of Orientalist and nationalist par- tory of Architecture on the Comparative Method (New York and
adigms have continued to persist beneath the innoc- London, 1924), 784.
uous veneer of formal autonomy. 6. Hartt, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (1976),
1:280, 288. The revised fourth edition of Hartt’s survey omits
the quoted passage and explains that the “Ottoman Turks”
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture,
were not “overwhelmed” by Hagia Sophia because their “archi-
Department of History of Art and Architecture tectural code” was firmly established when they conquered
Harvard University Constantinople. Sinan is now identified as a “genius” who
carries “Ottoman architecture to the height of its classical
period.” See idem, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Archi-
tecture, 2 vols. (New York, 1993), 1:309–11. The emulation of
NOTES Hagia Sophia in Renaissance Italy is discussed in Necipoqlu,
Age of Sinan, 88–92.
1. For the “Rumi” identity of the Ottomans, see Cemal Kafadar’s 7. James Fergusson, The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, 2 vols.
essay in this volume and Tülay Artan, “Questions of Ottoman (London, 1855), 1:464, cited in Stephen Vernoit, “Islamic
Identity and Architectural History,” in Rethinking Architectural Art and Architecture: An Overview of Scholarship and Col-
Historiography, ed. Dana Arnold, Elvan Altan Ergut, and Bel- lecting, c. 1850–1950,” in Stephen Vernoit, ed., Discovering
gin Turan Özkaya (London and New York, 2006), 85–109. Islamic Art: Scholars, Collectors and Collections (London and
2. Sinan’s conscious dialogues with early Ottoman, Byzantine, New York, 2000), 6–7. Thanks to their Indo-European racial
and Italian Renaissance architecture are discussed in Gülru origin, “Persian” and “Indian” art were ranked above that
Necipoqlu, “Challenging the Past: Sinan and the Competi- of the “Semitic Arabs” and “Turks.” For the denial of the
tive Discourse of Early Modern Islamic Architecture,” Muqar- “Turks’” artistic sensibility colored by “Turkophobia” based
nas 10 (1993): 169–80; idem, The Age of Sinan: Architectural on Enlightenment critiques of “Oriental despotism,” see the
Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London and Princeton, 2005), essays of Rémi Labrusse in the forthcoming Louvre Museum
esp. 77–103, 135–47. exhibition catalogue Purs décors? Arts de l’Islam dans les collec-
3. For revisionist attempts to “re-orient” Renaissance visual tions des Arts Décoratifs (Paris, 2007).
culture by exploring its global interactions with the Islamic 8. It is beyond the purview of this paper to consider the impli-
lands and the New World, see Claire Farago, ed., Reframing cations of new interpretive horizons and revisionist criti-
the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, cal perspectives that have recently begun to emerge in this
1450–1650 (New Haven and London, 1995); Lisa Jardine, unusually fertile field. For new critical perspectives on the
Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London and historiography of Ottoman architecture, see Artan, “Ques-
New York, 1996); Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Inter- tions of Ottoman Identity,” 85–109, and the proceedings
ests: Renaissance Art between East and West (London, 1996); of a conference on the seven-century-long “supranational
Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic heritage” of Ottoman architecture, which expose the limi-
World on Venetian Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven, 2000); tations of Orientalist and nationalist paradigms: Nur Akæn,
idem, “Venice between East and West: Marc’Antonio Barbaro Afife Batur, and Selçuk Batur, eds., Osmanlæ Mimarlæqænæn 7
and Palladio’s Church of the Redentore,” Journal of the Soci- Yüzyælæ “Uluslarüstü Bir Miras” (Istanbul, 1999).
ety of Architectural Historians 62, 3 (2003): 306–25; Jerry Brot- 9. Marie de Launay, Pietro Montani, et al., Uª¢l-i Mi{m¸rº-i
ton, The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo {Osm¸nº = L’architecture Ottomane = Die ottomanische Baukunst
(Oxford, 2002); Gerald MacLean, ed., Re-Orienting the Renais- (Istanbul, 1873). For this text and its authors, see Ahmet

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 176 gülru nec~poÅlu
Ersoy’s essay in this volume and his dissertation, “On the to the Eighteenth, trans. J. I. Erythrapis (London, 1983); Marie
Sources of the ‘Ottoman Renaissance’: Architectural Revival de Launay et al., Uª¢l, vii.
and Its Discourse During the Abdülaziz Era (1861–76)” (PhD 23. Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, 6, 11a. Later publications (dis-
diss., Harvard University, 2000). Nineteenth-century theories cussed below) that repeat this unsubstantiated claim include
linking styles with racial or national characteristics are dis- Ahmet Cevdet, ed., Tezkiretü’l-Büny¸n (Istanbul, 1315/1897),
cussed in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography 13. Seemingly noting the chronological discrepancy, Franz
of Art (Chicago and London, 2004), 36–58. Babinger writes (without citing a source): “Yusuf, his [Si-
10. The French version of the Uª¢l often substitutes “turque” nan’s] favorite pupil, is said to have been the architect of the
for “ottomane.” The early Ottoman architecture of Bursa is palaces in Lahore, Delhi, and Agra, which were built by the
identified as “Turkish” in Léon Parvillée, Architecture et déco- Emperor Akbar”: see his entry in Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st ed.
ration turques au XVe siècle (Paris, 1874). (henceforth EI1) (Leiden, 1927), s.v. “Sin¸n.” Chaghtai iden-
11. Cited from the second edition of this work: see Charles Texier, tifies the architect of the Taj Mahal as Ustad Ahmed, the son
Asie Mineure: Description géographique, historique et archéologique of Sinan’s pupil Mimar Mehmed Yusuf; he also states that
(Paris, 1862), 125. For the French discourse on the decline Mimar Mehmed Yusuf built the fort of Shahpur at Gulbarga
of “Arab art” in Egypt under “Turkish rule” see Heghnar (Deccan) in 1555: see Muhammad A. Chaghtai, Le Tadj Mahal
Zeitlian Watenpaugh’s essay in this volume. d’Agra (Brussels 1938), 122, 146, cited in Suut Kemal Yetkin,
12. These two monuments are the royal mosque complexes of Türk Mimarisi (Ankara, 1970), 198.
Mihrümah Sultan and Nurbanu Sultan [Atik Valide] in Üskü- 24. For Marie de Launay’s education and his measured drawings
dar: see Texier, Asie Mineure, 79, 126. of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, published in the Uª¢l, see
13. Charles Edmond, L’Egypte à l’Exposition universelle de 1867 Ersoy, “On the Sources of the ‘Ottoman Renaissance,’” 160,
(Paris, 1867), 183; discussed in Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the n. 87.
Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs 25. Marie de Launay et al. Uª¢l, 3–7, 66a. The decline begins
(Berkeley, 1992), 37–39. with the arrival of French engineers, sculptors, and decora-
14. The section on antiquity was written by the Egyptologist tors during the reign of Ahmed III (1703–30) and contin-
Auguste Mariette (Mariette-Bey), that on the middle ages by ues with the Europeanizing works of the Armenian archi-
the historian and archaeologist Charles Edmond, and that on tect “Rafael” and his students. For the decline discourse, see
the modern period by Figari-Bey and J. Claude. The medi- Shirine Hamadeh’s essay in this volume.
evalization of the Islamic architectural heritage of Cairo is 26. Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, 12, 14.
analyzed in Nezar AlSayyad, Irene A. Bierman, and Nasser 27. Ibid., 12–14. Montani is credited with the discovery that Otto-
Rabbat, eds., Making Cairo Medieval (Lanham, MD, 2005); man architects, “like the architects of antiquity,” employed a
also see Watenpaugh’s essay in this volume. system of modules to establish the proportions of their edi-
15. Edmond, L’Egypte à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, 203–5. fices, a system already observed in the Ye×il Cami of Bursa
16. Ibid., 10, 182. before the sixteenth-century invention of orders in Istanbul:
17. Ibid., 200–201. ibid., 26a. Especially from the 1830s onwards, the Westerniz-
18. Salaheddin Bey, La Turquie à l’Exposition universelle de 1867 ing Ottomans, hoping to get themselves accepted and creden-
(Paris, 1867), discussed in Çelik, Displaying the Orient, 39– tialed as Europeans, began to represent their cultural iden-
40. This catalogue, generally attributed to Salaheddin Bey, tity as parallel to yet distinct from those of modern Western
was actually authored by Marie de Launay, who later wrote European nations: Halil Berktay, “Between the First and the
the historical overview of the evolution of Ottoman archi- Third Divisions: Ottoman Late Imperial and Modern Turk-
tecture in the Uª¢l: see Ersoy, “On the Sources of the ‘Otto- ish Nationalist Reactions to the Possibility of Relegation,” a
man Renaissance,’” 164; Edmond, L’Egypte à l’Exposition uni- paper read at a Central European University (CEU) confer-
verselle de 1867, 176–77. ence titled “Europe’s Symbolic Geographies,” Budapest, May
19. Edmond, L’Egypte à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, 176–80. 28–29, 2004.
20. Ibid., 144, 180. 28. Mimar Kemalettin’s 1906 essay, titled “Mi{m¸rº-i ~sl¸m” (Archi-
21. Salaheddin Bey, La Turquie à l’Exposition universelle de 1867, tecture of Islam), asserts that the Uª¢l should be banned from
30. The Ottoman exhibits in Paris included plans and eleva- use as a texbook in architecture schools because its leading
tions of the principal mosques of Istanbul (by Pietro Mon- theorist, Montani Efendi, derived the Ottoman orders from
tani) and of Bursa (by Bontcha): ibid., 139. It was Montani Vignola’s treatise. Kemalettin criticizes the use of both of these
who subsequently wrote the section in the Uª¢l on the fun- illustrated texts in the education of architects, to whom he
damental principles of Ottoman architecture. recommends the first-hand examination of national monu-
22. Prisse d’Avennes’s 1877 book, for example, aimed to trace ments and their decoration. Celâl Esad Arseven also opposed
the “formation, flowering, and decay of Muslim civilization the use of the Uª¢l as a textbook: see ~lhan Tekeli and Selim
in Cairo” up to the arrival of the French armies who rescued ~lkin, Mimar Kemalettin’in Yazdæklaræ (Ankara, 1997), 17, 25–
the Arabs from Ottoman rule, “an epoch during which artis- 26, 72–73.
tic inspiration was all but extinguished under the Turkish 29. The French text identifies the “caractère principal” of Otto-
yoke” and whose few architectural works of merit reflected man monuments as “sévérité noble,” translated into Turk-
“the supreme protest of Arab genius against barbarism.” See ish as “austere (mehºb) grace (le«¸fet).” To avoid monotony,
Achille-Constant-Théodore-Emile Prisse d’Avennes, Arab Art Sinan was “sober” in his use of tile revetments produced in
as Seen through the Monuments of Cairo from the Seventh Century Iznik; he limited them to clearly defined fields. The truth-

Book 1.indb 176 9/20/2007 9:17:30 PM

 creation of a national genius 177
fulness-to-materials principle is observed in the floral motifs ism upon the 1913 defeat in the Balkan War: see Halil Berk-
of Iznik tiles that “imitate the fossilized imprint of ancient tay, Cumhuriyet ~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü (Istanbul, 1983),
plants on stone” (les vestiges que la végétation antédiluvienne a 35–36. An early discussion of Anatolian Seljuk architecture
laissé empreints sur la pierre): see Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, appears in Mimar Kemalettin’s 1906 essay, which derives its
11–12, 14–17, 73a. The seventeenth-century collapse of the evolutionary scheme of Ottoman architecture (now labeled
“national” tilemaking industry in Iznik is attributed to civil “Turkish”) from the Uª¢l: see n. 28 above. Kemalettin elab-
wars: ibid., 6, 25a. Diverse patterns of floral Iznik tiles (faiences orates on the Uª¢l’s rationalist paradigm by highlighting
murales) from the sixteenth-century monuments of Istanbul the fundamental distinction between “Turkish” and “Arab”
are illustrated in the final section on Ottoman ornament architecture. Asserting that the Arabs were merely good dec-
(pls. 1–22). orators, he argues that the Turks structurally perfected the
30. For nineteenth-century European discourses on the “ara- Byzantine tradition of construction by creating monumen-
besque” and the ornamental character of Islamic architecture, tal domed edifices imitating Hagia Sophia: “But this imita-
see the chapter “Ornamentalism and Orientalism” in Gülru tion by the Turks is to be considered highly extraordinary.
Necipoqlu, The Topkapæ Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic The Turks appreciated the inventiveness of Hagia Sophia’s
Architecture (Santa Monica, CA, 1995), 61–109. German his- style of construction and improved it.” See Tekeli and ~lkin,
tories of world architecture considered Islamic architecture Mimar Kemalettin’in Yazdæklaræ, 34–36. Kemalettin’s later pub-
inferior to that of Europe because it was not built according lications increasingly foregrounded the Turkishness of Otto-
to classical norms; although “the decorative details of Islamic man architecture, and he altogether denied foreign influ-
buildings were accepted as beautiful, in their entirety the ences, including that of Hagia Sophia, in an article that he
buildings were seen as bizarre and lacking coherent struc- wrote just before his death in 1927: Tekeli and ~lkin, Mimar
ture”: see Annette Hagedorn, “The Development of Islamic Kemalettin’in Yazdæklaræ, 12–13, 201–2.
Art History in Germany in the Late Nineteenth and Early 38. For the five versions of Sinan’s autobiography, see n. 34
Twentieth Centuries,” in Vernoit, Discovering Islamic Art, 117– above. The likelihood that Sinan’s autobiographies were
27. Ahmet Ersoy’s essay in this volume draws attention to the inspired by the lives of Italian Renaissance artists and archi-
parallel between the Uª¢l’s rationalist paradigm and that of tects is discussed in my preface, “Sources, Themes, and Cul-
Léon Parvilée’s L’architecture et décoration turques, published tural Implications of Sinan’s Autobiographies,” vii–xvi.
the following year (Paris, 1874), despite the preface in the lat- 39. Ahmet Cevdet, ed., Tezkiretü’l-Büny¸n, 1–13. Mehmed Aga-
ter, by Parvillée’s mentor Viollet-le-Duc, which questions the Oglu expressed doubts about the reliability of the Quy¢d¸t,
very existence of a distinctive tradition of “Turkish art.” the whereabouts of which Ahmed Cevdet could not remem-
31. Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, 31–42. ber twenty-five years after he wrote his preface: see “Herkunft
32. Ibid., 31, 26a. und Tod Sin¸ns,” Orientalische Literaturzeitung 29 (1926): 858–
33. Ibid., 40–42. There are no elevations and sections of the 66. The anachronisms and errors of the Quy¢d¸t were fur-
Selimiye in the Uª¢l, nor are its decorative details illustrated. ther exposed in Ræfkæ Melûl Meriç, “Mimar Sinan’æn Hayatæ,”
Its ground plan is complemented by an elevation drawing of Ülkü 63 (1938): 195–205. It is dismissed as a forgery in ~bra-
the forecourt’s north portal. him Hakkæ Konyalæ, “Mimar Sinan Türktür, Bizdendir,” Tarih
34. This text had been anonymously printed in Istanbul around Hazinesi 6 (1951): 289–93.
the mid-nineteenth century. Together with its longer version, 40. Cevdet, Tezkiretü’l-Büny¸n, 13.
titled Tezkiretü’l-Büny¸n, it circulated widely in manuscript 41. Auguste Choisy, L’art de bâtir chez les Byzantins (Paris, 1883),
form throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 139–41, 174. Choisy judged the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne
during which time both texts were cited by various Ottoman as a “magnifique” edifice constituting the last offspring of
authors. For the five versions of Sinan’s autobiography and Hagia Sophia: “il marque la dernière forme que revêtit l’idée
their audiences, see Sinan’s Autobiographies: Five Sixteenth-Cen- mère de Sainte–Sophie”: ibid., 141. See also Alphonse Gos-
tury Texts, introductory notes, critical editions, and transla- set, Les coupoles d’Orient et d’Occident (Paris, 1889), 131.
tions by Howard Crane and Esra Akæn, edited with a preface 42. Gosset, Les coupoles, 142.
by Gülru Necipoqlu (Leiden, 2006). 43. Ibid., 146–47.
35. Sinan built no fewer than seventy-six mosques “pour l’honneur 44. Cornelius Gurlitt, Die Baukunst Konstantinopels, 2 vols. (Berlin,
de l’Empire Ottoman, sa patrie, et la glorification de l’Islam”: 1907). Prior to Gurlitt’s monograph, and shortly after pub-
see Marie de Launay et al., Uª¢l, 34, 42. The statement quoted lication of the trilingual Uª¢l, Friedrich Adler (1827–1908),
above is omitted from the Turkish translation. an architect and professor at Berlin University, wrote an arti-
36. For Sinan’s competitive dialogues with the Byzantine and cle on major mosques in Istanbul: “Die Moscheen zu Con-
Ottoman past and his contemporary European rivals see stantinopel: Eine architektonische baugeschictliche Studie,”
n. 2 above and my preface, “Sources, Themes, and Cultural Deutsche Bauzeitung 8 (1874): 65–66, 73–76, 81–83, 89–91, 97–
Implications of Sinan’s Autobiographies,” in Crane and Akın, 99. Another early publication in German was Armin Weg-
Sinan’s Autobiographies, vii–xvi. The domical superstructures ner, “Die Moschee Sultan Selim’s II zu Adrianopel und ihre
of the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosques are not indicated Stellung in der osmanischen Baukunst,” Deutsche Bauzeitung
on the ground plans published in the Uª¢l, an omission that 25 (1891): 329–31, 341–44, 353–55. Gurlitt, who was a pro-
deemphasizes their parallels with Hagia Sophia: I owe this fessor at the Königliche Sächsische Hochschule zu Dresden,
observation to Paolo Girardelli. obtained permission to survey Istanbul’s mosques via the dip-
37. An important turning point for the rise of Turkish ethnic lomatic mediation of the German ambassador von Bieber-
nationalism was the blow inflicted on pluri-ethnic Ottoman- stein. For the fountain of Kaiser Wilhelm II, see Afife Batur,

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 178 gülru nec~poÅlu
“Alman Çe×mesi,” Dünden Bugüne ~stanbul Ansiklopedisi (Istan- semination from North to South. For his diffusionist theo-
bul, 1993), vol. 1. 208–9. ries and formalist methodology, see Oya Pancaroqlu’s essay
45. Corneilus Gurlitt, ~stanbul’un Mimari Sanatæ, trans. Rezan in this volume; Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art, 70–
Kæzæltan (Ankara, 1999), 59, 66, 96. 73, 85–87; Margaret Olin, “Art History and Ideology: Alois
46. Ibid., xvii. Gurlitt wrongly presumed that the centralized qua- Riegl and Josef Stryzygowski,” in Cultural Visions: Essays in
trefoil plan of Mehmed II’s mosque (1463–70), featuring a the History of Culture, ed. Penny Schine Gold and Benjamin
dome surrounded by four half domes, reflected its original C. Bax (Amsterdam and Atlanta, 2000), 151–70. Strzygowski
form. In actuality, this was the plan of the mosque as it was declared that “it is the duty of the North to trace its cul-
rebuilt in 1767, following an earthquake; the original had ture back to Armenia, Persia, and India”: cited in Christina
only a single half dome, above the mihrab. Attributing this Maranci, Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of Race
monumental mosque complex to the Greek architect Chris- and Nation (Leuven, 2001), 155.
todulos (sources have shown that the actual architect was 52. Josef Strzygowski, “Türkler ve Orta Asya San’atæ Meselesi,”
named Atik Sinan), Gurlitt characterized it as a monument Türkiyat Mecmuasæ 3 (1926–33, publ. 1935): 1–80.
with a “renaissance” spirit, built at a time when no such grand 53. For the biographies and publications of Strzygowski, Glück,
edifices were being created in Italy: ibid., 57–58. Diez, and Otto-Dorn, see Oktay Aslanapa, Türkiye’de Avustur-
47. Besides Sinan’s “conception of space” (also emphasized in yalæ Sanat Tarihçileri ve Sanatkârlar: Österreichische Kunsthisto-
the German architect Friedrich Adler’s 1874 article cited in riker und Künstler in der Türkei (Istanbul, 1993), 24–27, 31–
n. 44 above), Gurlitt noted the organic character and light- 38, 39.
ness of the domes in Sinan’s mosques, the elegance of their 54. Heinrich Glück, Türkische Kunst, Mitteilungen des Ungarischen
internal and external columnar arcades, and their distinctive Wissenschaftlichen Insituts in Konstantinopel, Heft 1 (Buda-
decorative elements, such as stained-glass windows, woodwork pest and Istanbul, 1917), also discussed in Pancaroqlu’s essay
inlaid with mother-of-pearl, bold inscriptions monumental in this volume. For the Hungarian Institute and the search
in scale, and naturalistic floral tile revetments forming “pic- for Central Asian origins in Hungary, see Ya×ar Çoruhlu,
ture panels”: ibid., 70–73, 97–102. Adler admired Ottoman “Macar Enstitüsü,” Dünden Bugüne ~stanbul Ansiklopedisi (Istan-
architecture and drew inspiration from it for his work as an bul, 1993–94), vol. 5, 234, and Taræk Demirkan, Macaristan
architect; he was fascinated by the ornamental plainness and Turancælaræ (Istanbul, 2000).
clear conception of space in mosque interiors (klare, über- 55. Heinrich Glück, “Türkische Dekorationskunst,” Kunst und
sichtliche Raumgestaltung, der es selbst bei grosser Schmucklosigkeit Kunsthandwerk 23 (1920): 46; idem, Die Kunst der Osmanen
in ornamentalem wie koloristischen Sinne an weihevoller Stimmung (Leipzig, 1922), 3–10. Glück also wrote a book on Anato-
nicht gebricht) and the “spatial unity” (Einfachheit der Raumidee) lian Seljuk art, Die Kunst der Seldschuken in Kleinasien und
and “purist character” (puristischer Charakter) of Sinan’s mon- Armenien (Leipzig, 1923). His special interest in cross-cul-
uments: see Hagedorn, “Development of Islamic Art History tural artistic exchanges between the Ottoman and European
in Germany,” 122–23. courts is reflected in his “16.–18. Yüzyællarda Saray Sanatæ ve
48. Franz Babinger, “Die türkische Renaissance: Bemerkungen Sanatçælaræyla Osmanlælaræn Avrupa Sanatlaræ Bakæmændan
zum Schaffen des grossen türkischen Baumeisters Sinân,” Önemi,” which is included with essays by J. Strzygowski, H.
Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Orients 9 (1914): 67–88. Glück, and Fuat Köprülü in a collection titled Eski Türk San-
49. Franz Babinger, “Ein osmanischer Michelangelo,” Frankfurter atæ ve Avrupa’ya Etkisi, trans. A. Cemal Köprülü (Istanbul, n.d.
Zeitung, Sept. 7, 1915, no. 248, 1. Morgenblatt. The appelation [1974]), 119–49.
“osmanischen Michelangelo” also appears in idem, “Sinan’s 56. Strzygowski, “Türkler ve Orta Asya San’atæ Meselesi,” and
Todesjahr,” Der Islam 9 (1919): 247–48. After the foundation Heinrich Glück, “Türk Sanatænæn Dünyadaki Mevkii,” Türkiyat
of the Turkish Republic, Babinger replaced this nickname Mecmuasæ 3 (1926–33, publ. 1935): 1–80, 119–28. For these
with “Michael Angelo of the Turks”: see his entry “Sin¸n” in articles, also see Oya Pancaroqlu’s essay in this volume. The
EI1. Sinan is identified as “Michelangelo der Osmanen” in K. scholarship of Fuat Köprülü and his republican ideology are
Otto-Dorn, “Sin¸n,” Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler analyzed in Berktay, Cumhuriyet ~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü.
von des Antike bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 31 (Leipzig, 1937), 84, 57. See Fuat Köprülü, “Türk Sanatæ,” reprinted in Strzygowski et
and as the “Michelangelo dell’architettura turca” in Giovanni al., Eski Türk Sanatæ ve Avrupa’ya Etkisi, 183–89. For Köprülü’s
Di Giura, “Il Maestro dell’architettura Turca: Sinan,” Rassegna personal interest in the scholarship of both of these schol-
Italiana 45, 230 (1937): 539. Also see the biographical novel ars see ibid., v–xv.
by Veronica De Osa, Sinan: The Turkish Michelangelo (New 58. See Strzygowski et al., Eski Türk Sanatæ ve Avrupa’ya Etkisi, 96–
York, 1982). 98.
50. The interdisciplinary collaboration between these two schol- 59. Ibid., 180–81. Aga-Oglu (d. 1949) belonged to the Aqaoqlu
ars is mentioned in Heinrich Glück, “Die bisherige For- family, whose members played a prominent role as politicians
schung über Sin¸n,” Orientalische Literaturzeitung 29 (1926): and intellectuals in republican Turkey, as did other Turkish
854. See Franz Babinger, “Quellen zur osmanischen Künst- émigrés educated in Russia (such as the Turcologists Zeki
lergeschichte,” Jahrbuch des asiatischen Kunst 1(1924): 31– Velidi Togan and Yusuf Akçura, who espoused pan-Turkism).
41. While serving as curator of the Islamic art collection at Çinili
51. Josef Strzygowski, Altai-Iran und Völkerwanderung (Leipzig, Kiosk in the Topkapæ Palace in 1927, Aga-Oglu taught courses
1917). Strzygowski regarded the migrations of two nomadic on Islamic art at the Darülfünun as associate professor; the
races, the ancient Turks of the “Altaic sphere” and the Scyth- following year he was appointed director of the Museum of
ians of the “Aryan sphere,” as the mechanism of artistic dis- Turkish and Islamic Art. He moved to the Detroit Museum

Book 1.indb 178 9/20/2007 9:17:31 PM

 creation of a national genius 179
in 1929 and was appointed to the chair of Islamic art his- 68. For the formalist methodology of Strzygowski and his stu-
tory at Michigan University in 1933. For his biography, see dents, see Pancaroqlu’s essay in this volume.
Semavi Eyice, “Mehmet Aqaoqlu,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfæ ~slam 69. Arseven’s earliest essays on national architecture (1906–7)
Ansiklopedisi, vol. 1 (1988), 466. For influential Turcologists echoed the thoughts of Kemalettin: see Tekeli and ~lkin,
who emigrated from Russia to Turkey see Berktay, Cumhuriyet Mimar Kemalettin’in Yazdæklaræ, 27. For Arseven’s biography
~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü, 31–47, and François Georgeon, Aux and publications, see Banu Mahir, ed., Celal Esad Arseven
origins du nationalisme turc: Yusuf Akçura, 1876–1935 (Paris, Anæsæna Sanat Tarihi Semineri Bildirileri (Istanbul, 2000). The
1980). architect Sedat Hakkæ Eldem, who between 1924 and 1928
60. The two articles by Aga-Oglu cited by Glück are “Herkunft was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts (modeled on the
und Tod Sin¸ns” and “Die Gestalt der alten Mohammedije in École des Beaux Arts in Paris) describes the drawing methods
Konstantinopel und ihr Baumeister,” Belvedere 46 (1926): 83– that focused on the Ottoman and Greco-Roman orders. For
94. The second article demonstrates that the plan of Mehmed the latter, Vignola’s treatise was used as a guide: see Ödekan,
II’s mosque did not originally feature four half domes (as Yazælaræ ve Rölöveleriyle Sedat Çetinta×, 55–56. Both Kemalettin
Gurlitt had thought: see n. 46 above) but overlooks struc- and Arseven opposed the use of the Uª¢l as a teaching tool:
tural innovations introduced in this pioneering mosque that see n. 28 above.
were inspired by the encounter with Hagia Sophia, such as 70. Published with a preface by the Byzantinist Charles Diehl:
the half dome over the mihrab and window-pierced tympa- see Celâl Esad (Arseven), Constantinople de Byzance à Stamboul
num arches resting on freestanding colossal columns. Aga- (Paris, 1909), 151–55.
Oglu’s view is contradicted by the the Ottoman historian 71. Celâl Esad (Arseven), Türk San’atæ (Istanbul, 1928), 3–10.
Tursun Beg’s chronicle of Mehmed II’s reign, which acknowl- 72. Ibid., 6. Arseven emphasizes the “racial character” (‘ærkæn seci-
edges that this mosque was built “in the manner of Hagia yesi) of “Turkish art”; he also refers to the publications of C.
Sophia” and incorporated “modern features constituting a Gurlitt, A. Gosset, L. Parvillée, H. Saladin, G. Migeon, and
fresh new idiom unequalled in beauty”: cited in Necipoqlu, G. Marçais.
Age of Sinan, 84. 73. Ibid., 145–51. Much like Arseven, early-twentieth-century
61. Aga-Oglu, “Herkunft und Tod Sin¸ns.” Turkish historians attempted to disprove the view, preva-
62. Ibid., 862, n. 1. Aga-Oglu says he obtained a photographic lent among European scholars, that Ottoman institutions,
reproduction of the manuscript from its owner, Rifat Osman in an Islamic guise, entirely imitated those of Byzantium; to
Bey. Photographs of the marginal note are reproduced in A. counter this view they stressed the seamless continuity of the
Süheyl, “Mimar Sinan,” Mimar 4 (1931): 117; Konyalæ, “Mimar Ottoman Empire with former “Turkish” states in Anatolia,
Sinan Türktür, Bizdendir,” 290. namely, the Rum Seljuks and Beyliks: see Berktay, Cumhuri-
63. Franz Babinger, “Zum Sin¸n-‘Problem,’” Orientalische Liter- yet ~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü, esp. 23, 30–35, 46–47, 62–80.
aturzeitung 30, 7 (1927): 548–51. Also see Babinger’s entry 74. Arseven, Türk San’atæ (1928), 7–11.
“Sin¸n” in EI1, which insists that the chief architect was “the 75. Ibid., 147, 150–54. Arseven’s account of the evolution of
son of Christian Greeks.” He adds: “His non-Turkish origin the “classical style,” invented by the architect of the mosque
(mühtedº) is beyond question and is never in dispute, either of Bayezid II and perfected by Sinan, is based on the Uª¢l,
among his contemporaries or among all serious Turkish although the term “classical” is not used in that source. Remzi
scholars.” Oquz Aræk, who was sent by the Turkish state to study archae-
64. Meriç, “Mimar Sinan’æn Hayatæ,” 199, and Konyalæ, “Mimar ology in Paris, similarly disparages the “tumultuous confusion”
Sinan Türktür, Bizdendir,” 293. Konyalæ believes that Rifat (hercümerc) of Anatolian Seljuk architectural ornament, which
Osman forged (or had someone else forge) this marginal becomes “cleansed/purified” (tasfiye) and “codified” (nizama
note, on which water was sprinkled so as to make it appear girmi×) in the “dignified” Ottoman “classical age” (klâsik çaq).
old. See his “Selçuklu Sanatæna bir Bakæ×,” Øadærvan 1, 6 (1949):
65. Tosyavizade Rifat Osman Bey, “~rtihâlinin 339’uncu sene- 6. For the widespread acceptance of national “purity” and
i devriyesi münâsebetiyle büyük Türklerden Mimar Koca “purification” as positive ideals in interwar Europe, see Mark
Sinan b. Abdülmennân,” Milli Mecmua 7, 83 (1927): 1335– Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York,
48; the marginal note and preface are mentioned on 1337, 1998).
n. 1. The author explains that some individuals are upset by 76. Arseven refers to the characteristics of the “classical style” as:
Sinan’s dev×irme origin and the claim that he was the son of nez¸ket, s¸delik, man«æq-i ins¸nº; ªamºmº, aªºl, vaq¢r; s¸delik ve
Christo. man«æq; necºb ve aªºl; ªamºmºyet, man«æq: ibid., 6, 93–94. For his
66. Ibid., 1339. Rifat Osman points out that unlike this authentic definition of the term “classical style,” see Celâl Esad Arseven,
portrait others “seen in some publications are imaginary.” Türk Sanatæ Tarihi: Men×einden Bugüne Kadar, 3 vols. (Istan-
67. For Kemalettin’s biography, publications, and works, see bul, n. d. [1954–59]), 1:300. I would like to thank Halil Berk-
Tekeli and ~lkin, Mimar Kemalettin’in Yazdæklaræ, 1–29, and tay for his insightful comments on a previous version of this
Yældæræm Yavuz, Mimar Kemalettin ve Birinci Ulusal Mimarlæk paper, which alerted me to the striking parallels between
Dönemi (Ankara, 1981). For Ayverdi’s life and books on Otto- early republican texts on history and on art/architectural
man architecture, see Ekrem Hakkæ Ayverdi Hâtæra Kitabæ (Istan- history, particularly the teleological treatment of the Seljuk
bul, 1995). The writings and drawings of Çetinta× are dis- period as “pre-Ottoman” history and the essentialized ideal-
cussed in Ayla Ödekan, Yazælaræ ve Rölöveleriyle Sedat Çetinta× ization of the Ottoman “classical age.” For nationalist history
(Istanbul, 2004). writing in the early Turkish Republic see Berktay, Cumhuriyet

Book 1.indb 179 9/20/2007 9:17:32 PM

 180 gülru nec~poÅlu
~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü; the contentious historiography on ler (Ankara, 1965); Ömer Lutfi Barkan, Süleymaniye Cami ve
the rise of the Ottoman state is analyzed in Kafadar, Between ~mareti ~n×aatæ (1550–1557), 2 vols. (Ankara, 1972–79); Ali
Two Worlds. Saim Ülgen, Mimar Sinan Yapælaræ (Ankara, 1989).
77. Arseven, Türk San’atæ (1928), 94–95, 172–76; idem, L’art turc: 84. The outline of chapters is provided in ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan
Depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours (Istanbul, 1939), 73, 179–80. (1968), 63–66. For the committee, which included F. Köprülü,
Arseven criticizes both the eclectic revivalist style promoted A. Refik, R. M. Meriç, Ö. L. Barkan, ~. H. Uzunçar×ælæ, H. F.
by the Uª¢l and the old-fashioned style of the “National Move- Turgal, ~. A. Kansu, A. L. Gabriel, S. Çetinta×, A. S. Ülgen,
ment.” For his defense of modernism see Sibel Bozdoqan’s S. H. Eldem, and Y. Akyurt, see Fuat Köprülü and Albert
essay in this volume. Gabriel, Sinan, Hayatæ, Eserleri = Sinan, sa vie, son oeuvre (Istan-
78. The rise-and-decline paradigm of nationalist architectural his- bul, 1937), 2; Meriç, Mimar Sinan, vii–viii.
toriography has been linked with the ideology of the repub- 85. Köprülü and Gabriel, Sinan, Hayatæ, Eserleri.
lican nation-state in recent critiques, but without reference 86. On p. 2 of the brochure, Köprülü refers to Gabriel as a “true
to its roots in the Uª¢l. For these critiques see Artan, “Ques- friend of our nation” and his “intimate friend.” For Gabriel
tions of Ottoman Identity,” 85–109, and the essays of Ayda and his publications, which generally espoused the relative
Arel, Uqur Tanyeli, and Ayla Ödekan in Osmanlæ Mimarlæqænæn independence of Turkish architecture from foreign influ-
7 Yüzyælæ “Uluslarüstü Bir Miras,” 30–33, 43–49, 56–59. ences and emphasized the primacy of Turkish architects,
79 Arseven, Türk San’atæ (1928), 95. see the catalogue of an exhibition curated by Pierre Pinon,
80. Ottoman monuments outside Turkey have generally been titled Albert Gabriel (1883–1972): Mimar, Arkeolog, Ressam, Gez-
treated separately, in specialized regional monographs. For gin = Albert Gabriel (1883–1972): Architecte, archéologue, artiste,
the widespread perception of Ottoman rule as a period of voyageur (Istanbul, 2006). In a later essay, Gabriel points out
“decline and decay” and “detested alien domination” see Uzi that archival documents “have furnished proof of the prepon-
Baram and Lynda Carroll, eds., A Historical Archaeology of the derance of Turkish workmanship in the mason’s yard of the
Ottoman Empire: Breaking New Ground (New York, 2000). Süleymaniye,” where Christians constituted the majority of
81. The Society planned the publication of a comprehensive masons (a relatively unskilled trade), and that “many more
national history, Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatlaræ (Outline of Muslims were employed in the crafts that required not only
Turkish History), with a section called “Türklerin Medeni- technical skill but also artistic sensitivity.” He attributes to
yete Hizmetleri” (The Service of the Turks to Civilization), “deeply seated prejudices” the view that “the contribution of
which included monographs on Seljuk and Ottoman archi- the Turks” to the great achievements of Ottoman architec-
tecture. It is unclear whether the monographs titled Osmanlæ ture was “negligible”: see Albert Gabriel, “Ottoman Schools,”
Türk Mimarîsi (Ankara, 1932) and Osmanlæ Türk Mimarlæqæ Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 10 (New York, 1965), 852–73.
(Ankara, 1934) were authored by S. H. Eldem or S. Çetinta×: 87. Köprülü and Gabriel, Sinan, Hayatæ, Eserleri, 5–6. Not sur-
see Ödekan, Yazælaræ ve Rölöveleriyle Sedat Çetinta×, 13. As part prisingly, an offshoot of the Sinan monograph project is
of the same series, Arseven wrote monographs titled Türklerde the eminent economic historian Ömer Lutfi Barkan’s study
Mimarî (Ankara, 1932) and Türklerde Mimarî: Eti ve Selçuk of the centralized construction industry during the erection
Mimarîleri (Istanbul, 1934). The latter covers the “Turkish” of the Süleymaniye complex. On the basis of archival docu-
architecture of the Hittites and the Seljuks in Anatolia in ments, this study disproves the contention of Western schol-
keeping with the Turkish History Thesis developed by the ars that Ottoman monuments were entirely created by non-
Society: see n. 95 below. Turkish and non-Muslim builders: see Barkan, Süleymaniye
82. See, Afet ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan (Ankara, 1956), rev. 2nd Cami ve ~mareti ~n×aatæ (1550–1557). On this point also see
ed. (Ankara, 1968), 66–74. The marble statue was modeled Gabriel’s view, cited above in n. 86. In a long article pub-
on the physiognomy of Ahmet Özta×, a Turkish stone mason lished in the journal Ülkü in 1937–38, Barkan had stressed
residing in the village of Aqærnas in Kayseri, who claimed to the uniquely Turkish non-feudal mode of labor organiza-
be a descendant of Sinan. At Afet ~nan’s suggestion, Sinan’s tion under the Ottoman timar system, praising the imperial
self-proclaimed relative and his two sons were invited to the regime as a centralized, statist, and virtually planned econ-
ceremony in Ankara so that onlookers could compare the omy: see “Osmanlæ ~mparatorluqu’nda Çiftçi Sænæflaræn Hukukî
statue with its “living model.” The 400th anniversary of the Statüsü,” reprinted in Ö. L. Barkan, Türkiye’de Toprak Meselesi:
Süleymaniye’s inauguration was commemorated in 1957 by Toplu Eserler I (Istanbul, 1980). I am grateful to Halil Berk-
two stamps, depicting the mosque and Hasan Riza’s portrait tay for this reference, which is analyzed in his “The ‘Other’
of Sinan. Feudalism: A Critique of 20th-Century Turkish Historiogra-
83. The unrealized two-volume Sinan monograph triggered several phy and Its Particularization of Ottoman Society” (PhD diss.,
publications by the Turkish History Society after a long period Birmingham University, 1991).
of gestation: an incomplete edition of the chief architect’s 88. Albert Gabriel, “La maître architecte Sinan,” La Turquie Kema-
autobiographies, prepared by Meriç; the account books of the liste 16 (1936): 2–13; idem, “Les mosquées de Constantino-
Süleymaniye complex and imperial decrees related to its con- ple,” Syria 7 (1926): 353–419. Gabriel’s 1926 article notes the
struction, edited and analyzed by Barkan; and Ülgen’s archi- Renaissance spirit of Sinan’s architecture (419): “l’esprit qui
tectural drawings of Sinan’s works, prepared between 1937 se manifeste dans son oeuvre n’est point sans analogie avec
and 1962. Revised versions of these drawings were included celui de la Renaissance occidentale…il semble bien que son
in Aptullah Kuran’s Mimar Sinan (Istanbul, 1986). See Ræfkæ inspiration ait été guidée par des principes comparables à
Melûl Meriç, Mimar Sinan Hayatæ, Eseri, Eserlerine Dair Metin- ceux de la Renaissance. Négligeant les productions du moyen

Book 1.indb 180 9/20/2007 9:17:33 PM

 creation of a national genius 181
âge byzantin, il a étudié, dans Saint-Sophie, un edifice tout is today as alive as ever. It preserves the immortal features
imprégné encore du genie antique…les architectes turcs of the past.” See Ernst Egli, “Sinan the Architect,” Landscape
savaient, dès le XVIe siècle, s’inspirer du passé pour créer (Spring 1958): 6–11.
des oeuvres modernes.” Also see his “Sainte-Sophie, source 98. Bruno Taut, Mimari Bilgisi (Istanbul, 1938), 71–72, 145–
d’inspiration de la mosquée Süleymaniye,” VIe Congrès inter- 59. Taut’s book was translated into Japanese in 1948 and
national d’études byzantines, Alger, 2–7 octobre 1939: Résumés des into German in 1977: see Sibel Bozdoqan, “Against Style:
rapports et communications (Paris, 1940), 230–31. Bruno Taut’s Pedagogical Program in Turkey, 1936–38,” in
89. Köprülü and Gabriel, Sinan, Hayatæ, Eserleri, 5–6; Gabriel, The Education of the Architect, ed. M. Pollak (Cambridge, MA,
“Les mosquées de Constantinople,” 353–419. 1997), 163–92. Taut proposed an unrealized project, perhaps
90. Ahmet Refik [Altænay], Türk Mimarlaræ (Istanbul, 1936). This inspired by Atatürk’s vision of resuscitating the Süleymaniye
document is summarized in an earlier booklet, in which Si- as a complex renamed after Sinan: a garden terrace, to be
nan’s birthplace is identified as the village of Aqærnas in Kay- called the “terrace of those who admire the Süleymaniye,”
seri: see idem, Mimar Sinan (Istanbul, 1931), 44–45. The that would overlook the mosque complex from the adja-
same document is cited in an article that identifies Sinan, cent campus of Istanbul University. See an interview with
the grandson of Doqan Yusuf Aqa, as a Christian Turkish Bruno Taut, “Türk Evi, Sinan, Ankara,” Her Ay (Istanbul),
dev×irme: see Enver Behnan Øapolyo, “Mimar Sinan Nereli- Feb. 1, 1938, 95. A booklet published a year later highlights
dir?” Uludaq 1, 3 (1935): 27–29. the modernist urban design principles of Sinan’s mosque
91. Documents cited in ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan (1968), 76. complexes: see Ziya Kocainan, Mimar Sinan ve XXnci Asær
92. Meriç, “Mimar Sinan’æn Hayatæ,” 195–206. The controversial Mimârisi (Istanbul, 1939).
official view also ignored the fact that, according to a seven- 99. Ernst Diez, Türk Sanatæ: Ba×langæcændan Günümüze Kadar, trans.
teenth-century source on the “Customs of the Janissaries,” Oktay Aslanapa (Istanbul, 1946), i–ii. See Arthur Upham
both Christian Turks and Turkish-speaking Christians were Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, eds., A Survey of Persian Art from
traditionally excluded from recruitment as Janissary cadets. Prehistoric Times to the Present (Oxford and London, 1938–
For this source, the waqfiyya of Sinan, and an evaluation of 39), analyzed in Kishwar Rizvi’s essay in this volume. Suut
the controversy, see Necipoqlu, Age of Sinan, 13–14, 42–43, Kemal Yetkin’s opening speech at the First International
129–30, 147–52. Congress of Turkish Art criticized A Survey of Persian Art for
93. In her preface, Afet ~nan mentions the prevalence of Turkish its identification of Ghaznavid, Seljuk, and Timurid mon-
names among the Christians and Muslims who had migrated uments commissioned by Turkic patrons as Iranian works:
to the Kayseri region in the Byzantine period. A visit to Aqær- see Milletlerarasæ Birinci Türk Sanatlaræ Kongresi, Ankara 19–
nas prompted her to write this childhood biography of Sinan 24 Ekim 1959, Kongreye Sunulan Tebliqler (Ankara, 1962), 1–
“in the manner of a historical novel” (tarihî roman üslubu): see 7. The same speech praised Strzygowski, Glück, and Gabriel
~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan (1956 and 1968). An earlier version as “friends of Turkish art.”
of the biography, published in the newspaper Ulus (Apr. 9, 100. Diez obtained his doctorate in Graz, having written his dis-
1949), is criticized for its anachronisms in Konyalæ, “Mimar sertation on the paintings of the Vienna Dioscorides man-
Sinan Türktür, Bizdendir,” 289–93. uscript. Inspired by Friedrich Sarre, he turned to the study
94. ~nan, Mimar Koca Sinan (1968), 11–23. of Islamic art at the Berlin Museum. He subsequently joined
95. Bedri Uçar, “Büyük Türk Mimaræ Koca Sinan,” Mimarlæk 1, 3 Strzygowski’s institute at Vienna University in 1911, leaving in
(1944): 4. A committee formed by the Turkish History Soci- 1926 for Bryn Mawr College, where he taught for a decade.
ety exhumed the body on Aug. 1, 1935 for anthropological He returned to Vienna University in 1939 and moved to Istan-
examination, and the next day Atatürk wrote his instruc- bul University in 1943. See Aslanapa, Türkiye’de Avusturyalæ
tion that Sinan’s statue be made: see Selçuk Mülayim, Ters Sanat Tarihçileri, 24–25; Diez, Türk Sanatæ, 6–7, 27, 138–39,
Lale: Osmanlæ Mimarisinde Sinan Çaqæ ve Süleymaniye (Istanbul, 170, 192–98. Diez’s expression “children of Hagia Sophia”
2001), 142, n. 120. The works of the Swiss physical anthro- recalls Choisy’s statement quoted in n. 41 above. His syn-
pologist Eugene Pittard had an enormous impact on Afet thetic view of Ottoman art parallels Halil ~nalcæk’s formula-
~nan. The Turkish History Thesis, developed by the Society tion of the Ottoman imperial system as a synthesis of Tur-
between 1929 and 1937, attempted to differentiate from the kic, Islamic, and Byzantine traditions in The Ottoman Empire:
“yellow race” the white “brachycephalic Turkish race,” which The Classical Age 1300–1600 (London, 1973). I thank Halil
originated in Central Asia and founded the earliest autoch- Berktay for pointing out the contrast of ~nalcæk’s perspec-
thonous state in Anatolia (the Hittites): see Berktay, Cum- tive with that of Köprülü, who (like Arseven) denied Byz-
huriyet ~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü, 47–63; Bü×ra Ersanlæ, ~ktidar antine influences and stressed the uninterrupted continu-
ve Tarih: Türkiye’de ‘Resmî Tarih’ Tezinin Olu×umu (Istanbul, ity between the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman states: see
1996). Berktay, Cumhuriyet ~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü, 63–64, 80.
96. Behçet Bedrettin, “Türk ~nkilap Mimarisi,” Mimar (1933). 101. Diez, Türk Sanatæ, 141–45; idem, “Der Baumeister Sinan und
97. Sinan’s reception through the lens of modernism is discussed sein Werk,” Du Atlantis 25, 4 (1953): 183.
in Bozdoqan’s essay in this volume. Ernst Egli, a former pro- 102. Diez, Türk Sanatæ, 146–58.
fessor at the academy, wrote: “His [Sinan’s] greatness lay in 103. Ibid., 232; Arseven, L’art turc, 173. Diez perceptively notes
the complete harmony in his work between form and con- the “dualism” of Istanbul’s Ottoman mosques, which feature
tent; his uniqueness lay in his ability to transform the strictly pointed Islamic arches in their substructures and Roman-Byz-
individual aspects of the commissions given to him into some- antine round arches in their hemispherical domical super-
thing of enduring and universal value. That is why his work structures: see Türk Sanatæ, 194. He argues that Ottoman

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 182 gülru nec~poÅlu
architecture, in its inability to proceed beyond the Gothic ine Sinan’s architectural style “empirically, without recourse
mode of construction, was unlike the Italian Renaissance to Western criteria,” in idem, Sinan’s Art and Selimiye (Istan-
style, which revived the classical orders; this does not dimin- bul, 1997), 201–12. He is suspicious of the “semantic” read-
ish its greatness, however, for it dared to challenge Hagia ings very much in vogue in contemporary art-historical the-
Sophia’s construction method and dome size: ibid., 197–98. ory, in which new meanings are sought “in the artistic object
Worth pondering is the striking parallel between Diez’s con- quite beyond the ‘formal-functional’ level.” For Kuban’s
ception of a Mediterranean Zeitstil and the pan-Mediterra- views on the shared artistic heritage of the Turks before
nean perspective of Fernand Braudel’s famous La Méditer- their migration to Anatolia see idem, Batæya Göçün Sanatsal
ranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoch de Philippe II, which Evreleri (Anadolu’dan Önce Türklerin Sanat Ortaklæklaræ) (Istan-
was first published in Paris in 1949 but was based on an out- bul, 1993).
line already written in 1939. I owe this observation to Halil 118. Suut Kemal Yetkin, L’architecture turque en turquie (Paris, 1962),
Berktay, who discusses the influence of the Annales school 1–2. Yetkin also wrote books on Islamic art and architecture:
in Turkey in his Cumhuriyet ~deolojisi ve Fuat Köprülü, 83– ~slâm Sanatæ (Ankara, 1954) and ~slâm Mimarisi (Ankara,
85. 1965).
104. Diez, Türk Sanatæ, 183–84, 190, 232, 235. 119. Oktay Aslanapa, Turkish Art and Architecture (London, 1971).
105. For the polemic led by T. Öz, S. Çetinta×, and E. H. Ayverdi, For Aslanapa’s biography and publications see Selçuk Mü-
see Ödekan, Yazælaræ ve Rölöveleriyle Sedat Çetinta×, 38–39. layim, Zeki Sönmez, and Ara Altun, eds., Aslanapa Armaqanæ
106. Oktay Aslanapa and Ernst Diez, Türk Sanatæ (Istanbul, 1955), (Istanbul, 1996). His subsequently published books include a
97–112. This revised edition omits the controversial refer- survey of Ottoman architecture and a monograph on Sinan:
ence to Sinan’s Turkish ethnic origin: see 145. Oktay Aslanapa, Osmanlæ Devri Mimarisi (Istanbul, 1986) and
107. Ibid., 128–32, 138–41, 150–51. Mimar Sinan (Ankara, 1992).
108. For the tensions between these two divergent views on what 120. Godfrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture (London,
constitutes “national style,” and a less vocal third perspec- 1971).
tive that interprets Ottoman architecture as a pan-Islamic 121. Metin Sözen et al., Türk Mimarisinin Geli×imi ve Mimar Sinan
tradition embodying timeless spiritual principles, see the (Istanbul, 1975).
essays of Doqan Kuban, Olu× Aræk, and Turgut Cansever in 122. Henri Stierlin, Soliman et l’architecture ottomane (Paris, 1985),
the proceedings of a symposium titled Mimaride Türk Üslubu 206–7.
Semineri (Istanbul, 1984), 7–30. 123. Aptullah Kuran, Mimar Sinan (Istanbul, 1986); idem, Sinan:
109. Arseven, Türk Sanatæ Tarihi: Men×einden Bugüne Kadar, 1:5– The Grand Old Master of Ottoman Architecture (Washington,
11, 2:658–75. DC, and Istanbul, 1987).
110. Ibid., 1:237, 374–87. The Üç Øerefeli Mosque and that of 124. These include studies by R. Günay (1987, 1998); A. Petrucci-
Mehmed II are identified as “proto-classical” precursors of oli, ed. (1987); A. R. Burelli (1988); Z. Sönmez, ed. (1988);
the “classical style,” which is characterized by light-filled uni- S. Mülayim (1989); J. Erzen (1991, 1996); J. Freely and A.
fied spaces generated by monumental hemispherical domes R. Burelli (1992); L. Bartoli, E. Galdieri, F. Gurrieri, and
resting on square, hexagonal, and octagonal support systems: L. Zanghieri (1992); O. Aslanapa (1992); M. Sözen (1992);
ibid., 278–301. For the earlier view that the Sultan Ahmed G. Goodwin (1993); U. Vogt-Göknil (1993); A. Akta×-Yasa,
Mosque initiates the “renewal period” (teceddüd devri) in ed. (1996); H. Egli (1997); S. Bayram, ed. (1998); D. Kuban
which “new proportions and new characteristics” are intro- (1997, 1999). For the full references of these books, see the
duced, see Arseven, Türk San’atæ (1928), 158–60. bibliography of my Age of Sinan, 567–74.
111. Arseven, Türk Sanatæ Tarihi, 1:216, 335–36; 2:760–70. 125. Kuban, Sinan’s Art and Selimiye, 233.
112. Ibid., 2:767. 126. Until quite recently the unparalleled wealth of documenta-
113. Examples include Ulya Vogt-Göknil, Türkische Moscheen (Zur- tion in the Turkish archives remained largely untapped by
ich, 1953); idem, Les mosques turques (Zurich, 1953); Kurt Erd- architectural historians, who have also tended to find Otto-
mann, Zur türkischen Baukunst seldschukischer und osmanischer man narrative primary sources tangential to their concerns.
Zeit (Istanbul, 1958); Behçet Ünsal, Turkish Islamic Architecture For example, Kuban, Sinan’s Art and Selimiye, 1–15, dismisses
in Seljuk and Ottoman Times, 1071–1923 (London, 1959). as “too prosaic” Sinan’s autobiographies, written by Sa{i in
114. Ernst Egli, Sinan: Der Baumeister osmanischer Glanzzeit (Zurich, what Kuban deems “second-rate verse and prose.”
1954); idem. “Sinan the Architect,” 6–11. An early mono- 127. Recent exceptions with contextual readings emphasizing
graph on Sinan’s works, written by a Turkish historian, is primary written sources include Jale Nejdet Erzen, Mimar
~brahim Hakkæ Konyalæ, Mimar Koca Sinan’æn Eserleri (Istan- Sinan: Estetik Bir Analiz (Ankara, 1996); Stéphane Yerasi-
bul, 1950). mos, La mosquée de Soliman (Paris, 1997); Mülayim, Ters Lâle;
115. Doqan Kuban, Osmanlæ Dinî Mimarisinde ~ç Mekân Te×ekkülü: Necipoqlu, Age of Sinan; and J. M. Rogers, Sinan (Oxford,
Rönesansla bir Mukayese (Istanbul, 1958), 3–8. For Kuban’s 2006).
career and publications see Zeynep Ahunbay, Deniz Mazlum, 128. See the essays of Arel, Ödekan, and Tanyeli in Osmanlæ Mimar-
and Kutgün Eyüpgiller, eds., Prof. Doqan Kuban’a Armaqan læqænæn 7 Yüzyælæ “Uluslarüstü Bir Miras,” 30–33, 43–49, 56–59.
(Istanbul, 1996). Criticizing nationalist paradigms and the rise-and-decline
116. Kuban, Osmanlæ Dinî Mimarisinde, 92–93. narrative that has privileged the “classical style” to the det-
117. Doqan Kuban, “Mimar Sinan ve Türk Mimarisinin Klasik riment of others, this revisionist volume seeks to initiate a
Çaqæ,” Mimarlæk 5, 45 (1967): 13–47. Kuban prefers to exam- “supranational” global perspective in future studies on the

Book 1.indb 182 9/20/2007 9:17:34 PM

 creation of a national genius 183
Ottoman architectural heritage. Unlike the flourishing field Islam” and that his legacy belongs to the universal Islamic
of Ottoman history, where self-reflective critiques initiated in civilization rather than being subject to the “exclusive owner-
the 1980s have led to innovative readings of the past, archi- ship of a city, a dynasty, or a republic,” see Gulzar S. Haider,
tectural historians started only in the late 1990s to question “Sinan—A Presence in Time Eternal,” Afkar Inquiry 3, 2
the inherited ideological premises of their field, its meth- (1986): 38–44. A recent monograph published by Albaraka
odological impasses, and its exclusions (such as non-mon- Türk presents Sinan’s oeuvre as a timeless architectural
umental architecture, female and sub-imperial patronage, expression of the Islamic concept of tawhºd: see Turgut Can-
the voices of non-Muslim and “heterodox” Muslim commu- sever, Mimar Sinan (Istanbul, 2005). Global surveys of Islamic
nities, regional and provincial subcultures, and cross-cul- architecture that focus on the formal values of Sinan’s works
tural exchanges). Other recent critiques of nationalist his- include John D. Hoag, Islamic Architecture (New York, 1977)
toriography include Uqur Tanyeli’s preface in Erzen, Mimar and Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function
Sinan, i–v, and Artan’s “Questions of Ottoman Identity.” and Meaning (New York, 1994).
129. For the view that Sinan deserves to be called the “son of

Book 1.indb 183 9/20/2007 9:17:34 PM