Adventures in Istanbul Part I ~ The Suleiman Mosque

The Suleiman Mosque is one of those must-see sights in Istanbul. It represents the pinnacle of Ottoman architecture and commands a marvelous view over the Golden Horn from its position on the Third Hill.

After Crown Prince Mustafa’s untimely death on the orders of his father Suleiman the Magnificent, that sultan ordered architect Mimar Sinan to build a mosque to his memory. He was so delighted by the result that he commissioned to build a mosque and mausoleum for himself and his wife Hürrem Sultan, also known as Roxelana. 

Mimar became the chief Ottoman architect, engineer and mathematician for sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II and Murad III. Like Suleiman’s wife Roxelana, Mimar was not an Ottoman Turk, nor a Muslim. Instead, he was born in Cappadocia in central Turkiye, around 1490, into a Greek Orthodox Christian family and given the name Joseph.

It is probable that his family gave him to the Ottoman Turks to become a member of the Janissary, an elite unit that was part of the sultan’s household troops. Apparently, the opportunities for a bright boy from a poor family made mothers fall over themselves in trying to get their sons an interview with the Janissary commanders whenever they arrived in these villages. Mimar must have passed such an interview, and then later on his talents for mathematics and engineering were encouraged.

Hürrem Sultan’s story is no less amazing. Born in around 1504 in what is now Ukraine as Alexandra Anastasia Lisowka, the daughter of an Orthodox priest, she was captured in a slave raid and taken to Istanbul. She entered the Imperial Harem where she was given an education in letters, manners, music, conversation and poetry. There she acquired her name Hürrem which means joyful in Turkish, because of her habit of laughing, dancing and playing music. By her mid teens she had caught the eye of the new Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and at the age of seventeen presented him with their first child, a son called Mehmed.

Hürrem was a rule-breaker. First of all she persuaded Suleiman to allow her to give birth to more than one son, a flagrant violation of the old imperial harem principle, one concubine mother — one son, which was designed to prevent both the mother’s influence over the sultan and the feuds of the blood brothers for the throne. However, after Hürrem gave birth to her first son Mehmed in 1521 (who died in 1543) and she then had four more sons, destroying Suleiman’s Chief Concubine’s status as the mother of the sultan’s only son.

Secondly, she somehow persuaded Suleiman to do the unthinkable. Around 1533, Suleiman married Hürrem in a magnificent formal ceremony. Never before had a former slave been elevated to the status of the sultan’s lawful spouse, a development which astonished observers in the palace and in the city. The wedding celebration took place in 1534.

Of course, Suleiman was crazy about her. However, the viperish power dynamics of the harem made Hũrrem cruel, and she was responsible for the murder of Suleiman’s eldest son Mustafa, because he preceded all of her sons. This caused Suleiman to fall into a depression, and as an act of atonement he commissioned Mimar to build the mosque I mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

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