Kilic Ali Pasha Complex
Encyclopedia
The Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex is a group of buildings designed and built between 1580 and 1587 by Mimar Sinan, who at the time was in his 90s. The mosque itself was constructed in 1578-1580.
It is located in the Tophane
neighbourhood of the Beyoğlu
district of Istanbul
, Turkey
. It is named after Kılıç Ali Pasha.
It consists of a mosque
, a medrese, a hamam, a türbe
, and a fountain
. Originally, it had been on the coastline, but since the sea in front of it has been filled again, it is now surrounded by other buildings. The complex was built on the orders of the Kapudan-i Derya (Grand Admiral) Kılıç Ali Pasha. When the Pasha was told to build the complex on the sea for being the Chief Captain, he had the mosque built on the land reclaimed from the sea
. The mosque of the complex is evaluated as a smaller version of Hagia Sophia
.
(Islamic) calendar (1580 in the Julian calendar
).
One of the two inscriptions, at the outer entrance of the complex, features a 4-verse poem in jali thuluth
calligraphic
script in Ottoman Turkish
by the poet Ulvî and written by calligrapher Demircikulu Yusuf:
The letters in the final line, “May this be a house of worship for people of the faith,” add up to the number 988.
All three doors of the courtyard
are ornamented
. The courtyard also has a marble
fountain
for ablution before prayer with eight column
s and a dome. The outer porch has a sloping roof supported by twelve columns on the west façade
and three on each side, all with rhombus-shaped capitals
. In the center is a marble portal
.
At the outer courtyard in the graveyard stands an octagonal türbe
with a dome also made by Mimar Sinan. It's wooden doors are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Kılıç Ali Pasha's tomb lies inside the türbe.
The medrese, opposite the southeast corner of the mosque, is almost square. This structure might not be constructed by Mimar Sinan as it is not in the official list of his works, the Tazkirat-al-Abniya.
To the right of the mosque is the hamam, of which the construction was completed in 1583. The glass doors lead into two separate soğukluks (cool rooms) that are placed on either sides of the hararet (caldarium-hot room) which is hexagonal in plan with open bathing places in four of its six arched recesses, the other two opening to the soğukluks. The placement of the soğukluks and the plan of the hararet differ from the usual application carried out by Sinan in his other extant hamams.
of the mosque is 12.7 metres (41.7 ft) in diameter, carried on pendentive
s on granite
piers
and two half-domes on the Qibla
axis. Towards the entrance, on two sides, there is a two-story gallery. The dome is placed at the center with two exedra
e similar to a Byzantine
basilica
, thus the resemblance to Hagia Sophia.
Above the prayer hall are five small domes carried on six marble columns. The tile
panels placed high in the prayer hall are inscribed with ayats
(verses) from the Quran. The mosque has only one minaret
with one gallery. There are 247 windows including the 24 of the central dome. The mihrab
is in a square projecting apse.
A 16th-century ship lamp that used to hang from the central dome was taken off to be displayed at the Museum of Ottoman and Turkish Naval History in 1948.
writer Miguel de Cervantes
was a forced worker at the construction of the complex during his enslavement, like the Captive character in his novel Don Quixote.
It is located in the Tophane
Tophane
Tophane is a neighborhood in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, Turkey. It has a coastline with the Bosporus. In the Ottoman era it was the city's oldest industrial zone.- History :...
neighbourhood of the Beyoğlu
Beyoglu
Beyoğlu is a district located on the European side of İstanbul, Turkey, separated from the old city by the Golden Horn...
district of Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. It is named after Kılıç Ali Pasha.
It consists of a mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
, a medrese, a hamam, a türbe
Turbe
Türbe is the Turkish word for "tomb", and for the characteristic mausoleums, often relatively small, of Ottoman royalty and notables. It is related to the Arabic turba, which can also mean a mausoleum, but more often a funerary complex, or a plot in a cemetery.-Characteristics:A typical türbe...
, and a fountain
Fountain
A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....
. Originally, it had been on the coastline, but since the sea in front of it has been filled again, it is now surrounded by other buildings. The complex was built on the orders of the Kapudan-i Derya (Grand Admiral) Kılıç Ali Pasha. When the Pasha was told to build the complex on the sea for being the Chief Captain, he had the mosque built on the land reclaimed from the sea
Land reclamation
Land reclamation, usually known as reclamation, is the process to create new land from sea or riverbeds. The land reclaimed is known as reclamation ground or landfill.- Habitation :...
. The mosque of the complex is evaluated as a smaller version of Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey...
.
Architecture
There are two chronograms that date the mosque, both yielding the year 988 in the HijriIslamic calendar
The Hijri calendar , also known as the Muslim calendar or Islamic calendar , is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to date events in many Muslim countries , and used by Muslims everywhere to determine the proper day on which to celebrate Islamic...
(Islamic) calendar (1580 in the Julian calendar
Julian calendar
The Julian calendar began in 45 BC as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year .The Julian calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months...
).
One of the two inscriptions, at the outer entrance of the complex, features a 4-verse poem in jali thuluth
Thuluth
Thuluth is a script variety of Islamic calligraphy invented by the Persian Ibn Muqlah Shirazi, which made its first appearance in the 11th century CE . The straight angular forms of Kufic were replaced in the new script by curved and oblique lines. In Thuluth, one-third of each letter slopes, from...
calligraphic
Islamic calligraphy
Islamic calligraphy, colloquially known as Perso-Arabic calligraphy, is the artistic practice of handwriting, or calligraphy, and by extension, of bookmaking, in the lands sharing a common Islamic cultural heritage. This art form is based on the Arabic script, which for a long time was used by all...
script in Ottoman Turkish
Ottoman Turkish language
The Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
by the poet Ulvî and written by calligrapher Demircikulu Yusuf:
Mîr-i bahr â’nî Kılıç Paşa Kapudan-ı zemân
Yaptı çün bu camii ola yeri Darüsselâm
Hâtif-i kudsî görüp Ulvî dedi tarihini
Ehl-i imâna ibâdetgâh olsun bu makam
The letters in the final line, “May this be a house of worship for people of the faith,” add up to the number 988.
All three doors of the courtyard
Courtyard
A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. These areas in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court....
are ornamented
Ornament (architecture)
In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornament does not include human figures, and if present they...
. The courtyard also has a marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
fountain
Fountain
A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air either to supply drinking water or for decorative or dramatic effect....
for ablution before prayer with eight column
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
s and a dome. The outer porch has a sloping roof supported by twelve columns on the west façade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
and three on each side, all with rhombus-shaped capitals
Capital (architecture)
In architecture the capital forms the topmost member of a column . It mediates between the column and the load thrusting down upon it, broadening the area of the column's supporting surface...
. In the center is a marble portal
Portal (architecture)
Portal is a general term describing an opening in the walls of a building, gate or fortification, and especially a grand entrance to an important structure. Doors, metal gates or portcullis in the opening can be used to control entry or exit. The surface surrounding the opening may be made of...
.
At the outer courtyard in the graveyard stands an octagonal türbe
Turbe
Türbe is the Turkish word for "tomb", and for the characteristic mausoleums, often relatively small, of Ottoman royalty and notables. It is related to the Arabic turba, which can also mean a mausoleum, but more often a funerary complex, or a plot in a cemetery.-Characteristics:A typical türbe...
with a dome also made by Mimar Sinan. It's wooden doors are inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Kılıç Ali Pasha's tomb lies inside the türbe.
The medrese, opposite the southeast corner of the mosque, is almost square. This structure might not be constructed by Mimar Sinan as it is not in the official list of his works, the Tazkirat-al-Abniya.
To the right of the mosque is the hamam, of which the construction was completed in 1583. The glass doors lead into two separate soğukluks (cool rooms) that are placed on either sides of the hararet (caldarium-hot room) which is hexagonal in plan with open bathing places in four of its six arched recesses, the other two opening to the soğukluks. The placement of the soğukluks and the plan of the hararet differ from the usual application carried out by Sinan in his other extant hamams.
Mosque
The central domeDome
A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....
of the mosque is 12.7 metres (41.7 ft) in diameter, carried on pendentive
Pendentive
A pendentive is a constructive device permitting the placing of a circular dome over a square room or an elliptical dome over a rectangular room. The pendentives, which are triangular segments of a sphere, taper to points at the bottom and spread at the top to establish the continuous circular or...
s on granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
piers
Pier (architecture)
In architecture, a pier is an upright support for a superstructure, such as an arch or bridge. Sections of wall between openings function as piers. The simplest cross section of the pier is square, or rectangular, although other shapes are also common, such as the richly articulated piers of Donato...
and two half-domes on the Qibla
Qibla
The Qiblah , also transliterated as Qibla, Kiblah or Kibla, is the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays during salah...
axis. Towards the entrance, on two sides, there is a two-story gallery. The dome is placed at the center with two exedra
Exedra
In architecture, an exedra is a semicircular recess or plinth, often crowned by a semi-dome, which is sometimes set into a building's facade. The original Greek sense was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, a suitable place for a philosophical...
e similar to a Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
basilica
Basilica
The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...
, thus the resemblance to Hagia Sophia.
Above the prayer hall are five small domes carried on six marble columns. The tile
Iznik pottery
İznik pottery, named after the town in western Anatolia where it was made, is highly decorated ceramics that was produced between the late 15th and 17th centuries....
panels placed high in the prayer hall are inscribed with ayats
Ayah
Ayah or Aayah is the Arabic word for sign or proof:"These are the Ayat of Allah, which We recite to you with truth...
(verses) from the Quran. The mosque has only one minaret
Minaret
A minaret مناره , sometimes مئذنه) is a distinctive architectural feature of Islamic mosques, generally a tall spire with an onion-shaped or conical crown, usually either free standing or taller than any associated support structure. The basic form of a minaret includes a base, shaft, and gallery....
with one gallery. There are 247 windows including the 24 of the central dome. The mihrab
Mihrab
A mihrab is semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla; that is, the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca and hence the direction that Muslims should face when praying...
is in a square projecting apse.
A 16th-century ship lamp that used to hang from the central dome was taken off to be displayed at the Museum of Ottoman and Turkish Naval History in 1948.
Rumours
The Turkish researcher Rasih Nuri İleri claimed during his examination of the complex's foundation documents that SpanishSpanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
writer Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
was a forced worker at the construction of the complex during his enslavement, like the Captive character in his novel Don Quixote.
See also
- Timeline of Islamic history
- Islamic architectureIslamic architectureIslamic architecture encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day, influencing the design and construction of buildings and structures in Islamic culture....
- Islamic artIslamic artIslamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations...
- List of mosques