Chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, summit of Islamic dome architecture
The chief architect of the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, the greatest name in the history of Islamic architecture, often hailed as "the Michelangelo of the Islamic world." He directed the building of over three hundred structures in his life: mosques, bridges, baths, caravanserais. His lifelong pursuit was to surpass the great dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. He kept refining structure, holding up ever larger domes in ever lighter, more transparent ways, making the mosque interior a spacious, bright, pure space of prayer. His late masterpiece, the Selimiye Mosque, he himself held to have at last surpassed Hagia Sophia — the highest peak of Islamic dome architecture.
The great dome of Hagia Sophia, floating for a thousand years, was Sinan’s lifelong rival and goal. He built mosque after mosque, each time pondering how to make the dome larger, lighter, steadier. At eighty he completed the Selimiye Mosque, whose grand, transparent dome let him say at last, with confidence: I have surpassed Hagia Sophia. An architect spent a lifetime flinging a homage-like challenge at another miracle a thousand years before.
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