the sufi convent of sokollu mehmed pasha in istanbul 159

ZEYNEP YÜREKL~

A BUILDING BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REALMS OF THE OTTOMAN ELITE: THE SUFI CONVENT OF SOKOLLU MEHMED PASHA IN ISTANBUL

Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, one of the most influential the architectural features of the convent was accom- and propertied men in Ottoman history, who from plished by Baha Tanman;7 in an effort to make known 1565 until 1579 served three subsequent sultans as a hitherto neglected building, Tanman presented it grand vizier, justified his successful career in public in isolation. I will now try to build on that study by service by his patronage of numerous public build- situating this building in space and time, investigat- ings throughout the Empire, located in places as var- ing the historical context that defined the relation of ied as Hungary and Syria. The public building complex the convent to, and its difference from, the rest of the he commissioned in Kadærga (^adærÚa Lim¸næ), at the building complex. southern edge of the Hippodrome in Istanbul,1 stands Primarily, this article investigates the historical out among Sokollu’s public building complexes be- constellation that accounts for the peculiar architec- cause of its physical proximity to his private realm. tural program that brought together a madrasa and He built the mosque there in 1571–72, on the site of a Sufi convent. This combination was rare in sixteenth- an old church; his wife, Ismihan, legally endowed it. century Istanbul, although it had been common in What remains of the group of Sokollu’s buildings the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries throughout the around this mosque are a madrasa completed by 15702 Islamic world. Around the beginning of the sixteenth and a dervish convent added around 1574 (fig. 1). century, the ties between Sufi groups and the Otto- The site of these buildings, however, was part of the man ulema were severed by the transformation of a large piece of land the grand vizier and his royal wife Sufi network into an openly anti-Ottoman state with owned in Kadærga, where their palace compound was claims to world rule—namely that of the Safavids. The also located (fig. 2).3 At the time the public build- coupling of madrasa and Sufi convent in the archi- ings were completed, the couple had abandoned the tectural program of major building complexes in palace (referred to as the “old palace,” d¸rüssa{¸de-i Istanbul became problematic thereafter; the few known {atº_a, in Sokollu’s endowment deed)4 in favor of a sixteenth-century examples should therefore be treated “new palace” (d¸rüssa{¸de-i cedºde) on a site nearby as a problem, which the present article seeks to ad- where the Sultan Ahmed mosque now stands.5 Pre- dress. Given the issue in question, this study is as much sumably, the old palace then came to house the ex- about the relation of a group of Sufis to “the madrasa” tended household of Sokollu and Ismihan, given that in the conceptual sense—or the religio-legal cadre the grand vizier’s endowment deed suggests no new termed {ilmiyye—as it is about the architectural and public function for the compound.6 social relation of that particular Sufi convent to the The Kadærga complex was supervised by Sinan, the adjacent madrasa. renowned chief court architect, who codified what we I also question herein why the convent building now know as “classical Ottoman” architecture. Like in Kadærga deviates from the architectural paradigm several earlier public building complexes in Istanbul, that was pursued by Sinan in the design of earlier the main element of the Kadærga complex is a lofty grandee buildings in Istanbul and in the rest of the mosque with a symmetrically-arranged madrasa sur- Kadærga complex. Possibly the convent was in fact rounding its courtyard. Its architectural program dif- designed, not by Sinan, who is recorded to have su- fers from Sinan’s earlier mosque-madrasa complexes pervised a conspicuously small number of Sufi con- only by the incorporation of a Sufi convent located vents throughout his career,8 but by one of the behind the mosque (fig. 3). An exhaustive study of younger architects who worked for him. Still, there . 160 zeynep yürekli

Fig. 1. Aerial view of the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha complex in Kadærga, Istanbul. From left: the madrasa, the mosque, and the convent. (Photo: R. Günay, from Sinan’æn Istanbul’u [Istanbul, 1987])

Fig. 2. Map of Kadærga, Istanbul.