DOGAN KUBAN

THE STYLE OF SINAN'S DOMED STRUCTURES

Nations dissent in their taste no less in architecture than in jood and clothing. Fischer von Erlach

Among the great domed buildings of the world must be the art historian. But what the documents do not pro­ included a group of Ottoman mosques dating from vide, the imagination and intelligence must fill in, and between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, this leads unavoidably to considerable subjectivity. Ob­ whose classical physiognomies have all ultimately to be viously the paucity of documentation limits the possibi­ credited to a single man, Koca Sinan, the chief archi­ lities for accurate interpretation. tect of the Ottoman Empire for half a century (1538- The little information we do have at least tells us 88). Although Sinan's life and a number of his something about the nature of the culture in which this buildings have been written about many times, 1 regret­ architecture was produced. It was a culture in wh ich tably no adequate comprehensive presentation of his the physical world served only as a stepping stone to the architecture is available in any language. 2 Such being other, true, world. Man served God and the Sultan. It the case, one can hardly be surprised that his work was his duty to abide by the commandments of his remains largely unappreciated and that his style, faith, and he was interested in this world only insofar although synonymous with the classical age of Ottoman as it pertained to the next. He does not describe it and architecture, is almost totally ignored in general his­ never attempts to theorize about it, because everything tories of art. works according to a divine order he cannot know. This The main facts of Sinan's life are known, and most absence of an independent objectivity regarding the of his buildings have survived. Important information world led to a basic pragmatism toward every aspect of about building practices in his time can be found in the life, including art and architecture. This gives us a clue account books of the imperial buildings he created. 3 for understanding Sinan's style. But all these make Sinan a documented legend, not an To study Sinan, our methodology must be essentially individual. We have poetry that glorifies his art, but no archaeological and our analysis descriptive; comparing real description of the man hirnself. Nothing substan­ Sinan's work to other domed styles can also lead to tial remains to tell us about his ideas or the opinions his some constructive insights. Formal analysis will con­ contemporaries held of his work. Descriptions com­ stitute the core of my discussion. That does not mean parable to the anonymous passage on the Cathedral at that historicalor cultural content has been relegated to Edessa,4 or that of Procopius on Hagia Sophia,5 or of the second rank, but only that it is less in need of fur­ Serlio on church plans6 are totally lacking for Sinan's ther elucidation. What we are seeking to make is a masterpieces. Without any contemporary reference to statement about the place Sinan and the Ottomans can the ideas of his time, we are forced to fall back on the claim in the general history of architecture. 7 buildings themselves and on what we know generally about the society in which their creator lived. When Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles No less severe a drawback is the total lack for his decided to cover the central nave of J ustinian' s basilica buildings of original drawings and models. A history of at Constantinople with a dome that could form a the Selimiye comparable to Geymüller's of St. Peter's suitable cover for stately processions, the Near Eastern cannot be written. Even drawings comparable to symbolism that derived from the dome's early mythol­ Villard de Honnecourt's would be a great blessing for ogy was still current. 8 But by the sixteenth century, THE STYLE OF SINAN'S DOMED STRUCTURES 73 when Ottoman architecture used it, that symbolism ingly minor additions and variations, together with the had been lost, replaced by a millennium of uninter­ changes in the form and structure they incur, are of rupted experience with domed structures that had led great stylistic importance. They also have theoretical to the use of the dome as a roof form for even the implications. They came about as a result of complex smallest spaces. The Ottoman is the only architectural and culturally significant developments in the Islamic style in wh ich the semi-spherical dome constituted the world, where the dome and the minaret became sym­ only form of roofing. This simplicity of basic form was bols of Islam. As a result, Islamic architecture devel­ compensated by the development of very elaborate oped a wide range of variations both in shape and in dome-covered spatial structures. Art historians are so structural and functional use. Examples of variations used to seeing domes, in both the East and West, are the single-shell dome-on-squinch of Central Asian associated with ancient symbolism and dressed in tombs, the multiple rows of small domes over the magnificent exterior forms that they pay little attention parallel bays of Indian mosques, domes only enhancing to the peculiar architectural vocabulary elaborated in the mihrab bay, and double-shell domes, with or with­ Turkey. It is easy for a superficial observer to look at out drums, in the great mausolea of the Seljugs, Hagia Sophia and decide that Turkish domes are sim­ Timurids, and Mamluks. ple imitations ofit. To counteract that hasty generaliza­ In Christian architecture the symbolic associations of tion we have first to remember the style-generating role the dome played an important role in its adoption as a of the semi-spherical dome. roof form for religious buildings. But its cultural sym­ Domical forms or domes built in all-natural mate­ bolism eventually turned into a formal symbolism that rials have been in use for millennia in all climates, with resulted in domes becoming buildings in themselves. or without symbolic association. The nomad te nt and Thus, although apparently minimal when reduced to the round hut may claim to have originated the domical schematic drawings, the conceptual differences shape, but here I am not concerned with the origin of between the great Ottoman mosques, on the one hand, the form; rather I am talking about the use of a and Hagia Sophia or Santa Maria in Carignano in developed brick dome within a structural and spatial Genoa, on the other, are immense. They not only concept. Until the advent of the industrial age, brick express different views of the world, but stylistically domes were the most convenient and dependable large­ they represent opposite ends of the spectrum. space covers for monumental structures. The difference The insistence on keeping the structural form of the between the way the Ottomans used the dome and dome intact from both inside and outside led to the other styles lies first in the Ottomans' use of domes as development of so me distinctive characteristics. If the sole element for roofing, and second in their western Gothic in its classical period of the twelfth and emphasis on structural design. In the Islamic, the thirteenth centuries can be characterized as a style Byzantine, and the Western architectural traditions, exploring the structural and spatial potentialities of the domes were used in combination with other roofing cross-vaulted bay, then Ottoman Turkish architecture systems, such as vaults in various forms or flat ceilings. can be characterized as a style exhausting the In a church interior, a barrel-vaulted nave is visually as possibilities of the simple spherical dome. To reduce a important as the dome-covered crossing. In a hypostyle style to a single motif is amistake, but to explain the Arabic mosque, the wooden ceilings of the aisles are as impact of a consistently used form in the conceptual important to the sratial perception of the interior as is development of a style is necessary. What the classical the dome over the mihrab bay. Structures with hetero­ orders are to Greek, Roman, and European architec­ geneous roof forms have spatial qualities that are very tu re generally, the domed baldachin is to the Turkish. different from those where the roof system consists The place of the Ottoman style so weIl represented entirely of domes. by Sinan's buildings in the universal history of art is Modifications in the shape of the dome itself were still unclear, essentially because historians insist on also characteristic of the style. The use of the drum using the criteria of Western art history even when the modifies the direct perception of the dome from the so-called non -Western arts are being dealt with. 9 interior, and raising it over the supporting mass, gives Although significant progress has been made in break­ it a particular emphasis on the exterior. The use of the ing down this conceptual deadlock by Western art double-shell dome further dissociates the dome from its historians themselves,lO the non-Western artistic tradi­ simple structural and geometrical purity. These seem- tion still remains little known, and consequently the