When it comes to highlighting the three best architects of Turkey throughout its history, few would hesitate to point to the following three: Anthemius of Tralles, Isidore of Miletus (who worked in pairs) and Mimar Sinan. From their designs have come the country’s most iconic buildings, from Byzantine and Ottoman times. Here we review them.
Antemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus
These two architects worked as a team and, although not much is known about their careers, their masterpiece already holds a prominent place in the history of architecture: the basilica of Hagia Sophia. Indeed, when they designed it in the 6th century, it was a Christian temple dedicated to holy wisdom. It was in the time of Justinian I, probably the most important Byzantine emperor, when he tried to restore the greatness of the Roman Empire with projects like this one.
The first may have been born in ancient Tralles, today Aydın, and carried out other projects as an engineer, in the military field, such as defensive fortifications on the Byzantine border with Syria. The second was born in Miletus, the Ionian city on the Turkish Aegean coast and probably served as a collaborator of Anthemius, but he had a very deep cultural background, as he also made the most important compendium of the work of Archimedes.
In the basilica of Hagia Sophia, the great milestone was the construction of a monumental dome, with a diameter of 33 meters and a height reaching 55 meters from the ground. The merit lies in the creation of a dome system on pendentives, with two more semi-domes as buttresses and, in addition, buttresses on the outside to further reinforce the structure.
Mimar Sinan, the great Ottoman architect
But undoubtedly, in the Turkish imagination, the great architect of the country’s history is Mimar Sinan. He was the most prolific of the Ottoman Empire era. But his fame derives not only from the number of projects he carried out, but also from their quality, durability and style: he was the true creator of Ottoman architecture, which later spread to many other territories of that empire and today is clearly distinctive from others.
Precisely, his starting point was the Hagia Sophia, later converted into a mosque. And he conceived it almost as a challenge to overcome, because he always had in mind an underestimation of Muslim architects with respect to Christians: they considered that none of them would be able to make a bigger dome than that of Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus.
With that challenge between eyebrows, he completed a career full of masterpieces and, of course, a temple in which he surpassed Hagia Sophia: that of Suleiman the Magnificent, also in Istanbul, whose dimensions reach 37 meters in diameter, making an even more sophisticated system of dome and semi-domes. It was this sultan, one of the most important in Ottoman history, his great patron, for whom he also developed many other projects, such as the mosque dedicated to his deceased son, that of Şehzade.
But although his work was centered in Istanbul, he also carried out major works in other cities, such as Edirne (Selim Mosque) or in Damascus (Tekkiye Mosque). In addition, he carried out numerous important civil works, such as the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Bosnia Herzegovina, listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The data on his career say it all, as he is credited with the design of some 475 buildings, of which nearly 200 are still standing. Nearly 100 are great mosques, but also about thirty palaces and about twenty mausoleums. For all these reasons, he is placed on a par with universal architects contemporary to him, such as Michelangelo.
