Through the Markets and Bazaars - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 160

Philaninos, had been ruler of Greece with the rank and title of Caesar.
Mahmut Paşa's contemporary, the historian Kritovoulos, gives this
attractive picture of him: “This man had so fine a nature that he
outshone not only all his contemporaries but also his predecessors
in wisdom, bravery, virtue and other good qualities... He was
enterprising, a good counselor, bold, courageous, excelling in all lines,
as the times and circumstances proved him to be. For from the time
he took charge of the afairs of the great Sultan, he gave everything in
this great dominion a better prospect by his wonderful zeal and his
fine planning as well as by his implicit faith in and good-will toward
his sovereign.” He was in addition a great patron of learning and
the arts, especially poetry. He was put to death by the Conqueror in
1474.
The general plan of the mosque resembles fairly closely that of
Sultan Murat I at Bursa. Essentially it consists of a long rectangular
room divided in the middle by an arch, thus forming two square
chambers each covered by a dome of equal size. On each side of the
main hall runs a narrow, barrel-vaulted passage which communicates
both with the hall and with three small rooms on each side. To the
west a narthex or vestibule with five bays runs the width of the
building and is preceded by a porch with five bays.
Let us look at some of the details. The porch is an unfortunate
restoration, in which the original columns have been replaced by, or
encased in, ungainly octagonal piers. Over and beside the entrance
portal are several inscriptions in Arabic and Osmanlı (Old Turkish)
verse giving the dates of foundation and of two restorations, one in
A.H. 1169 (A.D. 1755) and another in A.H. 1244 (A.D. 1828). The
ugly piers are undoubtedly due to this last restoration, since they are
characteristically baroque. The entrance portal itself clearly belongs
to the same period. On entering one finds oneself in the narthex - a
most unusual feature for a mosque, found only once or twice at Bursa
and at the Beyazidiye here. The vaults of the narthex are interesting
and diferent from one another. The central bay has a square vault
heavily adorned with stalactites. In the first two bays on either side
smooth pendentives support domes with 24 ribs; while in the two
end ones the domes are not supported by pendentives at all, but by