Around Beyazit and Sehzadebas - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 187

about 1514, when Selim I brought back a group of Persian craftsmen
after his conquest of Tabriz, while the latest known examples, in the
lunettes of the windows of Kara Ahmet Paşa Camii on the Seventh
Hill (see Chapter 16), date from 1555. Other examples are in the
mosque and türbe of Selim I (see Chapter 13) himself, some here
and there in the Saray, and in the porch of the Çinili Köşk, and that
is about all. Thus the türbe of the Şehzade contains far and away the
most extensive and beautiful collection of tiles of this rare and lovely
type.
The tile decoration of the interior was clearly designed as a
whole. Panels of floral design separate the lower tier of windows;
in the lunettes above them are inscriptions framed in arch-shaped
borders; in the spandrels between these appears an occasional boss in
faience. Above, a continuous series of large panels, each spanning two
windows, contains a long inscription; then comes the upper tier of
windows framed in floral panels with a lovely medallion between each
pair of windows. The ground is in general apple-green, sometimes
dark blue; on this are designs of leaves and flowers in lemon yellow,
turquoise, dark blue, white, and a curious unfired pinkish-mauve; the
colours are separated by the thin, almost black line of the cuerda seca.
The whole efect is lyrically beautiful, truly like a garden in paradise,
making this türbe a masterpiece unrivalled of its kind.
And the beauty of the türbe is not limited to its ceramics, for
the upper row of windows contains some of the most perfect of
Turkish stained-glass in rich and brilliant colours. Some of these
are, alas, broken and damaged, but several remain entire; only in the
Süleymaniye is there so extensive and brilliant a display of Turkish
stained-glass of the sixteenth century. The dome, supported on a
deep cornice of stalactites with a frieze of trefles, preserves its original
arabesque painting: a great medallion in the crown with a circle
of leaf-like forms in rich brick-red from which a sort of cascade of
smaller medallions and lozenges rains down nearly to the cornice.
Since one must perforce use superlatives in describing this building,
one might venture the view that this is the very best painted dome
that survives in the city. Still another unique feature of the türbe is
the very curious baldachino over the Şehzade's cenotaph. It is of dark