The Süleymaniye - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 208

dome over the sarcophagus; the latter is of marble with a turbaned
tombstone at the head. Outside the türbe are several other graves,
presumably of Sinan's wife and children, but unfortunately there are
no inscriptions.
On the south wall of the türbe garden there is a long inscription
by Sinan's friend, the poet Mustafa Sa'i, which commemorates the
architect's accomplishments. Mustafa Sa'i also wrote of Sinan in
his Tezkere-ül Ebniye, and from this and other sources we can piece
together the life-history of this extraordinary genius. Sinan was born
of Christian parents, presumably Greek, in the Anatolian district of
Karamania in about 1490. When he was about 21 he was caught up
in the devşirme, the annual levy of Christian youths who were taken
into the Sultan's service. As was customary, he became a Muslim
and was sent to one of the palace schools in Istanbul. He was then
assigned to the Janissaries as a military engineer and served in five of
Süleyman's campaigns. In about 1538 he was appointed Chief of the
Imperial Architects, and in the following year completed his first large
mosque in Istanbul, Haseki Hürrem Camii. In the following half-
century he was to adorn Istanbul and the other cities of the Empire
with an incredible number of mosques and other structures. In the
Tezkere , Mustafa Sa'i credits Sinan with 84 mosques, including 42 in
Istanbul, as well as 52 mescits, 63 medreses, seven Kuran schools, 22
türbes, 18 imarets, 20 kervansarays, three hospitals, 35 palaces, eight
storehouses, 52 hamams, six aqueducts and eight bridges, a total of
378 structures of which 86 still remain standing in Istanbul alone.
And although he was in his 50th year when he completed his first
mosque in Istanbul, this renaissance man got better as he grew older
and was all of 85 when he completed his crowning masterpiece, the
Selimiye mosque in Edirne. He did not pause even then and in the
years that were left to him he continued his work, building in that
period, among other things, a half-dozen of Istanbul's finer mosques.
Koca Mimar Sinan, or Great Sinan the Architect, as the Turks call
him, died in 1588 when he was 97 years old (100 according to the
Muslim calendar). He was the architect of the golden age and his
monuments are the magnificent buildings with which he adorned
this city.