The Seventh Hill - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 331

irregular in shape; while the eighth side of the courtyard forms the
façade on the street with grilled windows. This building too has been
well restored and is once again in use as a hospital.
DAVUT PAŞA CAMİİ
Returning to the street outside Haseki Hürrem Camii, we continue
on in the same direction for about 400 metres. Then to our left, set
back from the road and partly concealed by trees and houses, we see a
fine but dilapidated old mosque. This is Davut Paşa Camii, dated by
an inscription over the door to A.H. 890 (A.D. 1485). Davut Paşa,
the founder, was Grand Vezir under Sultan Beyazit II. In plan the
mosque belongs to the simple type of the square chamber covered by
a large blind dome; but the mihrab is in a five-sided apse projecting
from the east wall and to north and south are small rooms, two on
each side, once used as tabhanes for travelling dervishes. What gives
the building its distinction and harmony, however, is the beautiful
shallow dome, quite obviously less than half a hemisphere. The
pendentives of the dome are an unusually magnificent example of
the stalactite form, here boldly incised and brought far down the
corners of the walls. Unfortunately they are in very bad condition, as
is the interior in general. A small amount of very careful restoration
is called for, for this mosque is one of the half-dozen of the earliest
period which are most worthy of preservation. In fact, the five-domed
porch, which was partially in ruins, has now been well restored; let us
hope the interior will soon be too.
Behind the mosque a delightfully topsy-turvy graveyard surrounds
the founder's türbe, octagonal in form and with an odd dome in eight
triangular segments. Across the narrow street to the north stands the
medrese of the külliye, almost completely surrounded and concealed
by houses. The courtyard must have been extremely handsome -
indeed it still is - with its re-used Byzantine columns and capitals,
but it is in an advanced state of ruin. Here immediate restoration
is urgently needed to save it before it is too late, for this is the only
one of the fifteenth-century vezirial medreses which survives in
something like its original form. The külliye once also had an imaret
and a mektep, but these have completely disappeared.