Along the Land Walls - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 353

to the shrine is in the corner between the two courtyards. We descend
down a long flight of steps and find ourselves in a small chapel at
the west end of which is the ayazma, or sacred spring. The spring is
said to be inhabited by a species of fabulous fish which are brown
on one side by virtue of their ancestors having leaped from a monk's
frying-pan into the water five centuries ago, on hearing the news that
Byzantium had fallen. However, closer inspection will reveal that the
fish in the sacred spring have since reverted to a uniform gold.
IBRAHİM PAŞA CAMİİ
Returning to the Silivri Gate and entering the city there, we find
immediately inside a fairly large and charming mosque by Sinan.
This was built in 1551 for Hadım (the Eunuch) Ibrahim Paşa, the
second of the two Grand Vezirs of that name under Süleyman the
Magnificent. The mosque has a fine porch with five domed bays and
a portal surmounted by an elaborate stalactited baldachino. In form
it is an octagon inscribed in a rectangle with galleries on each side; it
has no columns but in the angles of the octagon, pretty pendentives
in the form of shells support the dome. The marble mimber and
sultan's loge are of admirable workmanship, as are the panels of the
doors, inlaid with ivory. Over the mihrab are tiles with inscriptions;
these must be a subsequent addition, for they appear to be from
the very latest Iznik period or even perhaps from the eighteenth-
century potteries of Tekfur Saray. In the mosque garden is the
attractive open türbe of the founder with a marble sarcophagus. The
pious foundation, whose date is given in inscriptions over the garden
gates, originally included a mektep and a hamam, but these have
perished.
SİLİVRİ KAPISI TO MEVLEVİHANE KAPISI
Returning to the Silivri Gate we proceed along the walls, which
are here not as well preserved as in the previous sections. Less than
midway along there is a curious jog, or indentation, in the wall known
as the Sigma from its resemblance to the uncial form of that letter -
like the letter C. Just beside the Sigma is the Third Military Gate,
now walled up. Over this little gate there once stood a statue of the