Up the Golden Horn to Eyüp - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 375

heavy Empire style; but the domes of the library reading-rooms contain
a good example of that horrendous Italianate comic opera painted
decoration of garlands, draperies and columns, which is so distressing
when it occurs in classical buildings but is quite appropriate here. At
the end of the street at the water's edge one gets a good view of the
neo-classical türbe of the Sultan Mehmet V Reşat who died in 1918,
oddly enough the only one of all the sultans to be buried in the holy
precincts of Eyüp and the last to be buried in his own country. It is a
rather heavy building, the interior revetted in modern Kütahya tiles
predominantly of a vivid (too vivid) green.
Taking the street parallel to the Golden Horn, one soon comes to
a crossroads where stand several classical türbes. The finest and most
elaborate of these is that of Ferhat Paşa, octagonal in structure with
a richly decorated cornice and polychrome voussoirs and window-
frames.
THE TÜRBE COMPLEX OF SOKOLLU MEHMET PAŞA
Further up the street that leads back towards Eyüp Camii two classical
türbes of great simplicity face one another. The one on the left is that
of Sokollu Mehmet Paşa, built by Sinan in about 1572; it forms part
of a small külliye. Elegant and well-proportioned, it is severely plain,
but the interior contains some interesting stained glass, partly ancient
and partly a modern imitation but very well done; alternate windows
are predominantly blue and green. A little colonnade attaches the
türbe to the dershane of the very fine medrese of the complex. Notice
the handsome identical doorways of the two buildings, difering only
in that the rich polychrome work of the türbe is in verd antique,
that of the dershane in red conglomerate marble. The dershane also
has stained glass windows, but they are modern and not so good as
those in the türbe. Its dome is supported on squinches of very bold
stalactites. The opposite door leads into the medrese courtyard, long
and narrow, its colonnade having ten domes on the long sides, only
three on the ends. The building has been well restored and is used
as a children's clinic: it is so pretty and charming, with a delightfully
well-kept garden, that it must almost be a pleasure to be a patient! In
the little garden of the türbe are buried the family and descendants