Üsküdar and the Princes’ Islands - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 385

cistern and beyond an elaborate two-storeyed colonnade gives access
to the imperial loge. The upper structure is also diversified with little
domes and turrets, and many windows give light to the interior. The
interior, as generally in baroque mosques, is less successful, though
the grey marble gallery along the entrance wall, supported by slender
columns, is efective.
Leaving by the south gate and following the street to the east, one
comes to a wider street, Doğancılar Caddesi, with two pretty baroque
çeşmes at the intersection; turning right one finds at the end of this
street a severely plain türbe built by Sinan for Hacı Mehmet Paşa,
who died in 1559. It stands on an octagonal terrace bristling with
tombstones and overshadowed by a dying terebinth tree.
AHMEDİYE COMPLEX
The wide street just ahead leads downhill past a little park; the third
turning on the right followed immediately by one on the left leads
to an elaborate and delightful külliye, the Ahmediye mosque and
medrese. Built in 1722 by Eminzade Hacı Ahmet Paşa, comptroller
of the Arsenal under Ahmet III, it is perhaps the last ambitious
building complex in the classical style, though verging towards the
baroque. Roughly square in layout, it has the porticoes and cells of
the medrese along two sides; the library, one entrance portal, and
the mosque occupy a third side, while the fourth has the main gate
complex with the dershane above and a graveyard alongside; but the
whole plan is very irregular because of the alignment of streets and
the rising ground. The dome of the little mosque is supported by
scallop-shell squinches and has a finely carved marble mimber and
kürsü. But the library and the dershane over the two gates are the
most attractive features of the complex and show great ingenuity
of design. The whole külliye ranks with those of Bayram Paşa and
Amcazade Hüseyin Paşa as among the most charming and inventive
in the city.
We leave the Ahmediye by the main gate at the south-east corner
of the courtyard, where a stairway under the dershane takes us to the
street below. A short, narrow street opposite the outer gate soon leads
to a wider avenue, Toptaşı Caddesi, where we turn right. We follow