Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
now part of Mimar Sinan Universitesi, the University of Sinan the
Architect. The academy has an exhibition hall on the Bosphorus
where art exhibits are held periodically.
MOLLA ÇELEBİ CAMİİ
At Fındıklı there is a little mosque of Sinan's called Molla Çelebi
Camii. This Molla was the Kadıasker (Chief Justice) Mehmet Efendi,
a savant and poet; he built here also a hamam, but this was demolished
when the street was widened. Erected in A.H. 969 (A.D. 1561-2),
the building is of the hexagonal type, but here the pillars are actually
engaged in the walls; between them to north and south are four small
semidomes, and another covers the rectangular projecting apse in
which stands the mihrab. The mosque is at the water's edge and its
position as well as its graceful lines make it very picturesque.
Between here and Dolmabahçe there are three fountains of
considerable interest, all of which were moved from their original
places when the street was widened and have been re-erected on their
present sites. Between the mosque and the Kabataş ferry landing,
beside the Bosphorus, stands the square çeşme of Hekimoğlu Ali Paşa
erected in 1732; it is of marble, beautifully carved; it had lost its
overhanging roof but this has now been replaced. There are çeşmes
on two faces of the fountain. Nearly opposite this çeşme, across the
road, is one of the most pleasing of the baroque or rococo sebils, built
by Koca Yusuf Paşa, Grand Vezir to Abdül Hamit I, in 1787. It has a
magnificent çeşme in the centre, flanked on each side by two grilled
windows of the sebil, and a door beyond; it is elaborately carved and
has incrustations of various marbles, while its long inscription forms
a frieze above the windows of the sebil. It is pleasantly embowered
in trees and is once more in use as a sebil, with the tables of a little
café in front of it. Finally, just opposite the Dolmabahçe mosque
is a little külliye with a sebil as its dominant feature. This was built
in 1741 by the sipahi Hacı Mehmet Emin Ağa. Halil Ethem says
rightly that it is “perhaps the most interesting eighteenth-century
sebil in Istanbul.” The five-windowed sebil is flanked symmetrically
on one side by a door, on the other by a çeşme; there follow three
grilled windows opening into a small graveyard for the members of
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