Appendices - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 482

many of the columns as possible, thus making the interior almost open
and visible from all parts. Moreover the galleries, at Haghia Sophia
as wide as the aisles, are here reduced to narrow balconies against the
side walls. This is the plan of Beyazit Camii and the Süleymaniye.
Sometimes this centralization and opening-up is carried even farther
by adding two extra semidomes to north and south, as at the Şehzade,
Sultan Ahmet and Yeni Cami. A further innovation of the mosques
as compared with Haghia Sophia is the provision of a monumental
exterior in attractive grey stone with a cascade of descending domes
and semidomes balanced by the upward thrust of the two, four or six
minarets.
Another type of classical mosque is also derived from a combination
of a native with a Byzantine tradition. This consists of a polygon
inscribed in a square or rectangular area covered by a dome. Its
prototypes are the early Üç Şerefeli Mosque at Edirne and SS. Sergius
and Bacchus here; the former has an inscribed hexagon, the latter
an octagon. In the classical mosques of this type (both hexagon and
octagon being common) there are again no central columns or wide
galleries, the dome supports being pushed back as near as possible
to the walls, thus giving a wholly centralized efect. Though this
was chiefly used by Sinan and other architects for mosques of grand
vezirs and high officials, the most magnificent example of this type is
the great mosque of Selim II at Edirne, Sinan's masterpiece and the
largest and most beautiful of all the classical mosques.
Almost all mosques of whatever type are preceded by a porch
of three or five domed bays and generally also by a monumental
courtyard with a domed arcade. If there is only one minaret - as in
all but imperial mosques - it is practically always on the right-hand
side of the entrance.
All imperial mosques and most of the grander ones of vezirs and great
lords form the centre of a külliye, or complex of buildings, forming
one vakıf, or pious foundation, often endowed with great wealth.
The founder generally built his türbe, or mausoleum, in the garden
or graveyard behind the mosque; these are simple buildings, square
or polygonal, covered by a dome and with a small entrance porch,
sometimes beautifully decorated inside with tiles. Of the utilitarian