Grabmal des Şehzade Mehmed

Şehzade Mehmed, a son of Süleyman I and Hürrem Sultan, was sent to Manisa as provincial governor in 1542^3,5. He fell ill and died in 950 AH (1543), during the celebrations for the capture of Esztergom, and was buried in Istanbul on the spot where his tomb was to be built^3,5. Süleyman, who called him “the choicest of princes”, asked Mimar Sinan for a tomb and gave him a whole complex to build in the prince's name; TDV puts Sinan's age at the time at 54^4,5. The tomb was the first part of the complex to be finished; according to Şen, a four-line Persian inscription over its door dates it to 1543^2,5,7.

The mosque, founded on 23 May 1544, opened in August 1548; the complex, on land taken from the old janissary barracks, also had a madrasa, a soup kitchen, a primary school and a caravanserai with stables². Mehmed's daughter Hümaşah Sultan and his brother Cihangir were later buried beside him^5,7. The graveyard filled with other tombs, among them Rüstem Pasha's of 1555 and Damad İbrahim Pasha's of 1603, whose design follows Mehmed's². Fires in 1613, 1633, 1718 and 1782 damaged the complex, which was thoroughly restored in 1994-1999². Şen reports, from press coverage, that the explosion in Istanbul on 7 June 2016 badly damaged the mosque and the tomb, their stucco windows with coloured glass worst of all; when she examined the tomb again in 2018 she found differences in the double windows of several walls⁷.

The tomb is an octagon with a fluted drum and dome; TDV links these, and the coloured stonework of the facades, to Iranian and Central Asian influences^2,5. Engaged columns divide the eight faces, which have windows in a lower and an upper row, and a three-bay porch shelters the door^5,6. Düzenli calls its exterior decoration unusual in Ottoman architecture⁸. The upper windows are closed by moulded stucco grilles, set with clear glass outside and coloured glass inside, with a gap the depth of the wall between the two layers⁷. Rüstem Pasha's tomb of 1555, in the same graveyard, repeats these features in a plainer design². UNESCO names the 16th-century Şehzade Mosque complex among the monuments of the World Heritage property¹.

Tiles cover the interior walls entirely². The ministry describes 16th-century tiles with plant motifs in blue, dark blue, green, yellow and white, which also line both sides of the doorway outside, and an inscription band between the lower and upper windows, inside and out⁵. The Ashmolean Museum's Iznik timeline lists the mosque and tomb of 1543-44 among the first buildings in the saz style and with the first tulip motifs⁹. Over Mehmed's cenotaph stands a four-legged, latticed throne (taht) inlaid with ivory; the cenotaphs of Cihangir and Hümaşah Sultan flank his inside a wooden railing, and a fourth, outside it, is unidentified^5,7. In the upper windows, coloured glass is set in stucco tracery with palmettes, rumi scrolls, narcissi and hyacinths⁷.