Suleymaniye Mosque

This guide to the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul traces Sinan, a boy taken from a Christian village near Kayseri around 1512 under the Ottoman devshirme system, trained as a soldier, and named chief imperial architect in his fifties with no formal training. It follows the seven years he spent raising this complex for Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and Sinan's own verdict that it was merely a journeyman's work beside what came later. Suleiman lies buried behind the mosque alongside his wife Hürrem.