Kilic Ali Pasha Mosque, Istanbul

Kılıç Ali Pasha Camii stands at Tophane on the European shore of the lower Bosphorus just outside the walls of Galata; Sinan built it for the chief admiral Kılıç Ali Pasha in 1580–1, when — by Freely's account — the architect was in his ninety-first year ¹.

The founder, born Occhiali in Calabria, was captured by Algerian pirates and spent fourteen years as a galley slave before entering Süleyman's service as a captain, becoming a Muslim named Uluç Ali; the only Turkish officer to distinguish himself at Lepanto in 1571, he was made chief admiral by Selim II and renamed Kılıç Ali ¹. After recapturing Tunis from the Spaniards in 1573 he retired to Istanbul; when he asked Murat III's leave to build a mosque, the story goes, the sultan told him to build it on the sea since that was his domain — so he filled in a stretch of shoreline outside Galata's walls and raised his mosque on it ². Freely notes that Sinan, who had always avoided directly imitating Haghia Sophia, here designed what is practically a small replica of it — one of his least successful buildings, in Freely's judgement ³. Ali Pasha died in 1587, reputedly the richest of the sultan's subjects ².

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 308–311 (Kılıç Ali Pasha Camii).
• The "build it on the sea" story and the fortune estimate are told in the source as anecdotes and are relayed as such.