Zal Mahmud Pasha Mosque, Istanbul

Zal Mahmut Pasha Camii at Eyüp on the Golden Horn shore is a mature but unique work of Sinan; its construction date is unrecorded, though Aptullah Kuran suggests it began about 1575 and was finished by 1580 ¹.

Freely recounts that Zal Mahmut's rise began in 1553 when he carried out Süleyman's order to strangle Prince Mustafa; Süleyman made him beylerbeyi of Anatolia, Selim II made him fifth vezir in 1566, and in 1572 he married Selim's daughter Şah Sultan. He and his wife died on the same night in September 1580 and were buried together in the türbe beside the mosque ¹. Built on a slope over vaulted substructures, its towering west façade with four tiers of windows looks more like a palace than a mosque; inside, a vast rectangular room is ringed by galleries on a heavy arcade, and the dome carries twelve windows ². Evliya Çelebi called it 'the finest of all the mosques in the Ottoman empire built by vezirs,' saying Sinan 'displayed his utmost art' ³. The külliye includes two medreses — one around three sides of the courtyard, another on a lower level to the west — and the mosque was well restored in the early 1970s ³.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 305–307 (Zal Mahmut Pasha Camii).
• The Mustafa execution account is relayed from the historian Joseph von Hammer as told by Freely.