Architect (mi'mar)

The architect (mi'mar) designs a building and oversees its construction, and was expected to know geometry, building technique and the measurement of land. ¹ In the Ottoman state the chief of the architects in the palace was called the mimarbaşı. He headed an office that carried out the buildings of the state and the sultan, and licensed those who built outside it. ²

The word mi'mari derives from an Arabic root that means to live long and to make a house populated and prosperous. ¹ It is a late word: it is not recorded in the classical Arabic dictionaries and became common in Ottoman usage. ¹

Classical Muslim scholars did not treat architecture as a separate science but as a branch of geometry. Taşköprizâde called this branch ilmü ukūdi'l-ebniye and defined its subject as the design of buildings, the principles of construction and sound building methods. ¹ Ja'far Efendi's Ottoman treatise on architecture says that the work is, in its essence, about geometry. ¹

The earliest mosques in the Arabian peninsula are known to have had mud-brick walls, wooden posts and flat roofs. ¹ Posts set in the ground carried wooden beams and palm branches, which were covered with mud. ¹

In the time of the four caliphs, and as Umayyad and Andalusian rule spread, each region used the most suitable local materials, and architects of every nation were employed without regard to their faith or origin. ¹ The encyclopaedia describes the Islamic world, from China to the Atlantic coasts, as opening work to a cosmopolitan body of architects. ¹

These were not one trade. In Ottoman usage the building trade was called esnâf-ı mi'mâr, the guild of architecture. It included masons, carpenters, stonecutters and the workers the sources call horasancı. Craftsmen in other materials and techniques were described as people of the craft attached to the architect. ¹

The word bennâ usually named builders of walls, that is masonry workers, depending on the context. ¹ Architects were described as men learned in geometry, because their work required knowledge of construction technique, land measurement and proportion; the architect was sometimes called an engineer (mühendis), since geometry covers measurement and proportion. ¹

Titles such as bennâ, neccâr, mühendis and mimar are recorded against the names of craftsmen, but they do not show at which stage of the work their holder took part, and not everyone who held them was an architect. ¹ Thirteenth-century Anatolian Seljuk sources mention kâğıt and tersîmü'l-üstâd, which suggests that buildings were erected to a written design, and a bina nâzırı, an overseer of the building team, is named. ¹

The accounts of the Süleymaniye building give a working picture of this division of labour. Masters of several communities, Muslims and subject non-Muslims, worked on it. Christian masters worked in some trades, some asked for higher wages, and Christian masters were given Sunday off. ¹

The entry does not describe the calligrapher's part in a building. It notes that the names of masters are read in building inscriptions, and that architecture, unlike calligraphy, music and the book arts, developed directly with materials, labour, masters and building sites, and so with the economy. ¹

The office of architects in the palace was called the Hassa Mimarları Ocağı, the Office of the Palace Architects. It was counted among the outer parts of the palace (Birun). Administratively it was subject to the city prefect (şehremini), while all technical work was in the hands of the architects. ²

Its duties included a preliminary survey of every palace or state building or repair, carrying it out, keeping its expense accounts, and a final survey on completion. ² It also carried out works for endowments, surveyed non-Muslim places of worship to decide whether they needed repair, watched over roads, bridges, water channels and town walls, checked fire risks, and opened, repaired and bridged roads for armies on campaign. ² It fixed the wages of workers and the prices of building materials, licensed and supervised provincial architects, and gave expert evidence in court. ²

The chief was chosen from within the office, from those who had reached the rank of khalifa or kethüda, or from the superintendent of the water works (suyolu nâzırı). Every appointment and promotion was made by order of the grand vizier, on the chief's submission. ² Appointments were for life until the middle of the seventeenth century, and the system ended with the dismissal of Kasım Ağa in 1054 AH (1644). ²

The office had 150 registered architects in the seventeenth century, fell to 35 to 40 by 1691, and had eleven at the end of the century. About half its members in 1604 were non-Muslims, according to the entry's citation of Afyoncu. ² Because the central office was small, provincial architects (eyalet mimarları) were appointed on the chief's proposal and checked by the office. They did small works and repaired frontier fortresses in particular. ²

In Sinan's time an order was issued that no one should build without the chief architect's knowledge, after buildings put up by men who had come to Istanbul from Rumeli and elsewhere, and who worked "with a yard-stick in hand" without knowing carpentry or masonry, fell or burned. ¹ From the sixteenth century, an architect, a kalfa (journeyman) or a master working outside the office needed a licence from the chief architect attesting his competence. ¹

The chief drew a stipend (ulûfe) like the other members of the office, which in the seventeenth century ranged from 31 to 45 akçe. ² He had further income: a levy called harc-ı mi'mârî on state construction and repairs, a fee on shops in Istanbul and on the houses of the Greek, Armenian and Jewish communities, and a revenue assignment in the district of Vize, worth 8,883 akçe a year in 1802. ²

Building in the Seljuk, Mamluk and Ayyubid periods was largely paid for by sultans, officials, rich merchants and the notables of the cities. ¹

Ottoman architects drew plans before building. ¹ None of the roughly thirty plans attributed to Ottoman architects that survive is older than the eighteenth century, and most of the plans in the Topkapı archive were drawn later for repairs. ¹ The entry says that statements show Sinan made plans and surveys (rölöve). ¹ Dâyezâde Mustafa Efendi reports that Sinan made a three-dimensional drawing (mücessem tersîm) of the Selim mosque at Edirne, in the manner of architects, and presented it to the sultan. ¹

In 1582 a wooden model of the Süleymaniye, carried on the shoulders of ten to fifteen men, was shown in a procession at the Sultanahmet Square. ¹ In his account of the Sultan Ahmed mosque, Ja'far Efendi describes the shape the architect depicted for the drawing of the mosque. ¹ The entry concludes that detailed designs were first shown to the patron and then explained to the builders. ¹

Davud Ağa was trained at the side of Sinan and served as superintendent of the water works in 983 to 984 AH (1575 to 1577). ³ After Sinan's death in 1588 he was appointed chief architect, and documents name him mimarbaşı from 1001 AH (1592). ³ He took care that his name appeared in the inscriptions of his buildings, so an inscribed work counts as his. ³ Accounts of his death differ. Selânikî says he died of the plague in Istanbul in September 1598. Ayvansarayî says he was killed in Vefa Square on a charge of heretical belief. The entry does not choose between them. ³

Hayreddin is the architect whom the documents name as the builder of the Mostar Bridge, which was built around 974 AH (1566–67). ⁴ On 9 Şevval 975 AH (7 April 1568) an order to the chief architect Sinan asked for an architect to build a fortress on the coast at Makarska, and named Hayreddin, who had built the Mostar Bridge before. ⁴ The entry takes this document as evidence that the bridge was not Sinan's, as had been rumoured. ⁴ In 971 AH (1563–64) Sinan examined, together with an architect named Hayreddin, the repair accounts of a church at Samatya in Istanbul belonging to Armenian subjects. ⁴ The entry considers it very probable that the man who built the bridge and the fortress is the same man who examined the Istanbul works, but does not settle the question. ⁴

Sinan is the figure to whom the titles of respect in the entry are given, among them "chief of the notables of the engineers" and "head of the masters of the age", and the entry says he held the first place for a long time. ¹ The entry also says that Kasım Ağa, dismissed in 1644, was chief architect and was involved in internal Ottoman politics. ² Its list of related entries describes Sedefkar Mehmed Ağa as chief architect in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and Acem Ali as the first chief architect known by name in classical Ottoman architecture. ²

The office was a school of the palace. Able young men were chosen from the Janissaries, from the palace's artists or from outside, and learned theory and practice in a master-apprentice relationship. An architect learned several building arts there. ²

After the founding of the Imperial Land Engineering School (Mühendishâne-i Berrî-i Hümâyun) in 1795, its graduates began to qualify as architects, and it was decided that the chief architect should be chosen from among them. ²

The office was based in the palace. Its members lived in the Yalı Köşkü at Topkapı and in the Sepetçiler Kasrı, and a workshop near Vefa was called the mimarbaşı kârhânesi. ² The office was based in Istanbul, and the entry says that intensive building from the foundation of the state went on especially in Bursa and Edirne. ^{2 1}

Only the works that the sources read for this record name are given here.

• The Selimiye Mosque at Edirne, whose dome the entry takes as the peak of dome technology in classical Ottoman architecture, both in its beauty and its size. ¹
• The Fatih Mosque and its külliye. The entry says that the buildings of Mehmed II's time show an office that was organised, and not one made up of gathered architects. ¹
• The Mostar Bridge, built around 974 AH (1566–67), was destroyed completely by artillery in the recent civil war. The entry does not record any later rebuilding. ⁴
• A kiosk on the Marmara shore wall, built in 998 AH (1590) at the wish of Sultan Murad III and at the expense of Sinan Pasha, decorated with İznik tiles. A fountain in it carries an inscription of 998 AH (1590) that names Davud Ağa as its architect. ³
• The Sepetçiler Kasrı, begun in 999 AH (1590–91) and completed in Cemâziyelâhir 1000 AH (March to April 1592). Accounts show that it was his work. ³
• A map of the Halkalı water line dated 992 AH (1584). Copies survive in Istanbul collections, and the entry dates the surviving copies to after the deaths of the men named in their margins. ³

Life tenure ended with the dismissal of Kasım Ağa in 1644. ² Under Mahmud II, the chief architect's office was joined with the city prefect's office in one directorate, the Ebniye-i Hassa Müdürlüğü, in 1831. Its units were then attached to the Council for Public Works in 1836 and to the Ministry of Trade and Public Works in 1839. ²

• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "MİMARİ", Selçuk Mülâyim, vol. 30, pp. 91–95. ¹
• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "MİMARBAŞI", Şerafettin Turan, vol. 30, pp. 90–91. ²
• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "HAYREDDİN, Mimar", Semavi Eyice, vol. 17, pp. 56–57. ⁴
• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "DÂVUD AĞA", Semavi Eyice, vol. 9, pp. 24–26. ³
• Works named in the entries, not read for this record: Ja'far Efendi, Risâle-i Mi'mâriyye; Fatma Afyoncu, XVII. Yüzyılda Hassa Mimarları Ocağı (2001); Ahmed Refik, Mimar Sinan (1931); Ayvansarayî, Hadîkatü'l-cevâmi'; Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme; Selânikî, Tarih.