Selimiye Camii ve Külliyesi

The Selimiye Mosque and Complex is the group of buildings that Sultan Selim II commissioned from Mimar Sinan and that single-handedly defines the skyline of Edirne. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the complex was built between 1568 and 1574 on Kavak Meydanı, a square in the city centre that corresponds to the site of the old palace. The Culture Portal gives 1575 as the completion year and reports that about fifteen thousand people worked on the construction. Mimar Sinan himself described this building as the masterpiece of his mature years. The complex was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2011. Part of the building's impact comes from its setting. Edirne is a flat plain city, and the mosque sits on a rise of about 70 metres within the town. According to the TDV, travellers arriving from Istanbul or from the Balkans pick out the minarets from 10 to 15 kilometres away, and as they draw closer they see first the dome and then the whole mass. Among the buildings that form the city's roofline together with the Üç Şerefeli Mosque, the Old Mosque and the more distant Muradiye, the Selimiye stands at the highest point. The complex is laid out inside a rectangular outer precinct measuring 130 by 190 metres. The mosque is in the centre, a madrasa stands to the southeast and another to the southwest, and the arasta market and a primary school lie to the west. The mosque itself consists of two rectangles of roughly 60 by 44 metres each, the arcaded courtyard to the north and the prayer hall of equal size. The walls are of yellowish cut stone, and two-coloured stone in the windows and arches brings movement to the facades. What sets the Selimiye apart in architectural history is its main dome. By the measurements given in the TDV, the dome is 31.30 metres in diameter and rises to a height of 42.25 metres. It rests on eight piers, six of which stand free while two are set into the corners of the mihrab section. By pushing the piers towards the side walls, Sinan obtained a single wide and airy space without dividing the central area. The Culture Portal notes that Sinan wrote in the Tezkiret-ül Bünyan that with this dome he had surpassed the dome of Hagia Sophia. The four corner minarets are just as famous. Each has a fluted shaft and three balconies, and the TDV gives their height as 70.89 metres. In the two minarets where the courtyard meets the main building, the balconies are reached by three separate stairways that never meet, so three people can climb to different balconies without seeing one another. Raising the minarets for the first time from the corners of the domed prayer hall itself was an innovation that shaped both the plan and the facade design. Inside, the mihrab section is clad with underglaze tiles up to the level of the second row of windows. The marble mihrab and the marble minbar with its geometric pierced work are counted, in the words of the Culture Portal, among the finest examples of marble craftsmanship. The walls of the sultan's loge in the eastern corner are also decorated with rich tiles bearing floral designs. The wooden muezzin's platform in the middle of the hall stands on eleven marble columns and has a small fountain pool beneath it. An upside-down tulip motif on one of the platform's columns has long been the subject of local legends. The arcaded courtyard to the north is surrounded by eighteen domes, and in its centre stands a sixteen-sided ablution fountain of carved marble. The lunettes of some of the courtyard windows carry inscribed tiles. The courtyard is entered by stepped gates on three sides, and the northern gate stands out from the others for its marble and its inscription. The other buildings of the complex are used as museums today. The Darülhadis Madrasa to the southeast houses the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, and the Darülkurra Madrasa to the southwest houses the Foundation Museum. The TDV notes that the Selimiye Darülkurra is the only surviving cell-type Quran school among those built by Sinan. The arasta to the west belongs to the complex Sinan planned, but its western shops, its vaulted roof and its prayer dome were completed under Murad III by the architect Davud Ağa. The TDV gives the arasta a length of 255 metres with 124 shops, while the Ministry brochure speaks of 225 metres, 73 arches and four gates. It makes sense to begin the visit outside, as the Culture Portal suggests, by walking around the complex. Because the Selimiye is a working mosque, choose clothing that covers shoulders and knees, take off your shoes at the entrance and keep quiet during prayer times. Since a comprehensive restoration of the mosque began at the end of 2021, check current announcements before you go to see which parts of the interior are open. The Edirne Museum is about 50 metres from the eastern gate, and the road down from the arasta leads to the Old Mosque and the Bedesten. Reachable on foot from anywhere in the city centre, the complex is the natural starting point of any visit to Edirne.