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Restoration work at Istanbul’s Suleymaniye Mosque has uncovered long-hidden details of the 16th-century landmark, including buried clay jars that dampen echoes in the dome, an inscription on rust-proof metal and original decorative paintwork from the era of architect Mimar Sinan.
The discoveries are resurfacing as the mosque marks its opening for worship on Oct. 15, 1557, a pinnacle of Ottoman architecture.
Built by Sinan on the orders of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the mosque sits at the center of a complex that includes madrassas, a hospital, a soup kitchen, a bathhouse, and other buildings that reflect Ottoman urban planning and social life.
A fixture of Istanbul’s skyline for centuries, the mosque is more than a place of worship. Together with the surrounding complex, it carries the cultural and social heritage of Ottoman civilization into the present day. Sinan himself described the building as his "journeyman" work, the stage before the master.
Kaya Ucer, a Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University faculty member who worked on the restoration, said the mosque holds a special place in his career. He said legends about the building have been passed down by word of mouth until many took them for fact, including one that jars built into the dome spoil its acoustics.
Ucer said no one had ever seen the jars until scaffolding of 20,000 cubic meters gave his team access to the entire interior. Then, in cracks in the dome, they spotted jars set among the bricks. After initial skepticism, they found them placed upright in zigzag lines at set intervals across the whole dome, each with a hole in its base.
The jars cannot be seen from below, he said, but from above it becomes clear the holes soften sound and cut off echoes. Specialists ran tests, he said, ending a myth that had lasted for years.
The dome also has a feature that surprised the team: despite being a Sinan building, it carries lavish Baroque, even Rococo-style, decoration, with dense floral bouquets.
Hoping to find something from Sinan’s time, the team examined nearly every part of the main dome under ultraviolet light and scraped away patches of paint to reach lower layers.
They found another Baroque design beneath, but only in a section, not across the whole dome.
"We interpreted that to mean two samples were made and whichever was preferred was continued," Ucer said. The earlier design had never been painted over. The team restored the decoration visible today, bringing back its splendor.
Ucer noted that the calligraphy in the dome is traditionally attributed to Ahmed Karahisari, a renowned 16th-century calligrapher. Records, however, name Karahisari’s student Hasan Celebi as the writer, he said, and say Abdulfettah Efendi made corrections during an 18th-century restoration.
Another detail is invisible to the naked eye from the floor. Behind the wide, gold-leafed, wood-framed inscription lies a zinc base, its panels nailed together with large black-headed nails, with the writing applied over the rustproof metal.
"It shows the intent that the inscription should stay here forever," Ucer said. "It’s the only example I’ve seen. It’s a kind of paintwork on metal."
The team also noticed that a letter was missing from the dome’s inscription. After consulting calligraphers, a scientific panel agreed the letter belonged there, and the letter "h" was added.
"This way, the magnificent inscription that has crowned the dome for centuries was restored on site so it can last for centuries more," Ucer said.
Ucer said the mosque took about seven years to build and the restoration took a similar length of time. The building was restored so carefully that it should not need major intervention for the next 50 years, he said.
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Scraping in the portico and the sultan’s loge turned up original paintwork from Sinan’s time. The team preserved the original sections and restored missing parts based on them.
"Classical-period designs came to light, the splendid rumi motifs that were among the most widely used in the 16th century," he said, referring to the Ottoman arabesque-style scrolling pattern.
At the mosque’s ablution fountain, the team found pieces missing from the top of the water-level tower, Ucer said.
"I had seen a piece of it somewhere," he said. He recalled a fragment lying on the ground at a museum run by the General Directorate of Foundations in Istanbul’s Fatih district. "We went and looked at it, measured it. The pattern was the same as on the water tower. When we cleaned the piece and set it in place, it fit that broken part exactly."
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