page_title: Süleymaniye Mosque
section_title: Interior
hierarchical_section_title: Süleymaniye Mosque / Architecture / Interior
caption_attribution_description: English: Inside Süleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey. Ελληνικά: Εσωτερικό Τεμένους Σουλεϊμανιέ, Κωνσταντινούπολη, Τουρκία.
context_page_description: The Süleymaniye Mosque is an Ottoman imperial mosque located on the Third Hill of Istanbul, Turkey. The mosque was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent and designed by the imperial architect Mimar Sinan. An inscription specifies the foundation date as 1550 and the inauguration date as 1557. Behind the qibla wall of the mosque is an enclosure containing the separate octagonal mausoleums of Suleiman the Magnificent and that of his wife Hurrem Sultan. The Süleymaniye Mosque is the second largest mosque in the city, and one of the best-known sights of Istanbul.
context_section_description: The interior of the mosque is almost a square, 59 metres (194 feet) in length and 58 metres (190 feet) in width, forming a single vast space. The dome is flanked by semi-domes, and to the north and south arches with tympana-filled windows, supported by enormous porphyry monoliths. Sinan decided to make a radical architectural innovation to mask the huge north-south buttresses needed to support these central piers. He incorporated the buttresses into the walls of the building, with half projecting inside and half projecting outside, and then hid the projections by building colonnaded galleries. There is a single gallery inside the structure, and a two-story gallery outside.
  The interior decoration is restrained with stained-glass windows restricted to the qibla wall. Iznik tile revetments are only used around the mihrab. The repeating rectangular tiles have a stencil-like floral pattern on a white ground. The flowers are mainly blue with turquoise, red and black but green is not used. On either side of the mihrab are large Iznik tile calligraphic roundels with text from the Al-Fatiha surah of the Quran (1:1–7). The white marble mihrab and mimbar are also simple in design, and woodwork is restrained, with simple designs in ivory and mother of pearl.
caption: Interior looking towards the mihrab
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