Building the Architectural Narrative of the Topkapı Kara Ahmed Pasha Mosque Complex in Early Republican Turkey

Abstract

The Kara Ahmed Pasha Mosque complex in Topkapı, Istanbul, a sixteenth-century monument, is one of the beacons in the architectural historiography created during the early republican period in Turkey. Noted in Mimar Sinan's autobiographies, the mosque became an academic subject of formalist monographs and research. The early republicans' formalist construct of the historic complex resonated with the theory of modern architecture. Function was not seen as an autonomous facility that had to be connected with other contextual facets but as an internal force through which architectural form emerged. Hence, Sinan's devised form for the mosque was merely conceived as the outcome of the chief architect's rational consideration of function and structure. In return, the formal appreciation of the historic compound devoted itself single-mindedly to the aesthetic properties of architecture and muted contextual analysis as a research inquiry. This essay provides a closer reading of the early republican historiography on the Kara Ahmed Pasha Mosque complex to unveil the formal references that have perpetuated the long-standing understanding of the historic complex.