Our guide Fatih pointed to a mosque ahead. It was not very grand in scale, with only one minaret, and so engulfed by its surroundings that I had almost missed it.
To be honest, I’d already seen enough mosques. After the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Rustem Pasha Mosque, the Eyüp Sultan Mosque, the Sülemaniye Mosque, and the Chora (aka Kariye Mosque), I was mosqued-out. (Fun fact: Istanbul has more than 3,000 mosques. Mind blown!) Still, I decided to trust Fatih. I put on my headscarf and took off my shoes one more time.
And I stepped into what instantly became my favorite mosque! The interior was flooded with natural light from scores of beautiful windows, many of them stained glass. It was gray cloudy day, and yet this was the brightest interior of all the mosques we had visited. I loved it. I also loved its smaller dimensions and its lack of crowds.
It was no surprise that this lovely mosque was designed by Mimar Sinan, the Imperial Architect. I learned that Mihrimah Sultan was the only daughter of Süleiman the Magnificent, and her name means “Sun and Moon.” Legend has it that Sinan was deeply in love with the princess (she married someone else). He designed a pair of mosques with her name, this one in Edirnekapı and another in Üsküdar, on the other side of the Bosphorus. On Mihrimah’s birthday (also the spring equinox, March 21), the sun sets behind the one mosque just as the moon rises behind the other. How romantic is that?
