Tazkara-t’al-Bonian and Tazkara-t’al-Abnieh Epistles: Pathways towards Architect Sinan’s Mindset about Architecture

In order to better learn the architecture of the past, it is necessary to better understand the mainstream architectural though of the period. In addition to its architectural works, the period’s architecturerelated written literature offers a way to study the period’s mindset. Nevertheless, there are few texts among the Islamic period literature explicitly and directly discussing architecture. Tazkara-t’al-Bonian and Tazkara-t’al-Abnieh are two texts from this rare genre, originating from the Ottoman era, and containing biographical and professional memoirs of Sinan, the great architect of the Islamic world. One could ask the ways in and the degree to which Sinan’s mindset can be read through these and other related texts from this period; what have been the influential ingredients, concepts and individuals of his mindset, and to what degree they have been influential? The present paper is an attempt to explore and unearth Sinan’s mindset through the above texts as well as other texts such as Resala-t’al-Memarieh and Tohfa-t’al-Memarin for presentday architectural researchers. For Sinan these texts were supposed to work as best practice instructions written to his own request by a trusted person, in the hope that he would be benignly remembered and his career would be recognized by his successors. Generally speaking, Sinan recognised two groups as having a meritorious status: the profession’s veterans and spiritual supporters, and the patrons. There are other dimensions to the architect’s mindset—Sinan in this case—under Ottoman order, based on concepts such as offering, Kaaba holiness, and being loyal to the past. Sinan’s mindset had clear spiritual dimensions, and his most important goal was being blessed and redeemed. He hoped to compete with the past and win pride for the Islamic world.