The Risale-i Mi'mariyye by Ca'fer Efendi is the most extensive and detailed Ottoman literary source devoted to a particular architect. In addition to being an account of the life and works of the imperial architect Mehmed Aga, builder of the Sultan Ahmed Complex in Istanbul, it serves to suggest something of the general character and career evolution of the entire class of Ottoman imperial architects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and includes as well a trilingual glossary of terms related to architecture. With the exception of the more abridged tezkeres of Mustafa Sa'i Celebi...

This is an annotated translation of what is perhaps the most important Ottoman literary source for the Islamic monuments of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul: Hafız Huseyin bin Ismail Ayvansarayi's Hadikat al-Cevami (The Garden of Mosques). Long recognized by Turkish scholars as a unique source for the city's architecture and urban form, the text, which was completed in 1195/1780 and revised and enlarged between 1248/1832-33 and 1253/1838 by Ali Sati, contains separate descriptions of each of Istanbul's more than 800 mosques, plus accounts of its medreses, tombs, tekkes and other...

The present volume contains critical editions of all five autobiographical accounts of the The sixteenth-century Ottoman architect Sinan, along with transcriptions, annotated translations, and facsimiles of the most important variant versions; an introductory essay that analyzes the various surviving manuscripts, reconstructs their histories, and establishes the relationships between them; and a preface that considers the sources, themes, and broader implications of the five autobiographies.