Sinan's autobiographies. Five Sixteenth-Century Texts * Edited with a preface by GuLRU NECIPOGLU

Abstract

Mustafa Sâʿî (d. 1004/1595–6) is associated with five biographies, or autobiographies of Sinan, an Untitled Treatise (AR) the Risaletü’l-Miʿmariye or Treatise on Architecture (RM), the Tuhfetü’l-Miʿmarin or Choice gift of the Architects (TM), the Tezkiretü’l-Ebniye or Record of Building (TE) and a longer version, the Tezkiretü’l-Bünyan or Record of Construction (TB). For concision, I shall refer to them, as the authors do, by their abbreviations. AR, RM, TM and TE, they conclude, appear to be in a single continuous line of textual descent from AR, which was evidently a draft and may have been programmatic, though the construction of a stemma is complicated by the fact that in several instances the texts are joined together or merged in the same manuscript. Apart from the serious objection that they all conflict in various ways with primary documents for Sinan's works—foundation inscriptions, the Mühimme Defters and the building accounts of Süleymaniye published...