Sokullu Mehmet Pasha was one of Sinan’s preeminent patrons.  He had the same vision as his first master Sultan Suleyman, who had emphasized the creation of complexes along the main diagonal route of the Ottoman Empire, culminating in Mecca and Medina.  Sokullu along with his wife Ismihan Sultan jointly commissioned one of Sinan’s most distinguished mosque complexes, located in the Kadirga neighborhood of Istanbul.  Here is the sketch of the interior toward the qibla wall.

The mosque is dated from 1569-71.  Sinan probably designed the mosque complex before 1568, before he left Edirne to build the Selimiye.  It is not a very large mosque, but it is quite fine inside.  The minbar is especially fine. There are Iznik tiles on the minbar cap and the qibla wall with black stones inset above the mihrab’s muqarnas and the minbar canopy.  We were told that what we saw was not the original decoration inside.

The prayer spaces above were not unlike the synagogues of the 3rd century A.D., and subsequent synagogues in eastern Europe.  Looking up, we saw the pendentive used as the transfer mode for a circular dome over the square room.  As such, the six pendentives provided an interesting structural feature and a stepped outline experiment for the dome’s thrust.  The unifying force of the central hexagon is accentuated by the arches, which are loaded to take the thrusts.

Sinan finally resolved the conflict between the circular dome and the rectangular ground plan in mosques with hexagonal baldachins.