Book of Buildings Tezkiretü'l Bünyan and Tezkiretü'l Ebniye ( Memoirs of Sinan the Architect )

Book of Buildings is the complete critical edition of two important texts, Tezkeritü-‘l-Bünyan and Tezkeritü-‘l-Ebniye, based on Sinan’s own accounts of his life and works.

The text is accompanied by scores of full color photographs of Sinan’s monuments, miniatures illustrating his works, and facsimiles of the original scripts.

For the Ottoman Empire it is works of architecture across the extensive lands which it ruled for over six centuries that mark its cultural identity most indelibly. Today from Bosnia to Yemen, from Iraq to Algeria, and throughout nearly every part of the eastern Mediterranean we find mosques, hans, hamams, bridges, and other buildings representing the achievements of Ottoman civilization and keeping its memory alive. Astonishingly, the majority of these landscapes are the work of A single creative genius, the great master architect of the Ottoman golden age: Sinan. In a lifetime of nearly a century one man created the most outstanding masterpieces of Ottoman architecture, and no other eminent architect left even a fraction of his legacy in terms of sheer numbers.

Cover Illustration: The only portrait of Mimar Sinan. Detail from a miniature in Tarih-I Sultan Süleyman, f.115b; Chester Beatty Library, MS413. 1579-1580

"I hope that those of pure heart who look upon my works from now until the end of time and doomsday will regard me kindly, and when they see the earnestness of my endeavour and dedication remember me in their prayers. May God’s will be done." Sinan