Pertevniyal Sultan

The Bosphorus cannot find happiness today. It flows red when the sun turns into fire at sunset, magically tinting the sky deep shades of pink. And when darkness descends, it becomes grey alternating with silver as the moon skips from cloud to cloud. And finally black from raindrops that cannot decide if they should pour or merely drizzle.

Pertevniyal Sultana is also melancholy as she gazes at the flowing waters, standing tall on the red carpet in the middle of her well-appointed room. She is tall and voluptuous with creamy arms and well rounded hips, like Aphrodite, like Venus. Her chestnut-colored hair sways and catches the light, glimmering with flecks of gold, as she turns her head slowly to show a profile that seems sculpted from the finest marble. The year is 1871.

Pertevniyal, a Causasian beauty of superior intelligence, is only sixteen, but she has already claimed the passion of Sultan Mahmud II, and has captured the attention and the devotion of the court. She, herself, has only one passion: To see the completion of the mosque and its complex that she had commissioned to be built in Istanbul’s Aksaray neighbourhood. The Sultana paid 7,538 gold coins just for the plot of the Mosque’s land and donated 1,055 unique works to its library. She hired the Italian architect Montani to collaborate with Turkish experts and build this elegant house of worship, combining elements of Turkish architecture with Gothic and Indian.

They decorated either side of the courtyard gates with facades of marble columns. On the arches they carved relief motifs, and created refreshing fountains out front. A delicate and astonishingly beautiful creation that impresses to this day.