Uskudar Mihrimah Sultan Mosque and Sinan

The Mihrimah Sultan Mosque, which is inside the Mihrimah Sultan Complex, was built by Mimar Sinan with a request of The Great Suleyman’s daughter Mihrimah Sultan between the years of 1547-1548. The mosque is rectangle shaped and it has a very big dome with a diameter of 10 meters. The dome’s pulley has 16 windows, and the pulley was supported via externally curved legs. The altar of the mosque is made of marble. The network of the pullit which is made by solid marble, decorated with the geometric shapes. On the side of the main door, there are the muezzin and oil lamp chambers carried by three marble columns and the sultan's chamber, which is seated on five columns on the wall. Door and window wings are inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, and the preacher's lectern is also very artistic. It is rumored that the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque was closer to the sea when it was built than nowadays. And Sultan Suleyman came with his royal boat, landed in front of the mosque stairs during the opening ceremony. It has one minaret balcony for two minarets and there is a twenty-cornered marble fountain in the courtyard of this mosque. It is also known as Pier Mosque.
Mihrimah Sultan: She was born in 1522 as the second child of Ottoman Sultan “Suleyman the First” and his wife Hurrem Sultan. In 1539, at the age of 17, she was married to Diyarbakir Beylerbeyi Rustem Pasha. The wedding ceremony was celebrated with feasts at the Horse Square in Sultanahmet, along with the circumcision wedding of his two younger brothers, Bayezid and Cihangir. Rustem Pasha became the grand vizier after this marriage and served as grand vizier uninterruptedly except for a period of 2 years between 1544 and 1561. From this marriage, a daughter was born in 1541. Later, Mihrimah Sultan gave birth to Murat Bey in 1545 and Mehmet Bey in 1547.
Mihrimah Sultan had a great say in state affairs throughout her life. It is said that she even promised to have 400 ships built with her own money in order to persuade his father to make an expedition to Malta. Like her mother Hurrem Sultan, she corresponded with the King of Poland II Zygmunt August. She had a huge fortune. Between 1540 and 1548, Mimar Sinan built a large complex consisting of a mosque, madrasah, primary school and hospital in the Uskudar district of Istanbul. In addition, between 1562 and 1565, Mimar Sinan built the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque and its complex, consisting of a mosque, fountain, Turkish bath and madrasah, in the Edirnekapi district of Istanbul.
After her mother died in 1558, she played the role of counsellor to her father, that her mother had played. After her father died in 1566, she continued her consultancy throughout Selim's reign. Since their mother Hurrem Sultan had died, she almost played the mother role for her brother.
Mihrimah Sultan has died during the reign of his nephew Murat the III in 1578. She was buried next to her father in the tomb in the Suleymaniye Mosque.
She was portrayed by Özlem Çınar in the 2003 television series Hürrem Sultan and was portrayed by Pelin Karahan in the Magnificent Century series broadcast between 2011-2014.
Mimar Sinan's Love for Mihrimah Sultan: Mihr-ü Mah means Sun and Moon in Persian.
Time passed quickly and Mihrimah Sultan grew up to be 17, which was a suitable age for her to be married at that time. There are two suitors, one is the governor of Diyarbakır, Rüstem Pasha, and the other is Mimar Sinan, the chief architect of the palace. The sultan marries his only daughter to Rüstem Pasha. Sinan is married and is 50 years old, but it is known that he is madly in love with Mihrimah Sultan. Mimar Sinan could not meet Mihrimah Sultan, whom he fell in love with with such a deep passion, but he reflected his love for her to his art with all his beauty. He is asked to build a mosque in the name of Mihrimah Sultan in Üsküdar, one of the most beautiful places in Istanbul. He completed the mosque in 1548, which he started to build in 1540. While the mosque is being built, he talks about his own love. And gives his work the silhouette of a woman in her skirts. Also, the architectural inspiration for the mosque is a masterpiece dedicated to another love, a sacred love; Hagia Sophia. The mentioned mosque has 2 minarets and is a work built with the sultan's edict. But what Sinan has to say did not end there. 14 years after this work, for the first time, without a sultan's edict, he started a second work in Edirnekapı, close to the walls, in a lonely place where not many people care, but on the high hills of Istanbul, as if he wanted to shout out the secret desolation and loneliness of his love, but at the same time its greatness. They say, The mosque is tiny in reference to Mihrimah Sultan's unassuming and noble beauty and has a minaret of only 38 meters. The 161 windows on one tiny dome represent how bright and clear its inner beauty is. Mihrimah Sultan's long hair beating her beautiful heels is depicted on the pendants inside the mosque and on the long embroideries on the sides of the minaret. It is also said that although the status of Mihrimah Sultan was sufficient to have a mosque with two minarets built, this mosque was built with a single minaret in the sense that it symbolizes her loneliness. 
But Sinan has sealed his love with such a magical sign that it is impossible not to be surprised by this secret. As if it is a sign to Sinan’s love, the locations of both mosques have been carefully chosen. These are mosques that were built by determining the rise and set of the sun. Identify a place where you can see the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Üsküdar and Edirnekapı at the same time. At sunset (of course, only on one day of the year, that day is March 21, the day when night and day meet each other equally, more interestingly, that day is Mihrimah Sultan's birthday) is the magnificent view you will see: As the sun sets behind the single minaret of Edirnekapı Mosque, the moon rises between the minarets of the mosque in Üsküdar! Sun and moon! “What kind of calculation is this, what kind of aesthetic understanding is this.