[1] He refined his architectural and engineering skills while on campaign with the Janissaries, becoming expert at constructing fortifications of all kinds, as well as military infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts.

[2] At about the age of fifty, he was appointed as chief royal architect, applying the technical skills he had acquired in the army to the "creation of fine religious buildings" and civic structures of all kinds.

[6] Mimar Sinan was born with the name Joseph in a small town called Ağırnas near the city of Kayseri in Anatolia (as stated in an order by Sultan Selim II).

[14][15][16][17] One argument that lends credence to his Armenian or Greek background is a decree by Selim II dated Ramadan 7 981 (ca.

December 30, 1573), which granted Sinan's request to forgive and spare his relatives from the general exile of Kayseri's Armenian community to the island of Cyprus;[12] this decree was published in the June 1930-May 1931 edition of the Istanbul Turkish journal Türk Tarihi Encümeni Mecmuası.

Godfrey Goodwin stated that "after the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1571, when Selim II decided to repopulate the island by transferring Rum (Orthodox Christian) families from the Karaman Eyalet, Sinan intervened on behalf of his family and obtained two orders from the Sultan in council exempting them from deportation.

[citation needed] When Chelebi Lütfi Pasha became Grand Vizier in 1539, he appointed Sinan, who had previously served under his command, to the office of Architect of the Abode of Felicity.

Through the years he transformed his office into that of Architect of the Empire, an elaborate government department, with greater powers than his supervising minister.

Various sources state that Sinan was the architect of at least 374 structures which included 92 mosques; 52 small mosques (mescit); 55 schools of theology (medrese); 7 schools for Koran reciters (darülkurra); 20 mausoleums (türbe); 17 public kitchens (imaret); 3 hospitals (darüşşifa); 6 aqueducts; 10 bridges; 20 caravanserais; 36 palaces and mansions; 8 vaults; and 48 baths.

This building, situated on one of the hills of Istanbul facing the Golden Horn, and built in the name of Süleyman the Magnificent, is one of the symbolic monuments of the period.

Mimar Sinan reached his artistic peak with the design, architecture, tile decorations and land stone workmanship displayed at Selimiye.

[28] While Sinan was maintaining and improving the water supply system of Istanbul, he built arched aqueducts at several locations within the city.

Mihrimah Sultan, the only daughter of Suleiman and Hurrem and wife of the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha gave Sinan the commission to build a mosque with medrese (college), an imaret (soup kitchen) and a sibyan mekteb (Qur'an school) in Üsküdar.

When sultan Suleiman the Magnificent returned from another Balkan campaign, he received news that his son Şehzade Mehmed had died at the age of twenty-two.

Sedefkar Mehmed Agha would later copy the concept of fluted piers in his Sultan Ahmed Mosque in an attempt to lighten their appearance.

He gave the order to Sinan to build a mosque, the Süleymaniye, surrounded by a külliye consisting of four colleges, a soup kitchen, a hospital, an asylum, a hamam, a caravanserai and a hospice for travellers (tabhane).

However, in a later stage, he also used divisions of three or ratios of two to three when working out the width and the proportions of domes, such as the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha Mosque at Kadırga.

Sinan built a mosque for the Grand Vizier Pargalı İbrahim Pasha and a mausoleum (türbe) at Silivrikapı (Constantinople) in 1551.

In 1556, Sinan built the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı, replacing the antique Baths of Zeuxippus, which are still standing close to the Hagia Sophia.

This time the central form is octagonal, modelled on the monastery church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, with four small semi-domes set in the corners.

In the same year, Sinan built a türbe for Rüstem Pasha in the garden of the Şehzade Mosque, decorated with the finest tiles Iznik could produce.

Sinan, concerned with grandeur, built a mosque in one of his most imaginative designs, using new support systems and lateral spaces to increase the area available for windows.

At each corner of this square stands a gigantic pier, connected with immense arches each with 15 large windows and four circular ones, flooding the interior with light.

In fact, the dome height from the ground level was lower and the diameter barely larger (0.5 meters, approximately 2 feet) than the millennium-older Hagia Sophia.

These supports lack any capitals but have squinches or consoles at their summit, leading to the optical effect that the arches seem to grow integrally out of the piers.

The four minarets (83 m high) at the corners of the prayer hall are the tallest in the Muslim world, accentuating the vertical posture of this mosque that already dominates the city.

He also designed the Sulaymaniyya Takiyya in Damascus, Syria, considered to have marked the introduction of the Ottoman architectural style to the city.

[33] He has also built Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge across the Drina River in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

He started to develop a series of variations on the domes, surrounding them in different ways with semi-domes, piers, screen walls and different sets of galleries.

According to the official list of his works, the Tezkiretü'l Ebniye, during his 50 year tenure of the post of imperial architect Sinan constructed or supervised 476 buildings, 196 of which survive.