Ignore the past

ASK a Turkish architect why his countrymen have spent the past 40 years building such terrible mosques, and he may well put the blame on the great Mimar Sinan. This is surprising. The best of Sinan's 16th-century mosques, baths and tombs are sublime expressions of an empire revelling in the kind of temporal and spiritual importance that inspires great art. As court architect to three expansionist Ottoman sultans—among them Suleyman the Magnificent, the most illustrious of the lot—Sinan crafted a cityscape that still astonishes visitors to Istanbul.