Sinan's head revisited

Is the body of the famous 16th century Ottoman architect, Mimar Sinan, headless? Well, at least that is the claim of a professor at Marmara University (tip from Al Biruni. Yup, he is still active). In theory, this should be an easy thing to check since we know where he is buried. In practice, though, one may not want to dig up a body after four centuries just for the heck of it (Unless there is a good reason: see this earlier post on digging up Copernicus). But Sinan is not just any other architect. He was responsible for, among numerous other works, the absolutely spectacular Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul and Selimiye Mosque in Edirne. If you haven't been to Suleymaniye Mosque in person, check out this wonderful virtual walking tour - and you will get some idea of the architecture. The mosque, at least until last October, was closed for major renovations, and it is expected to open some time this year.

But why might Sinan's head be missing in the first place? Usually, one expects head to stay with the body. Well, surprise: it might be related to Turkish identity and politics:

According to Professor Selçuk Mülayim from Marmara University, the corpse of Mimar Sinan, best known for the 16th-century Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, was taken from its modest tomb next to that building Aug. 1, 1935, in order to measure the famed architect’s skull.

Documents show that the team, headed by Turkish Historical Society Director Hasan Cemil Çambel, society member Şevket Aziz Kansu and historian Afet İnan, conducted the excavation in an hour, Mülayim told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review recently.

“The purpose was to prove he was an ethnic Turk,” the professor said. “Kansu took measurements with compasses and other tools and from these measurements it was decided that he was an ethnic Turk.”

At the time of the team’s foray into the tomb, there was a rising appreciation of Mimar Sinan in Europe, where people were increasingly claiming that the great architect could not have been Turkish, Mülayim said. “The excavation was an answer to these claims.”

To this day, few members of the Turkish public know that the man hailed as the greatest of Ottoman architects was actually a Muslim convert of Armenian origin.

Following the excavation of Sinan’s tomb, the Turkish Historical Society team took its findings to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. “He refused to look at the results, saying, ‘Instead of measuring his skull, make a statue of the architect,’” Mülayim said.

The idea that Sinan’s skull is missing from his tomb is not a new one, but one that many experts have avoided repeating in public.

Great. Now we that we have tied Sinan's head to race and politics, I'm sure all of this will go well. In any case, read the full article here.