Kantarcılar Mosque

Set on Kantarcılar Street in the Eminönü quarter of Istanbul, just beyond the Rüstem Paşa Mosque when approached from the waterfront, this mosque is traditionally attributed to Sarıdemirci Timurtaş Ağa, recorded in the Ottoman chronicle Hadikatü'l-Cevami as one of the servants of Mehmed the Conqueror who sponsored small neighborhood mosques after the conquest of the city. Its minbar was later donated by a warehouse official named Hacı Mehmed Ağa, known as Mahzenci. The building is constructed in the characteristic almohad-style banding of three courses of brick alternating with one course of cut stone, and its mihrab wall is pierced by five windows of varying sizes, with six smaller windows arranged in two rows on each of the side walls; the roofline is finished with three rows of dentilled eaves. Tucked among the commercial streets of old Eminönü, it survives as one of the many unassuming guild-district mosques founded in the generation after 1453.