The tomb of the princes stands in the courtyard of the Sultan Selim Mosque, on the hill above the Golden Horn, beside the tomb of Selim I himself. It is hexagonal in plan, and the verse of the Throne is carved in relief around the drum of its dome.
Buried in it are two sons and two daughters of Süleyman the Magnificent: the princes Mahmud and Abdullah and the sultans Güherhan and Hüma Şah.
Another tomb once stood on this spot and has since been lost. It held the wife of Selim I — Ayşe Hafsa Sultan, the mother of Süleyman — and Şahsultan, Selim's daughter and the wife of the grand vizier and historian Lütfi Paşa.
The tomb belongs to the complex of the Sultan Selim Mosque, which Süleyman raised on the hill for his father; the inscription over its portal dates the work from 1519 to 1522. Some publications name Sinan as the architect, but archive documents give the building to Acem Ali, and Sinan had not yet begun his career as an architect at that date. In front of the mosque's mihrab stands Selim I's own tomb, octagonal and single-domed, with tile panels on either side of its entrance. According to the Fatih district's account, the kaftan Selim wore on the way to the Egyptian campaign, spattered with mud thrown up by his teacher's horse, was laid over his sarcophagus at his own request. A third tomb in the same grounds, hexagonal and simply domed, holds Sultan Abdülmecid, who died on 25 June 1861, together with his sons.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
