Tiles in the mosque of the Valideh Atik
Chinili Jami
The third princess to build in Scutari was one whose acquaintance we have already made, the great valideh Kyössem. Her mosque also stands on the upper terrace, at the head of the long corridor known as Chaoush Deresi. The Turks call it Chinili Jami, which really means the China Mosque. It is a tiled mosque, much smaller than Rüstem Pasha, faced on the inside and along the porch with blue and white tiles of not so good a period. Between 1582, when the Lady of Light tiled her mihrab, and 1643 something had evidently happened in Nicæa. As a matter of fact, I believe the tiles came from Kütahya. Nevertheless the mosque is charming, there is the quaintest pagoda-like fountain in one corner of the court, and the main gate of the yard composes with the fountain and the mosque and the cypresses around it in the happiest possible way.
The fountains of the Valideh Jedid
The latest of our four mosques was erected by the sultana who, being by birth a Greek, took away San Francesco in Galata from the Conventuals. At least that lady was the builder if she was the mother of Ahmed III as well as of Moustafa II. She atoned, however, for that eminently feminine piece of high-handedness by her mosque in Scutari. It is popularly called the Valideh Jedid, the mosque of the New Mother, and it belongs to that early period of Turkish rococo which Ahmed III borrowed from Louis XV. For the mosque of a new mother, the style is admirably adapted. It is to be seen at its most characteristic in the fountain of marble embroideries which stands outside the north gate of the mosque yard. A second fountain stands beside the first, of the sort where cups of water are filled for passers-by. Then comes the tomb of the foundress, who lies like the Kyöprülüs under a skeleton dome of bronze. And you should see the roses that make a little garden around her in May. They are an allusion, I suppose, to her graceful Turkish name, which may be less gracefully rendered as Rose Attar of Spring. The mosque yard has no great interest—except on Fridays, when a fair is established along its outer edge. But I must draw attention to the bird-house, like a cross-section of a little mosque with two minarets, on the façade of the forecourt, and to the small marble beehive that balances it. This forecourt is the only one of its kind in Scutari. As for the mosque itself, you may find the windows too coquettish even for a New Mother. For myself I rather like their flower-pots and flowers, though they clearly belong to a day other than that of the old window jewellery of Sinan’s time. The green tiles about the mihrab also betray a symptom of decadence in that they are of a repeating pattern. But the chief point of the mosque is one to which I drew attention a good many pages back, namely its stencilling. Being a native of Scutari, I can without presumption recommend to all Ministers of Pious Foundations that they preserve that old painting as long as the last flake of it hangs to the ceiling, and that before the last flake falls they learn the secret of its effect. So may they in days to come restore to Rüstem Pasha and Sultan Ahmed and Yeni Jami a part of their lost dignity.
