An Unknown Fountain in the Edirne Selimiye Complex

Building water structures such as fountains, sebil or a sadirvan has always been an important charitable deed. These were built as works of charity to provide water for a district or street, or for mosque communities as part of a social complex. The Edirne Selimiye Mosque, masterwork of Sinan the Architect, was built on the old palace grounds on a ridge called Kavak Meydan？. The structure, built by Sultan Selim II between 1568 and 1574, constitutes a small social complex. This paper examines the wall fountain of the Edirne Selimiye Complex, which was built by an anonymous architect at an unknown date and is not mentioned in the biographies and pious endowment charters of Sinan or in the Selimiye Booklet by Dayezade Mustafa Efendi. The fountain on the northern outer court wall of the Edirne Selimiye Complex is introduced for the first time in this paper by its architectural characteristics and examined for its location, construction and period. The paper also discusses the importance of the fountain among the relatively unknown examples built by Sinan, and evaluates it within the context of fountains and fountain architecture in Edirne