1000 Years Amnesia : Environment Tradition in Muslim Heritage by Salim T S Al-Hassani

3.1 Environment Design in Sinan's Architecture

In construction for example, we can refer to Sinan's architecture (smoke filtering and its use as ink, also use of Ostrich eggs to drive spiders out) and to the spread of courtyard houses (as optimum environmental design). In water resource management reference may be made to water raising machines (including automatic animal water feeding, wind and water mills, qanats, dams, etc.)

Mimar Sinan (d. 1588) was the chief Ottoman architect and civil engineer for sultans Suleiman I, Selim II, and Murad III. He was, during a period of fifty years, responsible for the construction or the supervision of every major building in the Ottoman Empire. Benefiting from the long Islamic and Turkish traditions of architecture, building design and civil engineering, Sinan used ostrich eggs in the centre of the chandeliers that dangled from the dome to chase away insects which were attracted by candles or oil lamps.

At the centre of the circular frame that holds the numerous candles and oil lanterns in Ottoman mosques, there is usually a strange egg shaped object as if made of marble (see fig. 8). The object is actually an ostrich egg . Through research over many years, the Ottomans discovered that these eggs secrete chemical substances into the atmosphere, which repel spiders and mosquitoes away. Hence, due to these eggs there are no spider webs in Ottoman mosques.[2]

Another innovation regarded air purification, mainly in mosques. For instance, in the Süleymaniye Mosque, built by Mimar Sinan on the order of Sultan Suleiman I the Magnificent between 1550 and 1557, there is a soot room on the main gate in Suleymaniye mosque. The oil lamps and candles that were used in large numbers to lighten huge buildings would generate smoke and burn oxygen. To solve this problem, Sinan and his followers made use of aerodynamics to drive the smoke to a filter chamber. The soot was then collected and used for making ink. In turn, clean air was driven to the outside ensuring sustainability. Soot obtained from the candles is one of the raw materials in the making of ink used for calligraphy adding with stirring. This ink protects the books from the book worms. This system filters the air pollution inside the mosque bad air that comes from candles and people breathing. In this example, we have a sustainable system, which is also environmentally friendly. The same device exists in Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, built between 1609 and 1616 during the rule of Ahmed I by the royal architect Sedefhar Mehmet Ağa, a pupil and senior assistant of Sinan.[3]

These two examples, the use of ostrich eggs and the air purification by collecting soot and its recycling for the fabrication of ink, are evidently environment friendly. Such research reminds us of the numerous discoveries in medicine such as the discovery of the catgut (the suture from the intestine of the cat used in internal surgery) by Al-Zahrawi which was found to be acceptable by the human flesh and is dissolved a few weeks after surgery.

Source : http://muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=1167