The five centuries, in which the Bulgarian lands were included within the frontiers of the Ottoman empire, left deep traces behind, some of which are stili visible today. Among these is the architectural heritage which has been tremendously rich. The vicessitudes of the extremely agitated history of the past hundred years caused the majority of the Ottoman monuments to disappear, but the number of those preserved is still considerable, and among them are works of the greatest quality which shed ample light on some important phases of the development of this architecture. Our knowledge of the Ottoman Turkish monuments of architecture in the Bulgarian lands is far from complete, partly due to the relatively late date in which Bulgarian science began to realise their value, partly of the difficulty to Western and Turkish scholars to travel the land extensively. A general work covering al! existing Ottoman-Turkish monuments in Bulgaria does not exist as yet and will take much pain-staking labour to produce. In this modest contribution we do not endeavour to give a full list of existing buildings nor wish to mentional all literature in Bulgarian, in Turkish or in other languages concerning these monuments but merely pick out a few important works of Early-Ottoman art which have remained largely unknown and unstudied until now.

Sinan İbni Abdülmennan, after nineteen years of distinguished service as a Janissary in the Ottoman Army of Süleyman the Magnificent, went on to a long career as architect, during which the large number of his works won for him the name of a builder and artist of genius whose name is writ large in the history of world architecture. Being a Janissary, Sinan was taken in his childhood or youth as a levy into the military corps. The registers of children taken in these levies were by the Aga of the Janissaries but they have not survived, having either been burned or perhaps destroyed along with everything else pertaining to the Janissaries, during the Vak'a-i Hayriye, the abolition of the Corps in the time of Mahmud II. For this reason, neither the date of Sinan's birth, nor his christian name, nor those of his parents are known. Although we have no certain knowledge of the architect Sinan's childhood, there are some clues. In the Tezkiret ül-Ebniye ("Book of Imperial Buildings") and the Tezkiret ül-Bünyan ("Book of Buildings") written down by his close friend the poet Nakkaş Mustafa Sa'i at Sinan's dictation, in the Tablet ül-Mı'marin ("Masterpieces of Architecture") compiled by Asari on the basis of SaTs works, and in Sinan's own deeds of bequest, we encounter certain facts which shed light on the matter.