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under the gallery to the rear of the mosque.
    The mosque interior is overlooked by an upper gallery on both sides and to the rear, with the two side galleries carried on slender marble columns. At the far corner of the left gallery we see the sultan’s loge, or hünkâr mahfili, which is screened off by a gilded grille so that the sultan and his party would be shielded from the public gaze when they attended services. Access to the sultan’s loge is gained from the outside by a very curious ramp behind the mosque. This ramp leads to a suite of rooms built over a great archway; from these a door leads to the hünkâr mahfili. This suite of rooms included a salon, a bedchamber and a toilet, with kitchens on the lower level, and served as a pied-à-terre for the Sultan.
    Yeni Cami, like all of the imperial mosques, was the centre of a whole complex of religious and philanthropic institutions called a külliye. The original külliye of Yeni Cami included a hospital, a primary school, a public bath, two public fountains, a mausoleum and a market, whose profits were used towards the support of the other institutions in the külliye. The hospital, the primary school and the public bath have been destroyed but the other institutions remain.
    The market of Yeni Cami is the handsome L-shaped building to the south and west of the mosque. It is called the M ı s ı r Çar ş ı s ı , or the Egyptian Market, because it was once endowed with the Cairo imposts. In English it is more commonly known as the Spice Bazaar, for in former times it was famous for the spices and medicinal herbs which were sold there. Spices and herbs are still sold there today, but the bazaar now deals in a wide variety of commodities, which makes it perhaps the most popular market in the city. In the domed rooms above the arched entrance there is a very picturesque and excellent restaurant called Pandelis, or the M ı s ı r Lokantas ı , which serves both Turkish and western dishes.
    The mausoleum, or türbe, of the Yeni Cami külliyesi is the handsome building at the eastern end of the garden of the Egyptian Bazaar. Here are buried the foundress of Yeni Cami, Turhan Hadice, her son, Mehmet IV, and several later sultans, Mustafa II, Ahmet III, Mahmut I, Osman III and Murat V, along with countless royal princes and princesses. The small building to the west of the türbe is a kütüphane, or library, which was built by Turhan Hadice’s grandson, Ahmet III, who ruled from 1703 till 1730. Ahmet III was known as the Tulip King, and the period of his reign came to be called the Lale Devri, the Age of Tulips, one of the most charming and delightful eras in the history of old Stamboul. It is entirely fitting that the tomb of the Tulip King should look out on a garden which is now the principal flower-market of the city.
    Directly opposite the türbe, at the corner of the wall enclosing the garden of the mosque, is a tiny polygonal building with a quaintly-shaped dome. This was the muvakkithane, or the house and workroom of the müneccim, the mosque astronomer. It was the duty of the müneccim to regulate the times for the five occasions of daily prayer and to announce the exact times of sunrise and sunset during the holy month of Ramazan, beginning and ending the daily fast. It was also his duty to determine the date for the beginning of a lunar month by observing the first appearance of the sickle moon in the western sky just after sunset. The müneccim, like most astronomers of that period, also doubled as an astrologer, and the most able of them were often asked to cast the horoscopes of the Sultan and his vezirs. In more recent times the müneccim often served as the watch repairman for the people in the local neighbourhood.
    At the next corner, on the same side of the street as the türbe, is the sebil of the Yeni Cami külliyesi. The sebil is an enclosed fountain which was used to distribute water free to thirsty passersby. Sebil means literally “way” or