Sinan had a river ready to cascade inside him. He gave his first work with the "Husreviye Mosque" that he built in Aleppo. His first work in Istanbul was the "Şehzade Mosque" in Fatih district. He was now known and recognized more with every building and work that he made. Because he wasn’t hiding himself; on the contrary, he embroidered his essence into his works. He did not make any of his works just to have that work built. Sinan wanted to establish a city. A whole city with all its houses, buildings, waterways, hospitals and schools... He could read the secrets of this city, which has been the centre of the world for a thousand years. He had also seen both Egypt and Vienna... He understood what his culture had taken from the east and what it was trying to bring to the west. He stood at the centre of the Renaissance worldview in Islamic culture and the ancient knowledge of the East in Western art. He learned about Istanbul, district by district, street by street, step by step. He built the whole city in his mind first. Later, he started building structures... Bridges, inns, caravanserais, madrasahs, social complexes... He considered every building that he built as a whole in itself, however, deployed each building as a part of the whole.

  

Sultan Süleyman's request to build a mosque offered him the opportunity that he had been waiting for a long time. Finally, he would be able to produce a work that could reflect the beauty, mystery and secrets of Hagia Sophia. The Süleymaniye Mosque would be the keystone of the building that he had long dreamed of being built. On this occasion, the proliferation of about fifteen waterways from the Byzantine Empire and the construction of many carrying structures connected to it began. Sinan built forty new waterways that allow the rain water collected outside the city to reach the city with a high flow rate. He solved the water shortage problem by building cisterns on the path of the aqueducts. He built nearly a hundred Hammams, some of which are still in operation, on the waterways. All of these waterways were distributed to the centre of the city, and from there to the neighbourhoods. With the arrival of water, settled life was modernising and the city was developing with the same rate. Suleymaniye Mosque, which was calculated with the calligraphy of the Surah Fatiha, became the transporter of service to the whole city. When the Süleymaniye Mosque, whose dome was designed as the dome of Hagia Sophia, was finished; Sinan's "journeyman" period was over. He was now the "Great Sinan," whose name spread beyond the borders of the empire and spread to Europe.