The rich and powerful people of his time were lining up to have a work of Sinan the Great built. He duly refused the offers, preferring to be out of sight for a while. Whenever he felt this way, he would immediately go to Hagia Sophia. He felt as if there was a bond between them, as if they had built Hagia Sophia just for him. When the order of Sultan Suleyman to build the most suitable mosque for his daughter Mihrimah Sultan in the most suitable place was conveyed to Sinan the Great; he completed his rest period and accepted the task with great humility. The moment that he saw Mihrimah Sultan, he thought he saw Hagia Sophia. He was shaken in the same way that he was shaken when he saw Hagia Sophia for the first time. The lines and symmetry of her face aroused deep admiration in Sinan. It was as if her eyebrows were equated with Basmalah and her face with the surah Fatiha. Sinan looked at Mihrimah Sultan like a reader… He never thought that a person could be so inspiring. The river flowing inside Sinan started to cascade. If dams were not put in front of him, he could cause disasters. Designs were not formed in his head, but in his heart. Mihrimah Sultan's status was sufficient enough to have a mosque with two minarets built. Just like the four minarets of the Süleymaniye Mosque, the fourth sultan after the conquest of Istanbul; If the ten sheriffs on the minarets represented the tenth Ottoman Sultan, the second minaret of the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque should have represented Sinan as well. But they could not be together.
The river flowing inside of him was not enough to extinguish the fire of love burning in his heart. Sinan made his decision. He was going to build two mosques with one minaret. Two "separate" mosques on both sides of the city, on the same line and at the same height, exactly equal to each other... And he was going to build these two mosques with an almost magical symmetry that was unique in the world. Mihrimah Sultan was a very wealthy woman because of her father, Sultan Süleyman Han, and her husband, Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha. She could have built not two or twenty mosques, but why would she do such a thing? A mosque with two minarets could have been built easily... Mihrimah Sultan accepted Sinan's design, perhaps consciously, perhaps unknowingly. After all, he was the Great Sinan.
For Mihrimah Sultan, the Mihrimah Sultan Mosque in Üsküdar, the seventh hill of Istanbul, looks like a "lady in a skirt"; representing himself and his distance from her, he built the charming Edirnekapı Mihrimah Mosques, where the colourful sunlight dances in every corner of it. If you stand at a place where you can see the Üsküdar Mihrimah Sultan and Edirnekapı Mihrimah Sultan Mosques at the same time, you can see the moon rising behind the only minaret in Üsküdar, while the sun sets behind the single minaret in Edirnekapı one day of the year. Because Mihrimah; means moon and sun.