The Architect's Apprentice

The award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, the most widely read female author in Turkey, and who has written in both languages, published her coming of age novel The Architect's Apprentice in 2013. This historical fiction centers on a young man at the periphery of the workshop of a renowned real-life Turkish architect, Mimar Sinan. Spanning almost a hundred years from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, the novel depicts the court of the Turkish sultanate in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. As we watch the main character navigate its complex politics, alliances, and intrigues, Shafak explores the magic and richness of the height of the Ottoman Empire.

As Jahan, the main character tells it, he was born in the Indian province of Goa to a brutal stepfather and mother who died when he was very young. Finding more comfort with animals than with humans, Jahan became best friends with a white baby elephant that was the color of “boiled rice.” After he helped it be born and named it Chota (or “small”), Jahan and the elephant became an inseparable team.

When Jahan is twelve years old, the incredibly smart elephant is sent to Istanbul as a gift for the sultan—a white elephant will make an excellent addition to the menagerie of exotic animals that the sultan acquires as a hobby. Unwilling to part from his friend, Jahan stows away on Chota’s ship, and when his affinity for this beast is discovered, Jahan becomes a mahout, or animal tamer, in the sultan’s palace.



In the palace, Jahan befriends and then falls in love with the sultan’s beautiful daughter, Princess Mihrimah. In order to keep her interest in him, Jahan tells her long, exotic stories—including the one about his early life in India.

Jahan also encounters and becomes an apprentice to Mimar Sinan, the empire’s chief architect. Sinan has four other apprentices, including Yusuf, a woman who lives and dresses as a man so she can use her intellect as an architect, and because she is secretly in love with Sinan.

The novel’s plot revolves around the construction of Sinan’s most famous buildings: an aqueduct; the first-ever multi-domed mosques, such as the Selimiye Mosque, Suleymaniye Complex, Mihrimah Sultan Mosque; the Church of the Assumption in Uzundzhovo, a project that shows the multiculturalism that thrived under the sultan in the Ottoman Empire; and the bridge on the Drina River in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Chota is instrumental in accomplishing the feats of architectural engineering Sinan has in mind, able to both transport and load materials.



Sinan’s work reflects growing tensions in the court: the conflict between artistic freedom and creativity on one hand, and the power of a growing empire on the other; the clash between fundamentalist religion and the discoveries of science; the incompatibility of love and duty.

During his time with Sinan, Jahan also interacts with people outside the palace, meeting and making friends with many members of the demi-monde—including several courtesans and the colorful criminal Balaban, the leader of the gypsies, or Romani, people. Jahan’s many adventures form the somewhat disconnected plot elements of the novel. There is an extended subplot where Sinan sends Jahan and another apprentice to Rome in order to study the structure of St. Peter’s and to attempt to see the by now immensely famous Michelangelo. They fail to get an appointment with the great man, and on their return trip, they are robbed of all their drawings, schematics, and notes. At a different time, Chota stops being an architectural elephant and instead is issued armor so that Jahan can ride him into a losing battle.

In the end, Jahan is unable to have an actual relationship with the princess, whose duties lie in marriage to a suitable royal. Hoping against hope that she does in some way return his feelings, Jahan spends his entire life saving himself and waiting for her. In the end, although the two are reunited when Mihramah is on her deathbed, she reveals that her feelings for Jahan are those of friendship, rather than romantic love. In response, Jahan reveals that many of his colorful stories about his life in India were actually fiction he spun in order to entertain Mihramah. He is not from Goa but grew up in Turkey—although his dangerous stepfather and his relationship with Chota are true.