[Illustration: The _mihrab_ of Rüstem Pasha] [Illustration: In Rüstem Pasha] Two mosques of a later period in Stamboul are completely tiled, that of Sultan Ahmed I and the one begun by his wife—Yeni Jami. They prove the wisdom of Sinan in not attempting to tile a large interior. Still, the gallery of Sultan Ahmed also proves that the architect was not altogether ignorant of what he was about. He put his best tiles there, where they can only be seen at close range. And his best is very good. I have counted twenty-nine varieties of tiles there, or rather of designs, divided, like those of Rüstem Pasha, into framed panels. The tiles facing the _mihrab_, where the gallery widens over the main doorway, are so good that I sometimes ask myself if the architect did not borrow from an earlier building. Two series of eleven panels, one above the other, make a tall wainscot whose only fault is that too much richness is crowded into too narrow a space. The lower series is the finer. Five panels to the right balance five panels to the left of a spindle-shaped Persian design. Its two neighbours are conventionalised cypress trees, than which nothing more decorative was ever invented. Then come two magnificent panels of larger spindles against a thicket of peach-blossoms or Judas blossoms, red with small blue centres, followed by two more cypresses. Five panels of the upper series, one of them forming the axis, are latticed again with blossoming sprays. In this case there is no spindle to hide the greater part of the flowers, which are blue with small red centres. The tiles are very nearly if not quite as good as those of the preceding century, and they make a wall more splendid than exists outside the old Seraglio. [Illustration: Tiles in the gallery of Sultan Ahmed]