Physician, astronomer and stone-carver who lives in Konstantiniyye in the shadow of the great dome. The hand that carved the one hundred and six tiles together with Aybars.
- Origin
- Konstantiniyye; a house with purple bougainvillea west of the dome
- Callings
- Medicine, astronomy, reckoning, stone-carving
- Words on his door
- "Knowledge belongs to the one who knocks."
- Assistant
- Hasan Efendi
- Weakness
- Figs
- In the palace
- Inventor of the hourglasses of the Chess Pavilion
Companionship is not a material, my child. It is a place.
Who he is
Sina Hoca, the master, is a scholar who has been gazing at the sky for forty years. Everyone in the city knows him by another name: to the fisherman he is "Hoca", to the baker "Sina the Physician", to the street children "Grandfather Star, who sits on the roof and looks at the sky". All of these are true. He breaks fevers, calculates the paths of the planets, sees the shape hidden inside a stone, and senses the sorrow hidden inside a person.
His eyes are extraordinarily keen. It is said that in his youth he went to Mount Kaf and asked Zümrüdüanka about the stars, and that the bird gave him its keen eyes in return. He himself does not confirm it; but the very moment he first saw Aybars, he read the Red Ridges from the mud on his boots, the glacier from the ice in the wolf's fur, and a hundred years of captivity from the marks on the horse's wing.
His path in the story
Years ago he saw one point of the Iron Stake go dark for a moment, and he told no one. When Aybars sets the stone upon his table, he understands what he has been searching the sky for these forty years: a reason.
It is he who gives the recipe for carving the stone: the colors of Şahmeran, the feather of Zümrüdüanka, and companionship. Through the forty nights it is Aybars who holds the feather, but it is Sina who reads the map that the stone unfolds. He works out the reckoning: four colors, thirteen numbers, two of every tile; he is the one who understands that the two extra green tiles are the gift of Hızır, and he laughs as he weeps for joy. It is he who gives the tile the word "okey": all right, it fits, it is done.
He is the first to stand beside Aybars against Erlik's offer. He ends his forty-year chess game by letter with Sissa Dede in a seven-day draw. And it is he who places the hourglass on the board to defeat Erlik with patience.
In the palace
He draws the plan of the palace: a courtyard in the middle, a walnut tree in the middle of the courtyard, every door opening onto the courtyard a hall, and no lock on any door. It is he, too, who sets the crown of walnut branches on Aybars's head. He spends his last days before the window of the Chess Pavilion, astrolabe in hand.
The first ancestor of the clocks that tick beside the chess tables is his two-glassed hourglass: while one player thinks, his sand runs, and the other's stands still.
His last words
"Write it down, Hasan. I have found a reason."
