Sultan Bayezid II commissioned the mosque, the second large imperial mosque built in Istanbul after the 1453 conquest. The article says the chief architect is not directly known: Rıfkı Melül Meriç names Yakubşah ibn Islamşah as the most likely, and Hayreddin appears in documents but is considered less likely. The body text gives 1500 to 1505, and the infobox gives 1501 to 1506, with the medrese completed in 1507.
The mosque is roughly square, about 131 feet (40 m) on a side, with a central dome 55 feet (16.78 m) across supported by two semi-domes and two arches. The courtyard has a colonnade of 20 columns, two of porphyry, ten of verd antique and six of pink granite, under 24 small domes.
Mimar Sinan repaired it in 1573 and 1574 and designed an arasta in 1580. A restoration from August 2012 to about 2020 cost 49 million Turkish lira, and the mosque reopened for worship in 2020.
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