The Amasya Bedesten stands inside the Kocacık Bazaar, on the side of the Taşhan that faces the citadel. Built in 1483 by Hüseyin Ağa, one of the palace gate chamberlains (kapı ağası) of Bayezid II, the building has lost parts of itself again and again over more than five centuries, to earthquakes, to a misguided urban improvement scheme and to demolitions carried out to make room for office buildings, yet each time it has managed to stay on its feet. Preserving only part of its original layout today, it is one of the most instructive examples in Amasya of why the commercial district of an Ottoman town was organized around a bedesten. The local historical record, moreover, tells us about more than a single building: at the end of the fifteenth century several bedestens rose side by side in the middle of the town, and for generations the shops inside them carried income to madrasas, small mosques and timekeepers' rooms.

What a Bedesten Is

The word bedesten, now settled in Turkish, is thought to derive from bezzâzistan or bezistan, a place where cloth is sold. According to Semavi Eyice's entry in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Ahmed Vefik Pasha defined the bedesten as "the place of the cloth merchants, the market where fine fabrics are sold." Above all jewels and precious stones, but also weapons, ornamented harnesses and valuable textiles, were sold there. Eyice points out that today the words market, bazaar, han, caravanserai, arasta and bedesten are often confused with one another. A bazaar (çarşı) consists of streets lined with shops on both sides. An arasta is a bazaar built to bring income to a pious foundation and, especially when that foundation was a mosque, to draw its congregation to the spot. A han or caravanserai was originally a lodging place along the roads. The bedesten, for its part, is a masonry, domed building, the core space in which valuable goods were bought, sold and stored.

At the outset the bedesten was a conspicuous stone mass rising among modest wooden shops. Because rows of shops could be put up quickly from light materials, they wrapped around the bedesten, with hans added in between, so that the bedesten became the center of the liveliest trading district of the town. Eyice links this arrangement to one of the basic principles of Ottoman urban planning, which held that a town should have a religious and a commercial center. The religious center was the great mosque (ulucami); the commercial center was the bedesten, which resembled the great mosque in its architecture. One of the first facilities founded in newly Turkified towns, the bedesten served as a kind of inner citadel that protected the merchants' valuables at the heart of the whole commercial district. Eyice rejects tracing the origin of the type to Byzantine or any other foreign architecture and regards the classical Ottoman bedesten as the multi-domed great mosque type put to commercial use. Indeed, like the great mosques, a bedesten is organized by repeating equal domed units. The interior was divided into bays by brick arches resting on thick square piers, the bays were covered by brick domes, and light entered through a few upper windows with iron shutters.

Another view of the origins of the type derives the bedesten from the Seljuk bazaar. According to accounts based on Mustafa Cezar's work, special hans for the sale of cloth began to be built in the second half of the thirteenth century, and these buildings, called the cloth merchants' han in the Seljuk period, evolved into the bedesten under the Ottomans. Because cloth was the most valuable and most actively traded commodity in the bazaar, the need of the merchants who sold it for a sturdier and safer space is regarded as the main reason the bedesten developed as a distinct architectural unit.

The Bedesten as a Security Building

Bedestens were built of sound masonry out of the need to protect valuable goods, at the very least, from the fires that quickly destroyed wooden shops. The four facades had sturdy iron-clad doors, the windows were few and set high, and iron shutters could be drawn when necessary. Inside stood cabinets used as sales counters, and shops were attached to the outer walls. Tuba Akar's article, which surveys the literature on commercial spaces in the Ottoman town, shows this function in more detail. Inside bedestens there were lockable compartments called chests, cabinets, vaults or safes. Both the tradesmen of the bazaar and wealthy townspeople rented these compartments to keep money, jewels, and gold and silver objects. The registers of the guilds and official documents such as court records were also kept in the bedesten. Each safe had two keys, one held by the bedesten guard and one by the renter. Goods left unused for a long time, with no owner or heir coming forward, passed to the beytülmâl, that is, the state treasury. The compartments could be wooden or metal; according to Osman Nuri Ergin, about three hundred empty and abandoned iron safes were found during the 1914 repair of the Sandal Bedesten in Istanbul.

These details explain why the commercial strength of a town was measured by its bedesten. According to Halil İnalcık, because a bedesten indicated the presence of international trade, it existed only in important and large cities; Evliya Çelebi even divided Ottoman towns into two groups, those with a bedesten and those without. İnalcık sums up the economic role of the bedesten under three headings: the storage and sale of valuable imported goods, above all textiles; the fitting out of caravans bound for distant lands; and the safekeeping of the wealth of individuals and institutions in its strongboxes. Prices were set in the bedesten, taxes were paid there, and the surplus revenues of pious foundations were kept there too, which is why some have likened the building to a modern bank. Eyice, for his part, notes that outside Istanbul there was as a rule one bedesten in each town, though more than one could be found in towns of great commercial potential. The studies Akar compiles show that in the Ottoman town the commercial zone developed between the great mosque and the bedesten; the more valuable the goods, the closer their point of sale lay to the bedesten, while hans, craft districts, tanneries and market places spread outward from the bedesten at the center.

The Commercial Life of Amasya and the Place of the Bedesten

That Amasya had a bedesten, indeed, as will be seen below, several bedestens, fits the town's administrative and commercial weight at the end of the fifteenth century. The town was both the seat of a princes' sanjak and a station on the roads that came from Iran by way of Tabriz and descended to the Black Sea ports. A recent study of the Amasya Bedesten by Ayşe Nur Canbolat recalls that one of the northern branches of the Silk Road in Anatolia ran through Erzurum, Erzincan, Tokat and Amasya to Sinop and Samsun, and that the routes between Tabriz and Sinop and between Sinop and Aleppo also passed through Amasya. The most valuable commodity carried along these roads was silk, and silk was foremost among the goods sold in the bedesten.

Sixteenth-century records give a concrete sense of the volume of this trade. According to the entry on Amasya in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the town had a dyehouse, a candle workshop and a mint, and silk weaving was carried on widely. Because Amasya lay on the road from Azerbaijan to Bursa, it was also an important market for Iranian silks: in ten months of 1554-1555 the silk that entered the town through official channels and was weighed amounted to 10,632 lodra, roughly fifteen tons. In the seventeenth century Evliya Çelebi wrote that Amasya had some one thousand and sixty shops and busy, prosperous bazaars. Canbolat notes that as wars with Iran cut off the flow of silk, cocoon raising spread in the town, and that the silk produced in Amasya was woven there and sold both within the empire and to Europe. It is within this trade that the locked cabinets inside the bedesten and the jewelers' shops around it take on their real meaning.

The position of the building within the town was chosen to suit this function as well. In a town divided by the Yeşilırmak, the northern bank holds the citadel, the rock-cut tombs and the houses of İçerişehir, while the southern bank holds the Sultan Bayezid Complex, the Darüşşifa hospital, the baths and the bazaar. The bedesten was built close to the citadel but on the level floor of the valley, at an easily reached point where bridges joined the two banks. Canbolat stresses that the Meydan, Mâdenüs, Alçak, Helkıs and Kunç bridges provided the crossing from İçerişehir to the southern bank and that these links were decisive in the choice of the bedesten's site. According to Hüsameddin's description of the quarters, the building stood in the Kazancı quarter, formerly called the Kaya Paşa quarter; to its north lay the Saraçhane quarter and to its east the Kocacık quarter.

Hüseyin Ağa, the Gate Chamberlain

Hüseyin Ağa, who had the bedesten built, served as kapı ağası under Bayezid II and left many charitable works in and around Amasya, as well as in Istanbul and Edirne. According to his biography in Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi, he was Bosnian by origin. Brought up as a slave of Sultan Bayezid II in the Amasya palace, he was freed on reaching maturity and became the gate chamberlain of Bayezid, who spent his years as a prince in Amasya. Hüsameddin describes him as "a man of extraordinary influence and wealth" and records that in the endowment registers he was called "rikâbdâr-ı şehriyârî," that is, the sovereign's stirrup-holder. Right beside the bedesten another palace official appears, Fîrûz Ağa, the chief of the harem eunuchs; in later centuries the endowments of the two ağas were so intertwined that they were administered together.

Hüseyin Ağa's best-known work in Amasya is the Kapı Ağası Madrasa on the bank of the Yeşilırmak in the Şamlar quarter. Also known as the Büyük Ağa Madrasa and the Medrese-i Hüseyniyye, it is among the examples of Ottoman madrasa architecture with few parallels, thanks to its original plan with an octagonal courtyard. Eyice writes that the plan arose from the topography of the site as much as from a concern for form, and that the same scheme was applied with some changes by the architect Sinan in the Rüstem Pasha Madrasa in Istanbul, dated 1550. According to Hüsameddin the madrasa ranked among the "sixty" madrasas, was given to senior scholars and carried a stipend of sixty akçe a day; one of its first professors, Taşköprülü Muslihuddin Efendi, was appointed here in 911 and moved to Istanbul in 918. The madrasa remained well kept and full of students until the year 1293.

Hüseyin Ağa's name lives on in Istanbul as well. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam entry on the Küçük Ayasofya Complex, the Church of Sergius and Bacchus, built by Justinian around 530, was converted into a mosque in the early sixteenth century by Hüseyin Ağa, the gate chamberlain of Bayezid II's reign, and a dervish lodge and the founder's tomb were added nearby. The double bath a short distance from the mosque was also built in 909 (1503-1504) as part of his endowment. The encyclopedia relates that Ayvansarâyî reports he was executed, and that a plaque placed on the tomb by local people reads "Kesikbaş Hüseyin Ağa," Hüseyin Ağa the Beheaded. A master's thesis prepared at Boğaziçi University states that this gate chamberlain, founder of the Küçük Ayasofya endowment, died in 1508 and had transactions and lands granted by the sultan in the Balkans and in the Province of Rum. That the entries on the Amasya madrasa and on Küçük Ayasofya both cite Eyice's comprehensive study "Kapu Ağası Hüseyin Ağa'nın Vakıfları" (EFAD, no. 9, 1978) shows that the two buildings belong to the same benefactor.

Date of Foundation and the Inscription

The foundation inscription of the bedesten bears the date H. 888 (1483). Hüsameddin writes that the same Arabic inscription as the one over the madrasa gate is found on the bedesten, except that its date is carved in the words "sene semânin ve semânîne ve semâni mie," which literally means "the year eight hundred and eighty-eight." The inscription states that the building was erected, through the sultan's bounty, by "Hüseyin Ağa b. Abdülmuîn, the doer of good works and founder of charitable institutions, known as the gate chamberlain in the palace of Sultan Bayezid Khan." The madrasa inscription is dated 894 (1489); accordingly, the bedesten was completed six years before the madrasa.

In Hüsameddin's own text, however, the dates do not match exactly. In the first volume, where he describes the quarters, he says that "Hüseyin Ağa, the Great Gate Chamberlain," built a large bedesten in the Kazancı quarter in 890. In the ninth volume, which contains the biographies, he relates that Hüseyin Ağa first completed the madrasa and then built another bedesten in the middle of the town, adjoining the Yâkût Paşa Bedesten on its west, and endowed it in 890 to meet the expenses of the madrasa. Read together with the 888 of the inscription, the most consistent interpretation is that 890 is the date of the endowment, not of construction; this is an inference and is not certain. The statement that the madrasa was completed before the bedesten, on the other hand, contradicts the 894 date of the madrasa inscription, and the author does not discuss the discrepancy.

What is certain is that the bedesten was conceived as an endowment building. Hüsameddin states plainly that the endowments of the madrasa were "broad and abundant," that one of them was "the famous Bedesten of Amasya," and adds that the revenues of the foundation also included the village of Eymir in the Argoma district of Suluova. This was an ordinary practice of the Ottoman waqf system: the costs of charitable buildings such as mosques, madrasas and fountains were met from the rents of leased shops and counters. Taking the bedesten and the madrasa together, one sees an arrangement in Amasya in which commercial income fed a seat of learning, both set up by the same person. Hüsameddin also notes with regret that, although the bedesten was entirely a valid endowment, some of its shops were later taken into private ownership.

Hüsameddin also offers a clue as to who built the structure. According to a biography in the tenth volume, Süleyman Çelebi, son of İbrahim of Amasya, became the architect and building superintendent of the Sultan Bayezid Complex by order of Bayezid II, and because he completed the complex between 886 and 891 he became known as the "Trusted Architect" (Emîn Mimar). The same entry states that he built the mosques and madrasas of Hüseyin and Ayas ağas "and their bedesten as well." It is not clear which bedesten the phrase refers to; that Süleyman Çelebi built Hüseyin Ağa's bedesten can therefore only be considered a strong possibility.

A Cluster of Bedestens

Hüsameddin's records mention several bedestens standing side by side in the middle of the Amasya bazaar. In the first volume, in the description of the Kazancı quarter, he writes that beside Hüseyin Ağa's large bedesten Fîrûz Ağa, the chief of the harem eunuchs, built "another bedesten," and that to the south of it the cellarer Selim Ağa built a masonry mosque and minaret in 890. The ninth volume places Hüseyin Ağa's building adjoining the Yâkût Paşa Bedesten on its west. The tenth volume records that Süleyman Ağa, chief cellarer to Prince Ahmed, built his mosque "in front of Yâkût Paşa's Bedesten, in the Sipahi Market." Hüsameddin notes that this founder, named Selim Ağa in the inscription, is known in common speech and in most records as Kilârî Süleyman Ağa, and suggests that the name Selim may have been chosen to fit the meter. The mosque still stands today between the Taşhan and the bedesten.

When these records are put together, it emerges that in the last quarter of the fifteenth century palace officials from Bayezid II's circle in Amasya furnished the heart of the bazaar with adjoining bedestens, a mosque and a market place. Hüsameddin also mentions a building he calls the "Middle Bedesten" (Orta Bedesten); he writes that in his own time it was leased to the Abranusyan Brothers for ten years on condition that they repair it, but that although nearly twenty years had passed it had not been returned to the foundation, "a matter worthy of investigation." Which of these buildings the surviving Amasya Bedesten corresponds to cannot be established with certainty from the sources. That its inscription belongs to Hüseyin Ağa shows it to be Hüseyin Ağa's bedesten; but the relationship between the present building and the "Yâkût Paşa bedesten," which Hüsameddin says was damaged in earthquakes, is unclear. The finding in the 1973 survey report of the General Directorate of Foundations that the original building extended to the Yeşilırmak and that its walls adjoined the Saraçhane Mosque suggests that these once adjoining bedestens may later have come to be perceived as a single large building; this too is an inference not confirmed by the sources.

Architectural Layout

The Amasya Bedesten is a medium-sized bedesten, a repetition of the system that Ottoman urban planning produced in its principal centers; however, because in its original state it was larger than its counterparts, it has been regarded as a variation within the type. Its plan is rectangular and it has four doors. Arches linking the central piers carry the upper covering. On the east facade opening to the arasta and on the other facades, arched shops support the structure. In Mustafa Cezar's classification, which divides bedestens into six groups, those with cellars, those with outer shops, arasta bedestens, bedestens with an arasta, multi-storey bedestens and plain single-space bedestens, the Amasya Bedesten belongs among the plain single-space type.

The sources differ over the number of domes. According to local official records, the original building had six domes carried by arches on two large central piers; in the 1970s the two domed bays on the north were removed while a provincial administration office building was being built, and through repairs the present four domes remained standing. Eyice, by contrast, describes the bedesten as a structure with four piers and nine bays, each covered by a dome, and writes that three of these bays have been lost today. Canbolat, following Eyice, also states that the original building had nine domes, that only four remain today and that the rectangular plan has turned into an almost square form. The difference between the accounts may arise from the building having been demolished and repaired in different ways at different times, and from the count of lost bays varying with the source; which is correct cannot be settled here.

The walls of the present building are of rubble stone, its domes of brick and its doors of cut stone. The brick domes are sheathed in lead. The entrance on each facade differs from the others, whereas all sixteen windows are alike in arrangement and size. The building is plain in decoration. Traces of arches on either side of the entrance suggest that these facades once had an additional section or that the building was joined to another structure. What is certain is that of the original state only the body walls and the inscription dated 1483 remain. The Merzifon Bedesten in the same region, by comparison, has survived with nine domes carried by large pointed arches in its interior and is a useful point of comparison.

Comparison with Other Bedestens

In the list in which Eyice enumerates the principal known bedestens, the Amasya Bedesten belongs among the examples of the last quarter of the fifteenth century. According to the foundation records, the Bursa Bedesten was built by Bayezid I in 1400; divided into fourteen bays by six large piers, it is among the largest bedestens of Turkish art. The Edirne Bedesten was built by Mehmed I around 1417-1418 for the Eskicami endowment and is a fourteen-domed building closely resembling the one in Bursa. The Ankara Bedesten was built between 1464 and 1471 by Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha and is divided by four piers into ten bays, each covered by a dome. Beside these three great examples the Amasya Bedesten, with six or nine domes in its original state, remains on a much smaller scale, but as a medium-sized building bringing income to a gate chamberlain's endowment it follows the same scheme.

The province of Amasya has other examples of the type. The Merzifon Bedesten is part of the complex of mosque, library, han and bath founded by Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha in 1666-1667; it measures 30 by 30 meters, is square in plan with four doors, and four piers divide the interior into nine bays covered by nine domes. Hüsameddin records that the construction of this complex was carried out by the pasha's agent in Merzifon, Kürd Sefer Ağazâde Ahmed Ağa, who had the mosque and the bedesten built "in perfect fashion." The Gümüşhacıköy Bedesten was built in 1660 by Köprülü Mehmed Pasha as part of the complex of his mosque and has an elongated rectangular plan made up of shops with barrel vaults. What distinguishes these two buildings from Amasya is that one was founded in the seventeenth century within a grand vizier's complex and the other in connection with a vizier's mosque. The Amasya Bedesten, by contrast, emerged on its own as the endowment of a gate chamberlain, amid the commercial vitality of the town at the end of the fifteenth century.

Commercial Buildings around the Bedesten

In the Ottoman town, in the words of Akar's article, the bazaar was generally a single district made up of a bedesten, hans and arastas. Manufacture and trade went on together, and retail and wholesale sales could be seen side by side. Depending on its size, the bazaar district contained a varying number of mosques and baths, and market and fair grounds were set up nearby. City hans were mostly two-storey masonry buildings consisting of a central courtyard, arcades around it and rooms behind the arcades. In Amasya the Taşhan, in the same bazaar area as the bedesten, is counted among the important examples of this building type and lies on the side of the bedesten facing the citadel. On the journey of trade goods, hans, bedestens, arastas and bazaars were successive stops.

There are records of how these rings were arranged in Amasya. According to an account based on Hüseyin Güneş's study of Amasya in the Tulip Period, sixteen jewelers' shops stood under sixteen arches adjoining the north side of the bedesten. In the bazaar next to the bedesten there were twelve shops facing each other, belonging to the cotton fluffers (hallaç) who prepared cotton for use. According to the same records, six separate bazaars surrounded the bedesten: those of the jewelers, the cotton dealers, the silk dealers, the turban makers, the perfumers and the shoemakers. That the jewelers occupied the ring closest to the bedesten is the Amasya counterpart of the general rule that the more valuable the goods, the nearer to the bedesten they were sold. Today the Taşhan and the bedesten are separated by Atatürk Avenue and look like independent buildings; yet it is thought that in the days when they were the heart of trade the two were used as a single whole.

Endowments of the Bedesten Shops and the Bedesten Stewards

For centuries the shops inside the bedesten remained valuable properties that were bought, sold, endowed and leased. Hüsameddin's records of the quarters give detailed examples. El-Hâc Mehmed Ağa, after whom the Eski Kethüda quarter is named, was well known as the steward (kethüda) of Yörgüç Pasha; to the small mosque he built in this quarter, known as the "Kapısı Kıble Mescidi" because its door faced the qibla, he endowed some eight shops inside the bedesten. When the mosque burned in the fire of 1011 (1602-1603), the judge Çavuşzâde el-Hâc Mehmed Efendi rebuilt it in 1018 (1609-1610) and endowed three more shops inside the bedesten, and his son Sarı Mehmed Ağa enlarged his father's endowment in 1057 (1647-1648) by adding two shops of his own in the bedesten. According to Hüsameddin, Mehmed Ağa had served as steward until 835 (1431-1432). If this date is correct, the shops he endowed may be thought to have stood in a bedesten that existed before Hüseyin Ağa's building of 1483, most probably the Yâkût Paşa bedesten; this is an inference not stated explicitly in the sources, and it is also possible that the shops were added to the endowment later.

A similar example comes from the middle of the seventeenth century. A pasha of the İğnecizâde family who served several times as mutasarrıf of Amasya restored the Şâdgeldi Pasha Madrasa beside the Saraçhane Mosque and built two timekeepers' rooms next to the Sultan Bayezid soup kitchen for the calligrapher Fazlullah Efendi and for Koca Müneccim Ahmed Efendi. For the upkeep of these buildings he endowed the row of shops on the qibla side of the Saraçhane Mosque and his shops in the İbadullah Bazaar and inside the bedesten, and from the income he had a pulpit and a preaching chair placed in the mosque and stipends assigned to its preacher and sermonizers. Hüsameddin writes that these endowments were lost over time.

The endowments of Hüseyin and Fîrûz ağas, for their part, were an office sought after by the town's notables. Hüsameddin records that when Murad IV came to Amasya in 1045 (1635-1636), "the trusteeship of the endowments of Hüseyin and Fîrûz Ağas" was given to a former sanjak governor of Bozok who had been wounded in the Yerevan campaign and retired, and that a town steward who had worked on the side of the state during the Celali revolts also became trustee of the same endowments. The bedesten also had a representative of its own in the running of the bazaar: in the month of Muharram 1182 (1768), "the steward of the tradesmen and of the bedesten," Iydîzâde Hâfız Mehmed Efendi, became the chief notable (baş ayan) of Amasya. That a bedesten steward could at the same time rise to the highest local office in the town shows the weight of the bedesten merchants in the town's administration.

The use of the bedesten as a secure depot continued into the early nineteenth century. According to Sabit Genç's study based on archival documents, when the Nizâm-ı Cedîd was abolished in Amasya by a decree of 4 June 1807 and the barracks were ordered demolished, the contents of the barracks were counted and brought to the Amasya Bedesten.

Earthquakes

The bedesten was badly damaged in the earthquake of H. 1079 (1668) and for a long time received no comprehensive repair. Hüsameddin describes the earthquake down to the day: on the eighth of the month of Rebiülevvel, a Friday, in the early morning, a violent and sustained shock struck Amasya and its surroundings, the ground split open, terrifying sounds were heard and the people fled to the squares and open spaces. The walls of the citadel, the domes of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, the Meydan Gate, masonry houses, the domes of most mosques and "many parts of the bedesten" collapsed; the right-hand minaret of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque fell toward the north and the left-hand one leaned toward the qibla. Because the shocks continued at intervals for days, the people stayed in tents pitched in the squares, and many died. Hüsameddin adds that some ill-intentioned people tried to profit from the earthquake and that the town steward was dismissed for his indifference.

Another great earthquake came toward mid-afternoon on 27 Cemaziyelevvel 1147 (25 October 1734). This time Hüsameddin writes that the Bey Mosque and the Dizdariye Madrasa in the Upper Citadel, the minaret of the Ayas Ağa Mosque in the Şamlar quarter, the Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa, the "Yâkût Paşa bedesten," the Loğ Minaret and masonry houses were partly destroyed. That the same earthquake damaged both Hüseyin Ağa's madrasa and the Yâkût Paşa bedesten adjoining his bedesten shows that the cluster of bedestens in the middle of the bazaar was badly wounded in this century as well. The sources do not state separately to what extent the present building was affected by this earthquake.

The Bedesten in the Time of Ziya Pasha

Ziya Bey, the poet who was the mutasarrıf of Amasya in 1863-1865 and who would later be known as Ziya Pasha, had launched a broad urban improvement scheme in the town. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, within two years he built six government houses, six schools, a secondary school (idadi), six clock towers, a prison, a bedesten and shops in the center of Amasya and its five districts, and opened new roads in the town; this activity is known as the "Amasya reform." Halil İnalcık, reviewing Kenan Akyüz's book publishing documents from this period, likewise relates that the pasha built a bridge, a bazaar and a bedesten, but tried to meet the cost of these works through local levies, that is, through taxes imposed on the notables and the people. An opposition led by the mufti of Zile and Hacı Hasan Ağa, behind which stood the leading families, scholars and merchants of Amasya, accused him of embezzlement, and in 1865 the pasha was transferred to the governorship of Canik.

The old bedesten came off badly from this improvement scheme. The lead sheeting over its domes was stripped, the domes were pulled down, and the building was covered with a roof. Eyice reports that complaints were made and an investigation opened because of this. The roof too proved short-lived; after a while it collapsed, and the bedesten spent years standing open to the sky. Hüsameddin records another change from the same years: while Ziya Pasha was building the government house and levelling the ground in front of the bridge, he removed the Garipler Mosque in Selağzı and the cemetery beside it, sold the site of the mosque and spent the money on the government house. The author says that in 1282 (1865-1866) the site of this cemetery and mosque "became a bedesten" and that the gravestones were moved to another cemetery. It is highly likely that this bedesten was the new one built by Ziya Pasha; there is, however, no information as to whether the lead stripped from the old bedesten was used in the new building, and drawing such a connection would be an unsupported inference.

Demolitions and Repair in the Twentieth Century

Of the structure left as four bare walls, the parts near the Yeşilırmak were demolished in the 1950s and an office building was put up in their place. Eyice writes that in 1957 there was insistence on building yet another office building on the remaining part, but that this time the bedesten was saved through his own initiative. This record shows that the building's survival today did not come about by itself but depended, at one point, on a conscious decision to protect it.

Around 1970 the Directorate of Foundations repaired the remaining part of the bedesten by rebuilding its domes. Local records give the date of this restoration as 1971. According to Canbolat, drawing on reports in the municipal archive, no shops could be fitted onto the south facade facing Atatürk Avenue during the repair; instead a walkway exposing the walls and steps leading up to it were built. On the east facade, where the arasta lies, the original shops were preserved and those that had lost their original character were restored to their former dimensions, while on the west facade an entrance iwan was added beneath the inscription. The wooden shops set up against the bedesten after the 1970 alterations were later removed entirely because of the fire risk. The 1973 survey report of the General Directorate of Foundations established that the bedesten had in fact been a monumental building, that it extended as far as the Yeşilırmak and that its walls adjoined the Saraçhane Mosque, and it stressed that a restoration in keeping with the historic fabric should respect these dimensions. The building is registered as an immovable cultural property and has lain within an urban conservation area since 1979.

Present Condition

Today the bedesten is popularly known as the Bedesten Covered Bazaar and stands within the Kocacık Bazaar, on Kocacık Street. In the narrow streets around it work coppersmiths, jewelers and tradesmen selling local products; Amasya apples, local foods and handicrafts are sold in this bazaar as well. This bazaar is the present-day counterpart of the trading district that once developed around the bedesten. That jewelers and coppersmiths are still found in the neighborhood recalls the old link between the bedesten and the trade in valuable goods.

The interior of the building now consists of rows of shops, where clothing and souvenirs are sold. According to Canbolat's field observations in 2025, although it continues its commercial function the building is neglected and worn; careless use, the failure to treat it together with the buildings around it and its mismatch with new construction threaten to turn it, in time, into a disused building. The researcher recommends removing the outdoor sales units that clash with the building, developing a common facade arrangement for the shops of the arasta, establishing the original boundaries of the bedesten and landscaping it together with its surroundings, and using it for crafts, education and arts activities alongside its function as a bazaar.

The New Restoration Process

In November 2025 a meeting chaired by the Governor of Amasya, Önder Bakan, was attended by the Chairman of the Provincial General Council, Zeki Erarslan, the Tokat Regional Director of Foundations, Sebahattin Erdoğan, and bazaar tradesmen and property owners. At the meeting it was announced that the title deed procedures for the bedesten had been completed and that project preparations would begin shortly. The course to be followed in the restoration, the protection of the historic fabric and the revival of the bazaar were discussed. Governor Bakan described the building as a heritage that brings the past and the present together and said they aimed to hand it on to future generations in keeping with the original. Once the restoration is complete, the bedesten is planned to become both a building open to tourism and a cultural space in which the traditional bazaar culture is kept alive.

Chronology

1483 (H. 888): According to its inscription, the gate chamberlain Hüseyin Ağa builds the Amasya Bedesten to provide income for his endowments.

1485 (H. 890): According to Hüsameddin, Hüseyin Ağa endows the bedesten to meet the expenses of his madrasa.

1489 (H. 894): Hüseyin Ağa has the Kapı Ağası Madrasa built in Amasya.

1503-1504 (H. 909): The double bath belonging to Hüseyin Ağa's Küçük Ayasofya endowment in Istanbul is built.

1508: The date given as the year of Hüseyin Ağa's death.

1609-1610 (H. 1018): Çavuşzâde el-Hâc Mehmed Efendi endows three shops inside the bedesten to the Kapısı Kıble Mescidi.

1647-1648 (H. 1057): Sarı Mehmed Ağa endows his two shops in the bedesten to the same mosque.

1668 (H. 1079): An earthquake causes severe damage to the bedesten.

25 October 1734 (H. 1147): An earthquake partly destroys the Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa and the Yâkût Paşa bedesten.

1768 (H. 1182): The steward of the tradesmen and of the bedesten, Iydîzâde Hâfız Mehmed Efendi, becomes chief notable.

1807: The contents of the abolished Nizâm-ı Cedîd barracks are counted and brought to the bedesten.

1863-1865: During the urban improvement works of the mutasarrıf Ziya Bey, the lead of the domes is stripped, the domes are pulled down and the building is covered with a roof; a new bedesten is built on the site of the Garipler Mosque and its cemetery in Selağzı.

1950s: An office building is built in place of the demolished sections.

1957: An attempt to turn the remaining section into an office building as well is prevented.

1970-1971: The Directorate of Foundations repairs the remaining part of the bedesten with its domes.

1973: The survey report of the General Directorate of Foundations establishes that the original building extended to the Yeşilırmak.

1979: The bedesten comes to lie within an urban conservation area.

November 2025: With the title deed procedures completed, preparations begin for a new restoration process.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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