Amasya is called the "City of Princes." The name did not begin as a phrase of praise; it carries the memory of an institution that operated for roughly a century and a half, the princely sanjak governorate. At the foot of the citadel overlooking the narrow valley of the Yeşilırmak there once stood a plain brick palace with gardens, and it was here, together with the surrounding madrasa, divan and life on the frontier, that the Ottoman dynasty's future rulers were raised.

The detailed life of each prince is told separately in the biographies elsewhere on the site.

Who Is a Şehzade?

The word şehzade comes from the Persian shah and zade and means the son of a ruler or a male member of the dynasty. It is not peculiar to the Ottomans; under other names it is found in all Islamic and Turkic states: among the Karakhanids the equivalent was "tegin," among the Ghaznavids "melikzade," among the Timurids "mirza," in the Crimean Khanate "kalgay." In the early Ottoman period members of the dynasty were referred to by titles such as pasha, emir, çelebi, sultan and beylerbey; the elder princes bore the titles pasha and emir, the younger ones çelebi. The princes sent to Amasya were also called "çelebi sultan."

In the Ottoman state the throne did not pass automatically to the eldest son; in theory every prince had an equal chance of becoming sultan, and no distinction was made among a sultan's children whoever their mother was. Of the thirteen rulers who sat on the throne in the roughly three centuries from Orhan Bey to Ahmed I, eleven, all except Mehmed I and Selim I, were the eldest surviving son. For this reason the eldest son was regarded as heir to the throne, not officially but by an established custom. Even so, equality was both an honor and a heavy burden. When the sultan died, the prince who received the news had to be the first to reach Istanbul; whoever took the throne also began a difficult period for the other princes. The practice that began when Osman Bey did away with his uncle Dündar, and Bayezid I with his brother Yakub, was given formal status by Mehmed the Conqueror through his law on fratricide; its basis was the protection of the ruler's absolute authority. This arrangement ended in the early seventeenth century, when the princes were kept under watch in the palace.

Going Out to the Sanjak

The princely period in Ottoman history is divided into two phases. The first is the age, lasting until the late sixteenth century, when princes served as provincial administrators. The second is the period after the practice of going out to a sanjak was abolished, when they were condemned to a closed life in the palace. In the first period newly conquered lands were made into sanjaks, much as in the earlier Turkic states, and these were assigned both to the beys who had served the policy of conquest and to members of the dynasty. The dispatch of a prince to a sanjak was called "sancağa çıkma," going out to the sanjak.

The first stage of a prince's education was theoretical study in the palace, under the supervision of the foremost teachers of the day. These lessons generally lasted until the prince was ten to thirteen years old, the place in the palace where teaching took place was called the "princes' school," and riding and the martial arts were taught in the third court of the palace together with the iç oğlans, the pages of the inner service. The theoretical education was completed with the circumcision ceremony. The second stage was practical training: the prince went out to a sanjak as "sanjak governor," together with his tutors, above all his lala, his retinue and every kind of equipment he needed. The principal aim of the posting was to gain experience in government, but there were other reasons as well. It was pointed out that the dynasty thereby showed the importance it attached to the region for the security of the empire, and it was thought that the people of a district to which a member of the dynasty was sent would be more careful in their obedience to the state. The economic reason also weighed heavily: since the expenses of the princes were a great burden on the treasury, the revenues of the sanjak's has lands and the taxes collected from the trade of the city were set aside for them, which eased the central treasury. Until the sixteenth century a fifth of the booty taken in operations they conducted independently, and in campaigns in which they took part as commanders, also belonged to the prince.

In the sanjak to which he was appointed the prince was a genuine administrator. His retinue included a staff resembling the divan organization at the center, and in the sixteenth century this staff could reach 2000 people. The prince could appoint and dismiss officials, distribute timars and salaries, punish or pardon, and was responsible for the economic, commercial, building and social affairs of the sanjak. He had to report these activities to the center and obtain approval; once approval was received he issued an order under his own tughra. Princely tughras, like those of the sultans, had three plumes and two curves, and these orders too were called "tevkî-i hümâyun," as with the sultans. The princes had no power to choose their sanjak; certain places stood out as the sanjaks to which heir-apparent princes were sent, and in the early period the expression "bey sanjak" was used for them.

These powers were narrowed over time. The recurring struggles for the throne since the Interregnum bore a large share in this: the rebellion of Prince Cem against Bayezid II, of Selim I against his father, and of Bayezid, son of Süleyman the Magnificent, against his father made close supervision necessary. Princes, who before Selim I had been able to move freely, began to be sent to sanjaks closer to the center so that they could be controlled more easily, and the powers of their lalas were increased in order to render the princes passive. The sending of princes to the sanjaks of Rumelia had been forbidden after Savcı, son of Murad I, rebelled there.

A caution is also needed here: accounts claiming that the princes received a broad curriculum including philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and Greek and Latin literature, besides Arabic and Persian, are not confirmed by contemporary sources. For this reason generalizations that every prince was raised as a polymath are best avoided. What is documented in the Amasya cases is more limited: some princes were closely interested in calligraphy, poetry and learning, but this does not show that the institution had a curriculum applying to all princes.

The Lala, the Statesman at the Prince's Side

The word lala is of Persian origin; in dictionaries it means "servant, slave" and a retainer charged with looking after his master's child. In time it came to describe the person who looked after the education of the children of notables and rulers, taught them the art of government and was responsible for their development in every respect. In this the lala resembled the earlier institution of the atabeg, but he carried less of a political character than the atabeg; among the Ottomans the lala never became a regent governing the state in place of an heir apparent or a reigning sultan. The word is thought to have come into use in Anatolia from the thirteenth century under Persian influence. In the earliest Ottoman sources the words atabeg and lala occur side by side; Tursun Bey writes that Zağanos Pasha was "appointed atabeg" to Prince Mehmed (the Conqueror) when he was sent to Manisa. When lalaship arose as an institution among the Ottomans is not known; some scholars say it became an established office under Murad I. The Teşkilât Kanunnâmesi of Mehmed the Conqueror is the first explicit document showing that the princely lalaship had acquired an official character, and it places the office below the treasurer of finance in protocol.

Lalas were chosen with care, and most were appointed from the center from among experienced and trustworthy men raised in the Enderun. In the early period men from local emir families had also taken on the post; from the late fifteenth century, however, officials of kul origin were generally brought in. A lala could be a statesman of the rank of sanjak governor or beylerbey, but a lower-ranking servant could also be one. Terms of office were two or three years, as with sanjak governors, and in some cases lalas were changed frequently. The main reason was to prevent lalas from influencing the prince where they served and becoming a separate center of power. Even so, lalaship was regarded as a step toward higher posts; if the prince they had served became sultan, it brought them great influence and rank. Kasım Pasha, lala of Süleyman the Magnificent, served as treasurer and vizier; Mustafa Pasha, lala of Selim II, rose to the second vizierate; and Mehmed Pasha, lala of Mehmed III, became first a vizier and then grand vizier.

The lala's principal duties were to educate the prince, to help him become informed in political matters, to preside over the prince's divan with the rank of vizier, to go on campaign with the sanjak troops or to take charge of the region's defense during a campaign, to provide the link between the center and the prince, and, when necessary, to take measures by corresponding directly with the center. If the prince was young the lala's administrative role grew; beside adult princes the lala often remained passive, and his work was chiefly to manage the relationship between the center and the prince. The lalas beside Bayezid II's sons Selim, Korkut and Ahmed had little administrative influence; they remained, as it were, in posts held in name only. The lalas of Mehmed the Conqueror, Süleyman the Magnificent, Selim II, Murad III and Mehmed III, by contrast, stood out politically and administratively. The lalas' powers widened after the affair of Prince Bayezid, son of Süleyman the Magnificent; the lalas of princes sent to Manisa had orders from the center issued in their own names and became authoritative in many matters such as appointments, the award of timars, defense and public order. When the practice of going out to a sanjak was abandoned after Mehmed III, lalaship lost its administrative side altogether; it was replaced by the office of chief lala, chosen from among the harem aghas, who looked after the prince's education in the palace.

The names of lalas occur often in the history of Amasya. Yörgüç Pasha, who served as lala to Murad II in his princely days, came to Amasya with the twelve-year-old prince and had a complex built in the town. Among the lalas of Bayezid II were experienced statesmen such as Çandarlı İbrahim and Yahya Pasha. Atabeyzade Hayreddin Hızır Pasha, who had been lala to Bayezid, built a madrasa and a bath in Amasya.

Why Amasya Was Chosen

Three qualities were sought in a settlement that was to be a princely sanjak. The sanjak had to lie in a frontier region, to have been the capital of an old Anatolian principality, and to be regarded as a center of history, culture, civilization and trade. The frontier requirement was also decisive for the throne, because the sultan's eldest son was posted to the border sanjak, and standing at the head of the state's military power gave him a serious chance of succeeding. Amasya met all three conditions. It was close to the eastern frontier, it had been the seat of the Danishmendids, and through its position on the Tarsus-Kayseri-Zile-Samsun road and its place on the Azerbaijan-Bursa route it was also important as a trading center. In the sixteenth century the city had a dyehouse, a candle works and a mint, silk weaving was widespread, and it was an important market for Iranian silks; in 1554-1555 the quantity of silk goods entering the city and weighed there within ten months reached 10,632 lodras, about 15 tons.

A prince serving in a sanjak close to the eastern frontier believed that the fame and glory of successes won on the border would be a great advantage on the road to the throne; for this reason many of the princes stationed here regarded themselves as the strongest candidate for the throne. The sanjak was the center of the province of Rûm, which embraced Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and their surroundings. Prince Bayezid was appointed to the first sanjak governorate of the Rûm Province, established under Murad I with Amasya as its center, and after Amasya came under Ottoman rule the Eyalet-i Rumiye-i Suğra, which also took in Tokat and Sivas, was formed. From the first half of the fifteenth century until 1520 Amasya was the center of the province. After Bayezid the Thunderbolt annexed Amasya to Ottoman territory, heir-apparent princes began to be sent there, and after Selim I the sanjak of Saruhan, centered on Manisa, came to the fore. The beginning of this relationship goes back to the reign of Murad I. When the principalities of Kadı Burhaneddin, the Candaroğulları and the Karamanids moved against the Ottomans in Anatolia, Murad launched a campaign of conquest against them in 1386. After he had brought the Candaroğulları under his rule and was informed that Osmancık, Gümüş and Amasya had accepted Ottoman sovereignty, he sent his son Bayezid the Thunderbolt to the region; the age of the "çelebi sultans," the name given to princes who went out to a sanjak, thus began. There is a small uncertainty over the first sanjak governor: it is also claimed that some districts had already come under Ottoman administration when Emir Ahmed of Amasya and Çandarlı Süleyman Bey accepted Ottoman authority against Kadı Burhaneddin between 1384 and 1388. Even so, it is generally accepted that the age of the princes began with Bayezid the Thunderbolt. There were other princely centers as well: Kütahya, Trabzon, Manisa and Konya were foremost among them, and Antalya, Kefe, Bolu, Isparta and Kastamonu also served from time to time as seats for princes.

The titles of the city reflect the same standing. Among the names listed in Hüseyin Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi are Medinetü'l-Hükema (city of the wise and the sages), Bağdâdü'r-Rum, Rumiyye-i Suğra (Little Rome), Ermeniyye-i Kübra, Hısnü'l-Mirat (Fortress of the Mirror), Kubbetü'l-ulema and Türbetü'l-evliya, Dârü'n-Nasr, Dârü'l-İzz, Dârü'l-Fütûh and Kasrü's-Selâtin (the sultans' pavilion). The comparisons so often heard for Amasya, "Little Bukhara" and "the Oxford of the East," we did not encounter in the sources we read; they remain later, settled descriptions.

The Princes' Palace

The princes lived in the palace in the inner citadel. This building, known in the Seljuk period as the Palace of the Beys, the Ottomans called the "Princes' Palace"; among the townspeople it is still known today as the Saraydüzü Barracks. A residence of sultans and commanders since the Danishmendids, it took its definitive form when Çelebi Mehmed bought the Gümüşlüzade pavilion from Gümüşlüzade Hoca Celaleddin Çelebi in 1396 and had a large palace built in its place. In the Ottoman period it was used as a palace for about 350 years. It is reported that Murad II and his son Ahmed Çelebi, Prince Ahmed son of Bayezid II, and Selim I were born here.

The palace is reflected in sources that also give information about the surrounding citadel. According to Hüseyin Hüsameddin the citadel was two neighborhoods wide; it had two bastions, two gates, a palace, a mosque, a madrasa, a zawiya, a soup kitchen and two baths. Evliya Çelebi speaks of an old-style palace in the citadel, the Bayezid the Thunderbolt Mosque, powder magazines, a granary and cisterns; the survey register of the 1500s records five storehouses in the citadel where grain was kept. That the citadel was first built by Mithridates, king of Pontus, is related on the basis of Strabo. In the Ottoman period the citadel and walls were repaired during the princes' sanjak governorships: by Murad II in 1449 and by Prince Ahmed in 1511. From the second half of the seventeenth century the citadel lost its importance and was left unmaintained, abandoned to the elements.

Hans Dernschwam, a member of the Austrian embassy who came to the city in the days when Süleyman the Magnificent was in Amasya in 1555, speaks of the palace as follows: it is a plain, single-storey building of brick at the foot of the mountain, with gardens around it. The same traveler also describes the appearance of the city. Dernschwam, who arrived in Amasya with the embassy on 7 April 1555, writes that the narrow valley was densely settled, that the houses, mostly two-storeyed and of mud brick, seemed piled on top of one another, and that there was one wooden and three stone bridges over the Yeşilırmak. He also records that the houses burned in a great fire on 14 April 1555 were quickly rebuilt, and that the city had eleven mosques at the time. By this description the building regarded as the waiting room of the throne was one in which function counted for more than show.

The Twelve Princes Who Served in Amasya

According to historical records twelve princes were appointed to Amasya as sanjak governor. Six of them later took the throne, six did not. The sources do not name the six who took the throne; but in the order below the figure holds if Bayezid the Thunderbolt, Çelebi Mehmed, Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror, Bayezid II and Murad III are set apart. This inference is our own and rests on counting the Conqueror among the sanjak governors of Amasya; as will be seen below, this point is disputed. The longest-serving prince in Amasya is Prince Ahmed (thirty years); he is followed by his father Bayezid II with twenty-seven years and by Çelebi Mehmed with twenty-four. The youngest to be appointed was Bayezid II at seven, the oldest Prince Mustafa at twenty-four. Although it was generally the sons of sultans who were appointed, Murad, grandson of Bayezid II and son of Prince Ahmed, also received this post. The princes carried on their struggles for the throne during their governorships, and two princes who could not gain the upper hand on their own account, Murad son of Ahmed and Bayezid son of Süleyman the Magnificent, took refuge in Iran.

  • Bayezid the Thunderbolt: He was sent to the region when, during Murad I's campaign of 1386 against the Anatolian principalities, Osmancık, Gümüş and Amasya announced that they accepted Ottoman rule; he brought the Principality of Amasya under the Ottomans and became the first sanjak governor. Another source places the city's annexation to Ottoman lands in 1398. This difference in dates is unresolved in the sources; the dispute over 1384-1388 mentioned above also clouds the question of who was the first sanjak governor.
  • Çelebi Mehmed (Mehmed I): He was sent to Amasya as the second sanjak governor in the face of the Timur threat. In June 1399 he was given the province of Rûm, comprising Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and Ankara. After the Battle of Ankara he made Amasya his base and conducted his struggle against his brothers Îsâ and Süleyman from there, and he became sultan in 1413.
  • Prince Murad (Murad II): He was born in Amasya in Dhu al-Hijja 806 (June 1404). For his mother, Hüseyin Hüsameddin gives Şehzade Hatun, daughter of Divitdâr Ahmed Pasha of the notables of Amasya; according to another account Murad was a son of Mehmed by a concubine. At the age of twelve he was sent to Amasya with the governorship of the province of Rûm, together with his lala Yörgüç Pasha; disturbances caused in the region by the Kara Tatars and by the beys of Kastamonu, Canik and Erzincan had occasioned his dispatch. A year later he was called with the Amasya forces to the Saruhan and İzmir area to put down the Börklüce Mustafa rebellion, and when he left, the Kara Tatars caused disorder in the region. In 1421, on the death of his father, he took the throne in Bursa.
  • Ahmed Çelebi: The eldest son of Murad II, born in Amasya in 1420, "Ahmed the Great." After Yörgüç Pasha was sent off to the wardenship of Edirne, he went out to the sanjak in 1435; he remained in post for about three years and died in Amasya in 1438.
  • Mehmed (the Conqueror): The sources part company here. It is said that after Ahmed's death in 1438 Murad II's eight-year-old fourth son was appointed sanjak governor; to this is added a story reported by Hammer: Murad II's three sons in Amasya visit Sheikh Abdurrahman, son-in-law of the Khalwati sheikh Pir İlyas; the sheikh allows two of the princes to kiss his hand, but before Mehmed he kneels and asks him to use all his strength for the glory and felicity of the state that divine providence will entrust to him. Halil İnalcık treats this claim with doubt; it is known that in the spring of 1443 Mehmed was sent from Edirne to Manisa as governor with his two lalas. Uzunçarşılı does not mention Amasya either. On the other hand the TDV article on Amasya counts the Conqueror among the sanjak governors of Amasya. For this reason the Conqueror's Amasya years are not certain but disputed.
  • Alâeddin Ali Çelebi: He is the eldest son of Murad II. He was appointed in 1440 at the age of fifteen; some sources give 1442. In 1443, on his father's orders, he joined the Karamanid campaign with the sipahis under his command, and he died when he returned to Amasya. This news shook Murad II deeply.
  • Prince Bayezid (Bayezid II): After the conquest of Istanbul he was sent to Amasya in 1454 at the age of seven and stayed until 1481, twenty-seven years. He took part in the Battle of Otlukbeli (1473) between the Conqueror and Uzun Hasan; on his return from the campaign he stayed about a month in Amasya with his father. Since the district of Lâdik, attached to Amasya, was the summer seat of the sanjak governors, he spent every summer in Lâdik. He appointed experienced statesmen such as Çandarlı İbrahim and Yahya Pasha as lalas, took writing lessons from the Amasya calligraphy master Sheikh Hamdullah and received his ijaza, and wrote his poems under the pen name "Adlî." When he left to take the throne he invited his teacher Sheikh Hamdullah to Istanbul with his family.
  • Prince Ahmed: The eldest son of Bayezid II, born in Amasya; he was left as governor in place of his father when the latter departed, and served thirty years. He opened his door to poets; the Amasya woman poet Mihri Hatun presented most of her qasidas to him. He intervened with his forces in the Şahkulu rebellion but was defeated and withdrew. When he received an invitation from statesmen to claim the throne he went to Istanbul, and when his attempt failed he returned to Amasya and continued his struggle against his brother Selim, who became sultan in 1512; he was defeated at Yenişehir in 1514 and done away with.
  • Prince Murad (son of Ahmed): He is the only grandson to have been appointed. When his father went to Istanbul for the throne he was left in Amasya. When the Safavid caliphs held sway over Tokat and laid siege to Sivas, he joined the caliph Nur Ali with ten thousand men; this crisis ended when Yahşi Beyzade Ahmed Pasha drove the rebels out of Amasya. Murad turned to the court of Shah Ismail, and after governing in Iran for three or four years he died.
  • Prince Mustafa: The eldest son of Süleyman the Magnificent. By the common view he was transferred from Manisa to Amasya on 16 June 1541; some sources give the date 1538; it is stated that he was twenty-four years old when appointed. His story is taken up separately below.
  • Prince Bayezid (son of Süleyman the Magnificent): His transfer from Kütahya to Amasya came in September 1558. Because of the rivalry for the sultanate among the brothers, Selim was appointed from Manisa to Konya and Bayezid from Kütahya to Amasya; Bayezid, suspicious of being removed from Kütahya, which was close to Istanbul, acted reluctantly and agreed to go on certain conditions. In a petition he wrote to his father from Amasya, saying "my state in this Amasya is one of distress; for God's sake set me free," he asked for the sanjak of Ankara. Cultured, modest, lively and brave, he was liked by his retinue and the grandees of the state; after Mustafa's death he was firmly convinced that he would become sultan, and the fear that the article of the law regulating fratricide would be applied also played a part in this struggle. He was defeated by Selim near Konya on 30 May 1559 and withdrew to Amasya; when his pardon was not accepted, in mid-August he took refuge with Shah Tahmasb of the Safavids together with his four sons and his men, and he was handed back for money and executed in Qazvin in 1562. He wrote poems under the pen name "Şâhî"; in the poems he wrote in Iran traces of regret and longing can be seen.
  • Prince Murad (Murad III): He is the last prince, sent to Amasya in 1566 at the age of twenty-one after the accession of Selim II. He stayed a year and a half and was transferred to Manisa. In these years the city had been affected by the Celali rebellions and by disturbances stirred up by madrasa students; the age of Amasya as a princely sanjak thus came to a close.

The dates of service differ according to the sources. Selim Özcan's article places Alâeddin's sanjak governorship in 1440, Ahmed Çelebi's service in 1435, Prince Bayezid's service in 1558 and the end of Prince Mustafa's term in 1553; another list compiled on the sanjaks gives 1442 for Alâeddin, 1557-1558 for Bayezid and 1538-1552 for Mustafa. The same list shows Çelebi Mehmed's service as 1389-1402, Murad II's as 1415-1421, Prince Ahmed's as 1481-1511 and that of Ahmed's son Murad as 1511-1512. The Conqueror's sanjak governorship appears in some lists and general accounts but is not supported in the works of İnalcık and Uzunçarşılı. Consequently the number of princes who went out to the sanjak, and of those among them who took the throne, varies according to whether the Conqueror is counted.

Selim I is not on this list. He was born in Amasya, where his father Bayezid II was sanjak governor (1470 is the stronger possibility, 1467-68 according to one account); after the circumcision ceremony he returned to his father's side and stayed on in Amasya for some time. The place of his first post as sanjak governor, however, is Trabzon. His mother was Ayşe Hatun, a daughter of the Dulkadirids. Seeing from Trabzon that his elder brother Ahmed stood out in Amasya as the foremost candidate for the throne, Selim did not accept the situation and entered the struggle; Ahmed had by then brought Amasya back under his own control. He came to Amasya as sultan, on his return from Çaldıran and Tabriz. Selim, who stayed nine days in Tabriz and gave up spending the winter there because of food shortages and the unwillingness of the army, passed the winter of 1514-1515 in Amasya and received the embassy sent by Shah Ismail here. Throughout the winter the Janissaries pressed to return to Istanbul; the sultan took great pains to find the real instigators of this affair and on 19 April 1515 marched on Kemah, held by the Safavids.

Under Selim I the city also lived through upheaval. In 1516, while the governor of Amasya, Mehmed Pasha, was on the Egyptian campaign with the sultan, the Alevis, who rose under the leadership of Varyalı Zünun (Baba Zünun) and Baba Celal, entered Amasya and plundered the city. Some accounts say that the sanjak governor was killed in this affair; in the sources we read we did not find confirmation of this. The disturbances in the region continued under Süleyman the Magnificent with Safavid propaganda and ended in 1534 with the harsh administration of Veli Pasha, sanjak governor of Amasya. When Sivas became the pasha's sanjak of the Eyalet-i Rûm, Amasya was attached to Sivas after 1520, and this lasted until the appointment of Prince Mustafa.

Prince Mustafa and the End of an Era

The history of the princes of Amasya is remembered most of all through Prince Mustafa. The eldest son of Süleyman the Magnificent, born in Manisa, was transferred from the sanjak of Saruhan to Amasya on 16 June 1541. This transfer aroused a reaction among the people and the soldiers; Süleyman announced that he had been sent for the security of the eastern lands and that his status as heir continued. Some sources attribute the transfer to the influence of Hürrem Sultan. With this appointment Amasya came out of its dependence on Sivas and became an independent provincial center; with Mustafa's death it returned to being a sanjak attached to the province of Rûm.

In Amasya Mustafa kept up the scholarly gatherings, took an interest in learning and literature and protected men of letters and poets, and himself wrote poetry under the pen name "Muhlisî." His teacher Mustafa Sürûrî presented works to him. He held a great place in the hearts of the people and the army of the region. Dernschwam confirms this: he found the people on the roads grieved and angry, and wrote that part of the people mourned the prince's having been put to death and part the lengthening of the Iranian campaigns; he noted that everyone he saw praised the prince, and that there was fear that unrest would grow once the sultan left the throne, because it was believed that the other princes could not be like their father.

His end came in October 1553. During Süleyman's Iranian campaign the prince set out from Amasya with a force of five thousand men, reached his father's camp at Akhöyük near Konya-Ereğli, and the next day (6 October) was strangled in the sultan's tent. His body was carried to Bursa and buried in the Muradiye Complex. The place of Mustafa's death is the Ereğli district of Konya; he was not killed in Amasya. In the traditional account the blame falls on Hürrem Sultan and the son-in-law Rüstem Pasha; academic studies tend to explain the event by several causes, such as concern for the throne, the attachment of the army and the people to the prince, and the gradual deterioration of his relations with his father. When the Janissaries reacted, Rüstem Pasha was dismissed. The elegy attributed to Taşlıcalı Yahya begins with the line "Meded meded bu cihânın yıkıldı bir yanı" and passed from tongue to tongue for centuries.

After Mustafa, when Süleyman returned to Amasya in 1555, he received the embassies of the Austrian emperor Ferdinand and of the Safavid Shah Tahmasb in the city; the Peace of Amasya, signed with the Safavids on 29 May 1555, was concluded during this stay. In those same years the quarrel between the two surviving sons of Süleyman also determined the fate of the city. Prince Bayezid, interpreting his transfer from Kütahya to Amasya as the choice of Selim in his place as heir to the throne, rebelled, and defeated, fled to Iran. The importance of sanjaks nearer Istanbul grew; Manisa came to the fore as the sole princely sanjak, and after Süleyman only the heir-apparent prince came to be sent to a sanjak. The princes' command duties also came to an end after Süleyman's time. The last prince sent to Manisa was Mehmed III, appointed in 1583; in Amasya the period had closed with Murad III, sent in 1566. From then on sanjak governors appointed from the center looked after Amasya.

The practice of going out to a sanjak effectively ended in the late sixteenth century. In 1617 the accession of Ahmed I's brother Mustafa I on Ahmed's death closed a three-century tradition, and the principle of seniority, by which the eldest male member of the dynasty became ruler, was adopted. The princes now lived a closed life in the palace, in the section adjoining the Harem and surrounded by box trees, called the "Şimşirlik," known as the cage (kafes). The reaction among the people and the administrators to Mehmed III's having his nineteen brothers put to death on his accession played a part in this.

What the City Gained

When the princes came, their retinues, scholars, poets and artisans came with them. For these 182 years Amasya played host to the princes and gained most of the buildings that survive today in this period. Of the city's 48 Muslim neighborhoods, 13 had a mosque built, and in the 24 neighborhoods without a mosque 25 masjids were built; together 37 mosques and masjids. Evliya Çelebi counts the mosques and masjids of the city at about two hundred in all and names nine mosques and twenty masjids. Nearly all the governors, beylerbeys and pashas appointed to the city, and the princes as well, had built a mosque or masjid in the name of their mothers and wives.

The principal works of the period are the following:

  • Complexes: the complex built in 1431 by Yörgüç Pasha, lala of Murad II (mosque, tomb, soup kitchen and a madrasa of four rooms); the Bayezid II Complex, whose foundations Prince Ahmed laid in 1481 and finished in 1486 (mosque, madrasa, school, soup kitchen and ablution fountain); the 1495 complex of Mehmed Pasha, one of the viziers of Bayezid II's time (masonry mosque, soup kitchen, tomb, madrasa). The mosque of the Bayezid II Complex, once completed in 1486, became the city's Friday mosque; before that this role had long been filled, as the Great Mosque, by the Fethiye Mosque, which the Danishmendids converted from a Nestorian monastery after their conquest. The complex stands in the Hacı İlyas neighborhood. All the units of the complex apart from the school survive today.
  • Soup kitchens: those of Yakup Pasha (1412), one of the emirs of Çelebi Mehmed's time; the Yakutiye (1413) of Sinaneddin Yakut Pasha; that of Yahşibeyzade Bayezid Pasha (1414), a native of Amasya who served as grand vizier to Çelebi Mehmed and Murad II; and the Hatuniye, built in 1509 by Bülbül Hatun, mother of Prince Ahmed. These buildings gave free meals to madrasa students and also fed the poor of the neighborhood and travelers staying overnight.
  • Madrasas: the madrasa of 1466 of Atabeyzade Hayreddin Hızır Pasha, lala of Bayezid II; the Abdullah Bey Darülhadis (1485); the Kapıağası madrasa built in 1489 by Hüseyin Ağa, the Chief Gate Agha, and the Ayasağa madrasa built in 1495 by Ayas Ağa, the Lesser Gate Agha.
  • Commercial and water structures: the bedesten built in 1483 by Hüseyin Ağa, one of Bayezid II's gate aghas, and the Lower Market that grew up around it; the Bayram Pasha, Bakırcıoğlu and Menzilci Mirza caravanserais and the Bezzazistan, with a second market, the Upper Market, founded later around the Kapan Han; the baths of Mustafa Bey (1436), built by Yörgüç Pasha's son, Hızır Pasha (1466), Kumacık (1495) and Sinan Pasha (1511); fountains such as Acem Ali (1465), built by the Nishapuri merchant Hoca Acem Ali, Temenna (1467), Hacı Hamza (1468) and İlyas Ağa (1515).

The bedesten stands in the Kazancı neighborhood south of the Helkıs Bridge. Since a bedesten was found only in large and wealthy cities, Amasya's having one shows that the city was counted in this class. The city also had a square called the "Ok Meydanı," the Archery Ground, because archery was taught at the head of the Meydan Bridge in the west, and a second square called the "Hacılar Meydanı," the Pilgrims' Square, because it was the gathering place of pilgrims. The names of the neighborhoods also reflect the order of the period: 15 of the neighborhoods bore the names of mosques, masjids, soup kitchens and madrasas, 6 the names of bazaars and markets, and 15 the names of scholars, sheikhs and dervishes. The presence in 1576, around the Savadiye neighborhood, of vineyards and gardens known as the "Prince Ahmed Vineyards" shows that the princes' mark extended as far as agricultural land.

The city was crowded as well. According to the survey of 1520 there were 52 neighborhoods and about 8000 people, and at the end of the century an estimated 10,000. The 1520 survey shows 1042 Muslim households, 471 unmarried men and 324 non-Muslim households; taking five persons per household gives about 7300 people, and with palace servants and the military class added one arrives at around 8000. In 1520 four neighborhoods, in the census of 1525 five, and at the end of the century six were non-Muslim; in 1525 non-Muslims made up about 2000 of the population, and by the end of the century this number had fallen to around 1500. The number of neighborhoods is given as 52 for 1520 (48 Muslim and 4 non-Muslim) and 55 for 1525; Evliya Çelebi counts 48 Muslim and 5 Christian neighborhoods, which makes 53. Evliya Çelebi, for his part, counts in the seventeenth century 53 neighborhoods and 5000 households (about 20,000 people), and 1060 shops besides. These differences come from different years and methods. This population made Amasya a city of middling size; but the political function of being a princely sanjak had placed it among the great cities of Anatolia.

After the Princes

With the departure of the princes the political, social, cultural and commercial vitality of Amasya gradually began to die away. In the seventeenth century, although the population grew, no major physical development was seen in the city; it is thought that the city's position, not very favorable to growth, may have played a part in this. What remains of the princes' palace, complexes and neighborhoods still defines the city's silhouette today; some of these buildings have survived, some have fallen into ruin, and some have disappeared altogether. In the late nineteenth century Ziyâ Pasha served briefly in Amasya as mutasarrıf. A wax figure of Prince Mustafa (2005) stands in the Princes' Museum in Amasya.

The answer to the question posed at the start is clear: Amasya is called the "City of Princes" because twelve princes served here and six of them sat on the throne. This number should not be exaggerated either. Not every candidate for the throne was raised in Amasya; Selim I was raised in Trabzon, Süleyman the Magnificent in Manisa. The city's place in the dynastic memory arose from the long-standing practice of sending here the princes regarded as closest to the throne. For those who wish to study the subject in detail, P. Kappert's book "Die Osmanischen Prinzen und ihre Residenz Amasya im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert" (Leiden 1976) is among the basic works of reference; we have not been able to read this book.

Chronology

1386: Prince Bayezid the Thunderbolt is the first sanjak governor to come to Amasya (another source gives 1398).

1396: Çelebi Mehmed is recorded as buying the Gümüşlüzade pavilion and having the Princes' Palace built.

June 1399: The province of Rûm is given to Çelebi Mehmed.

1402: After the Battle of Ankara Çelebi Mehmed withdraws to Amasya.

1404: Murad II is born in Amasya.

1413: Çelebi Mehmed becomes sultan.

1421: Murad II passes from the Amasya sanjak governorship to the throne.

1431: The Yörgüç Pasha Complex is built.

1438: Prince Ahmed Çelebi dies in Amasya.

1443: Prince Alâeddin dies on returning from the Karaman campaign.

1454: The seven-year-old Bayezid (Bayezid II) becomes sanjak governor of Amasya.

1473: Prince Bayezid takes part in the Battle of Otlukbeli.

1481-1486: Bayezid II takes the throne; his complex in Amasya is built in these years.

1483: Hüseyin Ağa builds his bedesten.

1514: Prince Ahmed is defeated by Selim at Yenişehir.

Winter of 1514-1515: Selim I winters in Amasya on his return from Çaldıran.

16 June 1541: Prince Mustafa becomes sanjak governor of Amasya (some sources give 1538).

6 October 1553: Prince Mustafa is killed near Ereğli.

29 May 1555: The Peace of Amasya is signed.

1558-1559: Süleyman's son Bayezid is transferred to Amasya, is defeated at Konya and takes refuge in Iran.

1566-1567: Prince Murad (Murad III) becomes the last prince appointed to Amasya.

1617: With the death of Ahmed I the princes pass to a life in the cage within the palace.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, issue 5, DergiPark.
  • İlhan Şahin - Feridun Emecen, "Amasya", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, 1991 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/amasya). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Mustafa Sabri Küçükaşcı - Haldun Eroğlu, "Şehzade", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 38, 2010 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/sehzade). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Feridun Emecen, "Selim I"; Halil İnalcık, "Murad II" and "Mehmed I"; Şerafettin Turan, "Bayezid II" and "Bayezid, Şehzade", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Tuncer Baykara, "Lala", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 27, 2003 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/lala). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Principal works on which Selim Özcan relies: Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Amasya Tarihi; İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, "Sancağa Çıkarılan Osmanlı Şehzadeleri", Belleten 156 (1975); Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, book 2.

Other sources

  • Funda Demirtaş, "Şehzade Mustafa'nın Öldürülmesi", Bilimname XVIII, 2010/1 (Erciyes University).
  • İdris Kılıçaslan, "Şehzade Sancakları: Amasya ve Manisa", Bilimdili; "Anadolu'nun devlet ve ilim adamı yetiştiren şehzade şehirleri", Fikriyat, 3 April 2020.
  • Vikipedi, "Amasya Sancağı" and "Şehzade Mustafa (I. Süleyman'ın oğlu)"; İlhami Yurdakul, "Şehzade Eğitimi", Türk Maarif Ansiklopedisi.

Online sources