The Bayezid Pasha Mosque stands on the eastern bank of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya, in the Beyazıtpaşa quarter, opposite the Künç (Kuş) Bridge. According to the Arabic inscription above its door, it was built by Bayezid Pasha, one of the viziers of Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), in the month of Muharram 817, that is, April 1414. It is among the oldest surviving buildings of the city's early Ottoman period. In architectural history it counts as a fine example of the multi-purpose type known as the "tabhane" or "zaviye" mosque, which also housed travellers and dervishes. The woodwork of its doors, the coloured stonework of its last-congregation portico and the many craftsmen's names recorded on it make the mosque as interesting for the story of its construction as for its plan. A soup kitchen (imaret) and a guesthouse once stood beside it; they are gone today, but thanks to the endowment deeds, the inscriptions and the summary of the deed carved into a rock on the bank of the Yeşilırmak, the workings of this charitable foundation can be followed in considerable detail.

Location and Quarter

The quarter in which the mosque stands takes its name from the building and its founder. In the section of his Amasya Tarihi devoted to the city's quarters, Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar places the Bayezid Pasha quarter south of the Kuş Bridge, on the site once called the "Foka quarter", and gives its boundaries as vineyards to the east, the stream to the west, the Savakça quarter to the south and the Yeşilırmak to the north. According to him the quarter came to be named after "Yahşi Beyzade Bayezid Pasha", who lived there until the year 816 (1413). He adds that the old name went back to the Byzantine period: Hüsameddin held that the emperor Phocas was a native of Amasya and that a building called the King's Palace stood in this quarter, on the road to Kirazlıdere. This last view is the author's own interpretation and has not been confirmed by any other document.

In Hüsameddin's description, the vizier had built in the quarter a "musanna", that is, skilfully wrought, mosque by the river, with a guesthouse and a soup kitchen to its east. The front of the mosque opened onto the river, and it stood in the middle of an enclosure walled on the other three sides. East of the soup kitchen, in line with the Kuş Bridge, was the Kumacık Bath, built in the year 900 (1494-95) by Ayas Agha, Agha of the Small Gate. Hüsameddin writes that together with this bath Ayas Agha also endowed a mill in front of the gate of the "Bayezid Pasha Precinct" and the garden beside it. On the qibla side of the mosque, near the road to Kirazlıdere, an emir named Gazi Bey built a small mosque (mescit) in 937 (1530-31), with a fountain in front of it and a school beside it. A century after its foundation, therefore, the mosque had become the centre of a quarter around which other charitable works had gathered.

The quarter in the early twentieth century can be followed in Osman Fevzi Olcay's Amasya Hâtıraları. Olcay relates that one reached the Bayezid Pasha Mosque by going down the first street of the Ahırönü quarter, and that the Kumacık Bath stood on the near side of the Künç Bridge. He describes the Bayezid Pasha quarter as the district where the French School, known as "Jojiyet", stood, and as the first quarter one met south-east of the Yeşilırmak on entering the town from the west side of the Künç Bridge. The quarter also appears often in Hüsameddin's biographies: it is recorded that in the seventeenth century Kara İbrahim Pasha of Bayburt was born in this quarter in 1034 (1624-25), that his endowment deed included a school here, and that Gazi Oruç Bey built a fountain in front of his mansion in the quarter.

The Founder, Bayezid Pasha

The mosque was built in the years when the Ottoman state was leaving behind the period of division that followed the Battle of Ankara. After Bayezid I's defeat in 1402, the struggle for the throne among his sons had been won by Çelebi Mehmed, who restored unity in the country in 1413. Before that he had served as sanjak governor in Amasya, and Bayezid Pasha, who built the mosque, had belonged to the prince's close circle since those days.

According to Aydın Taneri's biographical entry in the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, Bayezid Pasha's father was named Yahşi. Because he was born in Amasya he appears in the sources as "of Amasya", although an Albanian origin is also considered likely. He was raised in the palace, held military posts under Bayezid I, served in Çelebi Mehmed's retinue during his governorship in Amasya and remained loyal to this prince throughout the Interregnum. Hüsameddin, however, draws an entirely different picture of the pasha's origins. In his view Bayezid Pasha belonged to the Sunkuroğulları, one of Amasya's old emirial families; his father was Yahşi Bey, his grandfather Hacı İsa Bey, the latter's father Süleyman Bey, and at the top of the line stood Sunkur Bey. He says that his father's name appears in the pasha's own endowment deed and his grandfather's in the deed of Gülçimen Hatun, and that he learned from the deed that his mother was Safa Pasha Hatun, daughter of Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha, emir of Amasya. Hüsameddin rejects in strong terms Solakzade's report that Yörgüç Pasha and Bayezid Pasha were not Turks. These two views of his origins contradict each other, and neither has been established by a conclusive document.

The family circle Hüsameddin describes also shows how closely the mosque was bound up with Amasya's native notables. The pasha's sister Pasha Hatun (Asiye Hatun) built and endowed a small mosque in the citadel quarter (İçerişehir), opposite the Upper Bath, in 821 (1418). His brother Hamza Bey became atabeg of Prince Murad and warden of Amasya, and in 1421 was appointed beylerbey (governor-general) of Amasya. The TDV entry records that the same Hamza Bey, as a naval commander, resisted from the land the Venetian fleet that bombarded Lapseki in 1417, and that he was made commander of the fleet during the conquest of Istanbul. According to Hüsameddin, his nephew Bayezid Bey, whose father had died in the war with Timur, and his sister's sons Sinan and Davud Pasha grew up under the pasha's protection and rose in state service.

Bayezid Pasha's role in the years after the rout at Ankara was a large one. Hüsameddin writes that he was at Çelebi Mehmed's side in the battle of 1402, that after the battle he went with the prince to Bolu, and that in 805 (1402-03) he brought him safely to Amasya. According to the same author the pasha was a master of cavalry command and was both Çelebi Mehmed's chief of staff and his most trusted adviser. He was at the prince's side in the battle against the Köpekoğulları at Kazova, marched on Sivas, which sought to break away from Amasya, and seized Kürtoğlu Mezid Bey, and before the final reckoning of 1413 he wrote letters to the lords of Rumelia trying to win them over to Çelebi Mehmed. Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, in a study published in 2016, likewise presents Bayezid Pasha as the man who brought the prince safely to Amasya and who played a decisive part in eliminating his brothers.

The sources differ on when Bayezid Pasha became grand vizier. According to the TDV entry, when Çelebi Mehmed restored order in the country in 1413 he appointed him grand vizier and beylerbey of Rumelia, and the pasha played a part that same year in the elimination of Musa Çelebi. The following year he also had a share in the treaty concluded with Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey, whose terms were heavy for the Karamanids. Hüsameddin, on the other hand, writes that in 1413 the grand vizierate went to İmamzade Hacı Halil Pasha of Amasya, that Bayezid Pasha first received the vizierate and the governorship of Rumelia, and that he succeeded Halil Pasha after the latter's death, in 819-820 (1416-17). He also objects to the common historical account that names Çandarlızade İbrahim Pasha as grand vizier of this period, citing Bayezid Pasha's endowment deeds as evidence. Whichever view is adopted, 1414, the year in which he built the mosque, falls in a period when the pasha's influence was rising fast.

Bayezid Pasha's interests were not confined to affairs of state and war. Keskin's study shows that he was in close contact with poets and writers. Abdülvâsi Çelebi, author of the Halîlnâme, states that he wrote the work at Bayezid Pasha's own request and with his encouragement; by his account the pasha knew Persian, took a keen interest in literature, and at the gatherings he held poets performed their art together with musicians. The TDV entry on Abdülvâsi Çelebi also records that the poet enjoyed the patronage of Bayezid Pasha, one of Çelebi Mehmed's viziers, and that the miraciye section at the end of the Halîlnâme was completed in 817 (1414). The year inscribed over the door of the mosque in Amasya is thus the year in which a poet under the pasha's patronage finished his masnavi. The pasha also built a madrasa in Bursa, and he is named with the title "vezîr-i kebîr" in the repair inscription of the Orhan Gazi Mosque in Bursa, damaged in the Karamanid plundering of 1413.

Date of Construction and the Earthquake of 1415

The principal document dating the mosque is the Arabic inscription over the main portal. Hüsameddin quotes the text in full; the inscription states that the building was erected in the month of Muharram of the year 817, in the reign of Sultan Mehmed, son of the late Sultan Bayezid Khan, by Bayezid Pasha, "the great emir, the glorious and honoured vizier". The use of the word "imaret" for the building in the inscription suggests that in its founder's eyes the mosque was less a place of worship on its own than the centre of a charitable institution. Hüsameddin writes that the vizier completed these buildings in 817 and drew up his endowment deed in 820; elsewhere he records that in Rabi' al-awwal 820 (April-May 1417) the mosque and soup kitchen were completed and properties in Amasya endowed for the expenses of these foundations, and that the pasha's son İsa Bey was then overseeing the endowments.

Only a year after the mosque was built, Amasya suffered a great disaster. In Hüsameddin's account, on the ninth of Safar 818 (April 1415), on a Tuesday in the late afternoon, a violent earthquake struck the city and its surroundings; Amasya was reduced to ruins, many people and animals were killed, and many mosques and large buildings collapsed. The judge Rükneddin Mahmud Buhari, the Halveti sheikh Şerefeddin Hamza Çelebi and the sheikh of the Mevlevi lodge were among those who lost their lives. Because of repeated tremors the people lived in tents for about three months; gardens and vineyards were neglected and dried up, and famine followed. In this context E. Hakkı Ayverdi's linking of the craftsman's inscription of 822 (1419) in the mosque's portico to a repair carried out after this earthquake is an understandable conjecture. Semavi Eyice, however, states plainly that this view rests on guesswork alone. There is no record that directly describes how far the mosque was affected by the earthquake.

Inscriptions and Craftsmen

The other inscriptions on the building show that the history of its construction and repair is more complicated than might be supposed. On the outer face of the pier to the right of the central arch of the portico is a marble plaque; it states that the architect was Ya'qub b. Abdullah, one of Bayezid Pasha's mamluks, and gives the date 822 (1419). Another marble plaque on the left pier of the same arch states that the mosque is the work of Zeynüddin b. Zekeriyya, surnamed "el-muallim"; according to Ayverdi this too relates to a repair. Beneath the portico, on the arch before the entrance, one can read on the right "el-muallim Ebû Bekir b. ..." (the rest is illegible) and on the left the name of a Muhammad known as İbn Müşeymeş ed-Dımaşkî. In the band inscriptions that run around the portico arches a summary of the endowment deed is carved in stone, and in one corner of this text yet another name occurs, read as "mimar ... Tugan b. Abdullah". Eyice stresses that no other Turkish work of the Ottoman period bears so many craftsmen's signatures.

Hüsameddin's record adds one more name to this list. According to him the mosque was built by a famous master named "Şemseddin Ahmed-i Şâmî", who carved his name on the left side of the door. This name is not among Eyice's readings, and it cannot be established whether the two read the same inscription differently. A review of Ali Yardım's book published in 2004 notes that this study corrected an error concerning the architect's inscription on the wooden door of the mosque and filled a gap concerning the architect's inscription of the soup kitchen, but it does not say what the corrected reading is. The debate over the craftsmen's names cannot therefore be regarded as closed.

Nor has the exact role of each of these men been fully clarified. Albert Gabriel notes that those bearing the title "mimar", unlike the architect of today, supervised the construction, while the "muallim" may have been a foreman or site manager, and that one holder of a title might even be regarded as the assistant of another. Keskin's study concludes that these artists' inscriptions show Bayezid Pasha carrying out his building activity with a number of different architects and with slaves of his own; the description of Ya'qub b. Abdullah as the pasha's mamluk is a clear example. Local descriptions say that Ottoman and Mamluk craftsmen worked together on the building. The nisba "ed-Dımaşkî" in one craftsman's name and the nisba "Şâmî" read by Hüsameddin are consistent with this view, but the origins of the craftsmen cannot be established with certainty from the inscriptions.

Endowment Deeds and Endowment Revenues

The documents of the endowment that sustained the mosque and the institutions around it are unusually rich for a single building. The pasha's Arabic deed dated 11 Dhu'l-Hijja 820 (19 January 1418), whose opening is missing, is in the Prime Ministry Archives, and a copy exists in the registers of the Directorate of Foundations. The TDV entry mentions supplements to this deed dated 821 (1418) and 823 (1420). Ali Yardım's study lists the supplements in more detail: four additional deeds dated 28 Dhu'l-Hijja 820 (5 February 1418), the last days of Safar 821 (late March-early April 1418), 1 Ramadan 821 (2 October 1418) and 20 Dhu'l-Hijja 823 (26 December 1420). Yardım speaks of seven deeds and supplements, recorded on stone and on paper, that can be identified. Hüsameddin, too, names in his biographies the scholars who witnessed the deeds; among them are Rükneddin Nu'man, professor at the Torumtay Madrasa, and Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi of Merzifon. The dates he gives for the deeds in these biographies (such as 818 and 822), however, do not always match those in the documents.

The TDV biographical entry records that in the deeds of this group of foundations, consisting of a mosque, soup kitchen and madrasa, the pasha is referred to only by the title "Celâleddin". The wording Hüsameddin quotes from the deed confirms this: there the founder is named "Celâlü'd-devleti ve'd-dîn Bâyezîd Paşa bin es-Sadru'l-Muvakkar Yahşî Bey". Through passages quoted from the deeds, Hüsameddin also sheds light on the endowment's sources of income. The Double Bath now called the Alaca Hamam was known in Bayezid Pasha's day as the "Hacı Şadgeldi Bath", and specified shares in it had passed to the pasha from Biçaroğlu Hamza Bey, from Sitti Hatun, daughter of Şadgeldi Pashazade Mustafa Bey, and from Benefşe Hatun. The deed dated Safar 821 also mentions shares inherited from Cânî Hatun and Sultan Hundi Hatun. Hüsameddin further writes that the Bayezid Pasha deed contains records concerning the paper mill that Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha had built at the place called Tarabut, and concerning its superintendent. Yardım's study also compiles the names and character of the lands named in the summary of the deed, most of them in the Yeşilırmak valley.

Perhaps the most remarkable document of the endowment is the summary of the deed carved into the living rock at Leğenkaya, on the bank of the Yeşilırmak near the Kuş Bridge. The rock was dressed to a marble-like smoothness up to two metres above the ground, and the text was cut into this surface in relief. About three metres wide and 110 centimetres high, the inscription consists of eight lines and contains 125 words, excluding particles. The TDV entry dates it to Dhu'l-Hijja 820 (January 1418); Yardım gives a narrower range, the middle of Dhu'l-Hijja 820 (19-28 January 1418). The text was first published by İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı and later by Ayverdi. In 2004 Ali Yardım, in his book Amasya Kaya Kitâbesi (Bâyezid Paşa İmâreti Vakfiyesi), published the Arabic text of this inscription, badly damaged after nearly six centuries of exposure to the elements, together with its transliteration and translation.

Yardım's book also extracts from the documents the officials of the soup kitchen and their wages, on which the distribution of the endowment's revenues was based, as well as the kitchen's expenses. In the same study the deed text cut in an intricate stacked script on a stone band 25.5 metres long on the portico pediment of the mosque, an abridgement of the rock inscription, was read metre by metre from its badly worn state and published with a translation. Hüsameddin also notes that the deed was carved outside the mosque, on red marble resembling a band, on the square arch on which the dome rests. The summary carved into the rock and the band on the mosque's façade are the product of an unusual choice: writing the terms of the endowment in stone before the eyes of the city.

The Plan of the Building

The Bayezid Pasha Mosque is one of the finest examples of the tabhane or zaviye mosque type that was very widespread in early Ottoman architecture. Foreign art historians long referred to mosques of this form by names that did not indicate their function, such as "inverted T type" or "Bursa type". After Eyice pointed out that they were in fact tabhane or zaviye mosques, other names tied only to form, such as "side-winged", "multi-functional" and "cross-axial", were also coined. In Eyice's view the function is plainly visible in the Bayezid Pasha Mosque, because the domed rooms on either side, with their hearths and the small stucco-decorated niche shelves on both sides of each hearth, are tabhane spaces resembling the houses of the period. Some sources also note that, apart from certain details, the plan of the mosque resembles that of the Green Mosque built in Bursa in the same years.

The mosque is entered from the last-congregation portico on the north. The main portal stands at the end of a deep, domed entrance iwan and is crowned by a muqarnas hood. Between the lower edge of the hood and the door arch are an inscription and carved decoration, and niches flank the door on either side. Hüsameddin, too, finds the door large and very skilfully made, writing that its top and sides are adorned with flowers carved in relief on marble. Beyond the entrance one passes into two domed spaces that follow one another on the central axis, separated by a large arch. The first space is covered by a dome about 8.70 metres in diameter with a lantern at its crown. Eyice notes that it was originally conceived as a covered courtyard and later incorporated into the prayer area, and says that a fountain may once have stood at its very centre. Of the six spaces opening onto this covered courtyard, four are domed and two are small, and all are tabhane rooms. A blind arch on each of the two side walls of the courtyard space preserves the memory of the four-iwan arrangement around a courtyard found in the earliest Central Asian Turkish architecture.

The prayer hall proper stands one step higher and is covered by a smaller, flatter dome. Hüsameddin describes this difference in level in his own words: the floor of the mosque is not flat, the upper half of the interior being one arşın higher than the lower, and each half forming a square. The transition to the dome is made by triangles. The mihrab is of stone and covered with very rich carving and relief; Eyice finds the decoration skilful but also too crowded, while Hüsameddin considers the mihrab and minbar "very elegant" and small. Between the tabhane rooms on the right a narrow stone stair rises to the galleries above, and from here one could formerly also reach the minaret. In the same place another narrow stair leads to a latrine built for the tabhane guests. The prayer hall is lit by two windows on each of three sides, with two in each of the side spaces and one more on the north. Above the large lower windows are pointed-arched stucco windows with coloured glass, and each face of the octagonal drum of the central dome has a window.

The use of the side rooms changed over time. Hüsameddin writes that two rooms inside the mosque were used as lecture rooms and, being reckoned as a madrasa, were assigned to many scholars. In his biographies, when describing Bayezid Pasha, he also says that in Amasya the pasha had "a madrasa comprising rooms within the mosque". The TDV biographical entry likewise records that the deeds mention a madrasa together with the mosque and soup kitchen. These records show that at least some of the tabhane rooms were used as teaching rooms in later centuries.

The Last-Congregation Portico and the Stonework

The most striking part of the mosque is the last-congregation portico on its north side. Six thick square piers, joined to one another and to the main wall by heavy pointed arches, form five bays. Each bay is covered by a dome resting on an octagonal base reached through Turkish triangles. The piers are built of fine ashlar up to the springing of the arches, while the arches are made of white marble and red stone laid in alternation. Slightly projecting marble frames surround the arches, and rosettes in the form of carved nail heads are set between them. Inside the two central rosettes the name Muhammad is written four times in interlaced Kufic. Along a red stone band that runs the full length of the façade beneath the muqarnas cornice, the mosque's endowment deed is carved in relief script; the upper part is decorated with scrolling branch and leaf motifs.

The interior of the central dome is richly decorated with muqarnas and lozenge motifs. The interiors of the other domes are plain or take the form of a wheel or a spiral. Eyice records as a feature seen in no other mosque the presence of a small pool with a fountain on the right and on the left of the floor of the portico platform. These pools also appear in Hüsameddin's description; the author says that in each of the two raised places in front of the mosque there was a small pool on marble, carved with flowers. The outer face of the portico is also worked with muqarnas cornices and bands of geometric ornament. The courtyard wall that once surrounded the mosque, and the kitchen and soup kitchen on one side of it, no longer exist.

Woodwork

The woodwork of the mosque has a value of its own. The wooden leaves of the main portal, with their geometric interlace and the inscriptions carved in their upper parts, can, according to Eyice, be counted among the masterpieces of Turkish woodwork. The few window shutters that survive are examples of plainer and simpler woodwork. Local descriptions likewise count the portal and the window shutters among the rarest works of Ottoman woodwork. Yardım's study documented the crown portal of the mosque and its original wooden door leaves, the portico piers and the faces of the cornice, with their inscriptions, in photographs, squeezes and drawings.

The End of Bayezid Pasha

The end of the vizier who built the mosque casts a shadow over the building's history as well. In Çelebi Mehmed's last years Bayezid Pasha also took part in suppressing the movement of Sheikh Bedreddin. According to the TDV entry, in 1420 he first defeated the rebels who had gathered around Bedreddin's disciples, such as Börklüce Mustafa and Torlak Kemal, and then marched against Sheikh Bedreddin, who was gathering followers in the Deliorman region. At Çelebi Mehmed's wish, he kept the sultan's death secret for forty days until his son Prince Murad arrived, thereby forestalling a likely outbreak of strife. The reason for the secrecy was that Murad's uncle Mustafa, held hostage by Byzantium, was to be released after the sultan's death under the terms of an agreement. In May 1421 Murad II came to the throne and Bayezid Pasha kept his position as vizier in the early days. Mustafa, now free and known as Düzmece ("the Impostor"), however, moved against the legitimate ruler.

The aged vizier was sent against Mustafa. He crossed the Bosphorus to the Rumelian shore and, with the few soldiers he had, met Mustafa's forces at Sazlıdere near Edirne. When most of his men went over to the other side he was forced to surrender, and the next day he was killed at the instigation of İzmiroğlu Cüneyd Bey (1421). His grave is at Sazlıdere. The TDV entry describes him as harsh in temperament, cautious and authoritarian, and counts him among the greatest of the Ottoman grand viziers. The same entry writes that the standing he had gained drew the jealousy of viziers of Turkish origin such as Çandarlı İbrahim and Hacı İvaz Pasha, and that for this reason, towards the end of his life, he was sent to Rumelia against Düzmece Mustafa partly by design. Hüsameddin, too, believes that the pasha was sent on this campaign because of the rivalry of the second vizier, Çandarlızade İbrahim Pasha.

Hüsameddin's account departs from the common view in the details and date of the death. According to him Mustafa first made the captured pasha his own grand vizier, but when he sensed that the pasha remained loyal to Murad II and was plotting against him, he had him killed at Sazlıdere. The author places this event in one passage in Dhu'l-Hijja 825 (November-December 1422) and in others in the year 826 (1422-23), whereas the TDV and other sources give 1421. He writes that Piri Ebubekir Bey and Umur Bey, relatives from Amasya who fought in the pasha's retinue, also died in this affair, while his brother Hamza Pasha escaped and was sent to the province of Aydın.

A detail recorded by Hüsameddin shows that the mosque remained a refuge for Bayezid Pasha's family after his death. The pasha's wife Safiye Hatun was the daughter of Şadgeldi Pashazade Devatdar Ahmed Pasha, lord of Amasya. After her husband's death she came from Edirne to Amasya, lived in the garden and pavilion attached to the Bayezid Pasha Mosque, and died in 831 (1427-28). Hüsameddin also lists the pasha's sons, Mehmed, İsa and Hamza, and his daughters, Hatice, Fatıma and Ayşe. The mosque's founder thus lost his life, seven years after building it, far from Amasya as the result of a court rivalry, but his line remained in Amasya for centuries at the head of the endowment he had founded.

The Later Centuries of the Endowment

The administration (tevliyet) of the endowment belonged, by the terms of the deed, to the pasha's descendants. Hüsameddin's biographies make it possible to trace this line over several centuries. Hasan Bey, son of Mirliva İsa Bey of the pasha's line, was trustee of his ancestor's endowments when he became a sanjak governor in 918 (1512), and distinguished himself at the Battle of Çaldıran in 1514. Bayezid Bey, who was assigned to reside in Amasya in the reign of Mehmed II, also appears in the records in 865 (1460-61) as trustee of the Bayezid Pasha endowment. Besides Amasya, the endowment also held properties in Bursa; Hüsameddin writes that Şerif Abdullah Bey, who became trustee of the pasha's endowments in Amasya and Bursa on the death of his father Mehmed Bey in 1141 (1728-29), owned a large mansion and garden adjoining the Bayezid Pasha Mosque.

In time the hereditary trusteeship came to be shared with officials from outside. Hüsameddin notes that the trusteeship had been reserved for the pasha's descendants, but that when the line died out it was given from around 1100 (1688-89) onwards to veterans leaving the palace household (Enderun), and that in 1251 (1835-36) the endowment was attached to the Ministry of Imperial Endowments. The trustees and deputy trustees of this period appear one by one in the biographies: among them are a cavalryman enrolled in the silahdar division in 1011 (1602-03), an Enderun agha who became overseer of the endowment in 1068 (1657-58), a man of Amasya who served as deputy trustee in 1099-1103 (1687-92) and later became chief butcher of the imperial army, İbrahim Çelebi, deputy trustee in 1113 (1701-02), and a turban agha sent to Amasya with the Bayezid Pasha trusteeship in 1210 (1795-96). There are small discrepancies of date among these records, and when the trusteeship passed entirely out of the family cannot be determined with certainty.

The mosque also remained a centre of learning and preaching for centuries. Hüsameddin's biographies record that a Nakşibendi sheikh who was preacher of the Bayezid Pasha Mosque died around 986 (1578-79), and that Şeyhzade, who was both preacher and sheikh of the soup kitchen, died in 1055 (1645-46). In the eighteenth century the headship of the soup kitchen passed within one family: on the death of Yahya Efendi in 1159 (1746) his son Ehlullah Efendi, and on Ehlullah's death in 1171 (1757) his son Feyzullah Efendi, became sheikh of the soup kitchen. There were also teachers who lectured in the mosque's lecture rooms: the lecture room was assigned in 1210 (1795-96) to Veysi Beyzade es-Seyyid el-Hac Mehmed Efendi and then to his descendants, a scholar of the same family became professor of Bayezid Pasha on the death of his father in 1221 (1806-07), and at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1313 (1895-96), the mosque's lectern sheikhdom was given to a scholar. Hüsameddin counts the Bayezid Pasha soup kitchen first among the five great soup kitchens and five tabhanes of Amasya.

Later Centuries and Repairs

The mosque also caught the attention of Evliya Çelebi, who came to Amasya around 1646. Among the city's mosques, Evliya describes the Bayezid Pasha Mosque as "bâğ-ı İrem-misâl", a garden like the Garden of Iram. Considering the garden and pavilion recorded by Hüsameddin and the mosque's position on the riverbank, Evliya's comparison reflects the building's surroundings in that period well.

Information on the repairs the mosque underwent comes from its inscriptions. Ayverdi suggested that a four-couplet verse inscription in ta'liq script in the inner left corner of the qibla wall refers to a major repair carried out in 1305 (1887-88) by a benefactor named Mazhar. Yardım, too, published this four-line Turkish inscription as one prepared on the occasion of the repair of 1887-88. The mosque's minaret disappeared in a later period. A photograph dated 1927 in Olcay's book shows the Bayezid Pasha quarter and the mosque's minaret "before its collapse"; Eyice's remark that one could formerly reach the minaret from the stair also confirms this loss. The minaret is said to have fallen in the earthquake of 1939, but no document confirming this date has been found.

The mosque was repaired by the General Directorate of Foundations in 2006 and is open for worship today. The rock inscription at Leğenkaya, however, was long neglected. Examinations carried out under a 2024 decision of the Samsun Regional Board for the Conservation of Cultural Property found that the surface of the inscription and its surroundings had been damaged with spray paint. In the restoration carried out by the General Directorate of Foundations and completed in spring 2026, the paint residue was removed by micro-precision blasting with travertine stone dust, the weakened surface was consolidated, and the legibility of the text was improved by light shading with earth pigment. The protective platform in front of the inscription was enlarged, the inscription was enclosed in a transparent protective system, and lighting was installed for visibility at night. The regional directorate of foundations that carried out the restoration announced that the work is unique in the world as an endowment deed carved directly into the living rock; this characterisation is the institution's own assessment.

Its Place in Early Ottoman Architecture

Semavi Eyice regards the Bayezid Pasha Mosque as an ambitious work of great value which, in the first period of Ottoman architecture, reconciled old Central Asian building traditions with the new artistic taste of the age. In his view a distinctive and beautiful form was achieved in the plan, and rich and careful workmanship was shown in construction and decoration. The successive domed spaces, the hearths in the side rooms, the galleries reached by stairs and the latrine built for guests show that a place of worship was at the same time an institution that received travellers. Within the building outlook of Çelebi Mehmed's time, the founding of such a building in a city like Amasya, on an important route, is consistent with this function.

Keskin's assessment makes it possible to look at the building from another angle. Through the works he built in Amasya and Bursa after the Interregnum, Bayezid Pasha took part in the rebuilding of the Ottoman lands, and he gathered around himself craftsmen who were his own slaves, poets and musicians. In this respect Keskin sees him as a special example revealing the intellectual inclinations of the fifteenth-century Ottoman ruling elite. Taken together with the craftsmen's signatures on it, the endowment deed carved on its façade and on the rock by the river, and the literary circle its founder patronised, the mosque in Amasya is one of the rare surviving records of an ambitious charitable institution founded by a vizier in his own city in the Ottoman world after the Interregnum.

Chronology

1402: The Battle of Ankara; the struggle for the throne among the princes (the Interregnum) begins in the Ottoman state.

805 (1402-03): According to Hüsameddin, Bayezid Pasha brings Çelebi Mehmed from Bolu to Amasya.

1413: Çelebi Mehmed restores unity in the country; according to the TDV, Bayezid Pasha is appointed grand vizier and beylerbey of Rumelia (Hüsameddin places the grand vizierate in 1416-17).

April 1414 (Muharram 817): The mosque is built by Bayezid Pasha, according to the inscription on its door; in the same year Abdülvâsi Çelebi's Halîlnâme is completed.

April 1415 (Safar 818): According to Hüsameddin, a great earthquake devastates Amasya; Ayverdi links a repair to it (conjecture).

January 1418 (Dhu'l-Hijja 820): Bayezid Pasha's principal endowment deed (19 January 1418) is drawn up; the rock inscription at Leğenkaya is dated to this month.

1418-1420: Supplements to the deed dated 5 February 1418, March-April 1418, 2 October 1418 and 26 December 1420.

1418 (821): The pasha's sister Pasha Hatun builds a small mosque in the citadel quarter.

1419 (822): Date of the plaque commemorating the architect Ya'qub b. Abdullah.

1420: Bayezid Pasha defeats Börklüce Mustafa and Torlak Kemal and marches against Sheikh Bedreddin.

1421: Under Murad II, Bayezid Pasha surrenders to Düzmece Mustafa at Sazlıdere and is killed (Hüsameddin gives 1422-23).

1427-28 (831): The pasha's wife Safiye Hatun dies; she had lived in the pavilion in the mosque's garden.

About 1646: Evliya Çelebi visits Amasya and mentions the mosque.

Around 1100 (1688-89): According to Hüsameddin, the line having died out, the trusteeship is given to veterans of the palace household.

1835-36 (1251): The endowment is attached to the Ministry of Imperial Endowments.

1887-88 (1305): Major repair by the benefactor Mazhar (according to Ayverdi).

1927: In the photograph published by Olcay the minaret is still standing.

2004: Ali Yardım publishes the rock inscription together with the mosque's inscriptions and endowment deeds.

2006: Repair by the General Directorate of Foundations.

2026: Restoration of the rock inscription at Leğenkaya is completed.

Sources

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Ali Yardım, Amasya Kaya Kitâbesi (Bâyezid Paşa İmâreti Vakfiyesi), Amasya Governorship Cultural Publications, Ankara 2004 (review by Vehbi Günay: Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi, XX/1, 2005, pp. 225-227).
  • Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, "Bayezid Paşa: Vezir, Entelektüel, Sanat Hamisi", Osmanlı Araştırmaları, 48, 2016, pp. 1-37.

Official sources

  • Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Culture Portal, "Bayezid Paşa Camii - Amasya".

Other sources

  • Semavi Eyice, "Bayezid Paşa Camii", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 5, Istanbul 1992, pp. 243-244. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Aydın Taneri, "Bayezid Paşa", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Abdülvâsi Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Bayezid Paşa Camii".
  • "Amasya'da 600 yıllık tarih ortaya çıktı", Vatan, 6 April 2026.
  • A. Gabriel, Monuments Turcs d'Anatolie, Paris 1934, II, 25-31 (from the bibliography of the TDV entry).
  • E. Hakkı Ayverdi, Osmanlı Mi'mârîsi II, pp. 4-25 (from the bibliography of the TDV entry).

Online sources