In the Ottoman sources, as with most sultans' consorts, the life of Bülbül Hatun fits into a few lines: the wife of Bayezid II, the mother of Şehzade Ahmed, a charitable lady of Amasya and Ladik. Her year of birth, her family and her origins are unknown; what she left behind, namely her buildings, her two endowment deeds and her tomb in Bursa, makes up nearly everything that can be said about her today. When Amasya's identity as the "city of princes" is described, the emphasis naturally falls on the princes who served as governors of its sanjak. The mother who came to the city with her son and had a complex built on the bank of the Yeşilırmak is, more often than not, left in the shadows.

Who She Was

Bülbül Hatun was one of the consorts of Sultan Bayezid II and the mother of Şehzade Ahmed. There is no reliable information about her origin, date of birth or family. One secondary source notes that the consorts of Ottoman sultans by custom came to the imperial harem as concubines through the slave trade and suggests that she arrived by the same route; this is, however, an assumption, and no definitive document on the matter has been found. The source records that Bülbül Hatun entered Bayezid's harem when he was still a prince and governor of Amasya. Amasya, then, is a city that meets her at the very beginning of her life.

According to the same source she had three children by Bayezid: Hatice Sultan (1463-1500), Hundi Sultan (about 1464-1511) and Şehzade Ahmed (about 1466-1513). This information rests on a secondary source, and the birth years are given with small differences depending on the source; that Bülbül Hatun was Ahmed's mother is common to all the sources examined. Hatice Sultan married the madrasa professor Kara Mustafa Pasha in 1479, was widowed in 1483 when her husband was executed on the charge of supporting Şehzade Cem's claim to the throne, and married Faik Pasha the following year. Hatice Sultan, who died in Bursa, was buried in the tomb built by her son. Hundi Sultan married Hersekzade Ahmed Pasha in 1484, and the marriage produced at least two sons and four daughters. These marriages of her daughters are a record of the ties that bound Bülbül Hatun's family to palace and vizierial circles.

Some publications call her "haseki". Since no source documenting this title could be found, she is referred to here only as "the wife of Bayezid II".

At Her Son's Side in Amasya

In the Ottoman Empire, the training of princes as provincial governors in sanjaks was a matter of state practice, and when a prince set out for his sanjak his mother usually went with him and took her place in the internal life of the provincial palace. Şehzade Ahmed was first sent to the sanjak of Çorum; his years of service there are given in the sources as 1480 or 1481 to 1483. He then became governor of Amasya and held the post from 1483 until his death in 1513. Bülbül Hatun stayed at his side; the study in Vakıflar Dergisi states explicitly that she remained with her son while Şehzade Ahmed was sanjak governor in Amasya.

Ahmed's long tenure ensured that Amasya remained a princely seat after Bayezid as well. The sources describe him as a poet, scholar and patron of the arts, and record that the poet Mihri Hatun was among those around him. In his father's eyes he was the likeliest candidate for the throne, and he had the backing of the grand vizier Hadım Ali Pasha. Moreover, his sanjak was the closest to Istanbul of his brothers' sanjaks; Selim was in Trabzon and Korkut in Antalya. For this reason Bülbül Hatun's years in Amasya can be read as the presence of a mother in a provincial palace and also as a close witness to her son's political fate. Ahmed's years as governor and his struggle for the throne are the subject of a separate biography; here only the mother's bond with the city and with her son's fate is told.

Charitable Works and Endowments

Bülbül Hatun's name is remembered mostly through the works she had built. According to the Vakıflar Dergisi study, based on documents of the General Directorate of Foundations and the Ottoman Archive, she had a charitable disposition and dedicated all her property to the continuation of the charitable institutions she had built in Amasya and Ladik. The study lists her works in Amasya as a mosque, a school and a fountain, and reports that in Ladik she had a mosque and an imaret (public kitchen) built. The same secondary source adds that she had a madrasa built in Bursa and that in 1505 she endowed part of her properties to the Enderun Mosque in Amasya. Because these two items do not appear in the summary of the endowment study, they must be regarded as taken from a secondary source.

A chain of endowments of this kind shows the economic power a lady could manage in her own name. Mosques served worship, schools the education of children, and imarets the feeding of the poor and of travelers. For these to function there had to be income-producing properties, trustees to manage those properties, and salaried staff. Bülbül Hatun's endowment deeds set down precisely this arrangement in writing.

The Hatuniye Complex

The mosque that gave its name to Amasya's Hatuniye Quarter stands on the north bank of the Yeşilırmak and was built by Bülbül Hatun in 1510. This date is repeated in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's presentation and in short encyclopedic entries; the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, however, dates the building to "the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century". The mosque was built together with a children's school (sıbyan mektebi) and an imaret. To its east stands the Enderun Mosque of the Danishmendids, and to its west the Yıldız Bath (Çukur Hamam) of the Seljuks. The Ministry's presentation describes the complex as a group of buildings consisting of a mosque, a bath and a children's school, while the encyclopedia entry mentions the adjacent bath as a Seljuk work; the sources therefore differ on whether the bath belongs to Bülbül Hatun's complex or is merely a neighboring structure.

The mosque has a rectangular plan and is built of rubble stone. The interior rests on two masonry piers of differing dimensions aligned one behind the other on the axis; two small domes stand in the middle, with two lower cross-vaulted units on each side. According to the TDV entry, this plan type was used in the fifteenth century in places such as Bursa, Alaşehir, Manisa and Dimetoka, and occasionally in Istanbul in the sixteenth century. The interior measures 15.70 by 12.20 meters. The walls, about one meter thick, were reinforced against the floods of the Yeşilırmak up to the level of the upper row of windows and thickened to 2.50 meters. The mosque thus appears as a building strengthened according to the demands of its riverside location.

The northern facade is closed by a five-bay last-congregation porch formed by six columns joined with pointed brick arches. The walls of this section are higher than those of the main prayer hall, and the surface above the arches is decorated with a meander motif covering the whole facade. Of the five small domes covering the porch, only the central one rests on an octagonal drum; the others have none. The frontal wall is built of stone with three courses of vertically laid brick between the stone and is adorned with a geometric brick motif. In place of the inscription above the door, the phrase "Yâ müfettiha'l-ebvâb iftah lenâ hayre'l-bâb" was written in black oil paint on a yellow ground in 1980; the original inscription has not survived. The brick-built, single-balcony minaret rises adjoining the mosque, and its entrance is inside the mosque. The mihrab is a simple round niche, and the wooden minbar is new.

The mosque is entered from the road to the north, through a small courtyard reached by descending steps. The TDV entry mentions in this courtyard a fountain with a basin set in a deep, pointed-arch niche and a vaulted latrine; old photographs also show that the courtyard had a well. The children's school immediately east of the mosque is a single-story, single-room building. Its rubble-stone walls have horizontal brick courses in threes; on the facade with the entrance there are three pointed-arch windows, and above the arches the bricks are laid in varying patterns to form geometric decoration. It is reported that in its original state the building was covered by double domes, which were later demolished and replaced with a wooden roof. Hüseyin Hüsameddin, the author of the Amasya Tarihi, records that the school was very solid and was still used for the same purpose in 1882; he also writes that there were large tabhane rooms on either side of the imaret. That the building east of the mosque is the school referred to is regarded in the TDV entry as "possible".

The Works in Ladik

Bülbül Hatun's charity reaches beyond Amasya. According to the endowment study, she also had a mosque and an imaret built in Ladik. The imaret was an endowed institution in the Ottoman Empire where free meals were distributed and which often combined the functions of soup kitchen and guesthouse; Bülbül Hatun's deeds list in detail who was to benefit from this imaret. The present state of the buildings in Ladik has not been verified here. Even so, it is evident from the documents that the income and charity of the endowments extended beyond the center of Amasya to the surrounding districts.

The Endowment Deeds

Bülbül Hatun regulated the operation of her endowments by two deeds dated 1511 and 1513. Ahmet Gündüz's article, published in 2021 in issue 55 of Vakıflar Dergisi, examines these documents in the light of the deeds in the archive of the General Directorate of Foundations and the records of the Presidential Ottoman Archive. According to the study's summary, the deeds explain in detail what the endowed properties were, who the staff were, what they were to do, what salaries they received and who would benefit from the imaret. The article also treats the endowment's sources of income and the operation of the imaret, and, drawing on the foundation's balance account books, its income and expenditure. These books are valuable because they show how the endowment ran in practice.

The same source further writes that in 1512 she built another complex and endowed a significant property for its expenses. According to it, Bülbül Hatun left the administration of the endowment first to her son Ahmed, and after his death to Ahmed's eldest daughter and her daughters. It interprets this arrangement as a precaution against the possibility that Ahmed might fail to reach the throne. The interpretation is interesting, but it has not been verified because no such record appears in the summary of the endowment study, and it is noted here only for the record. Saying more about the content of the deeds is not possible without consulting the documents directly.

The Struggle for the Throne and the Family

Bülbül Hatun's last years coincide with her son's political collapse. In Bayezid's final period the rivalry among the princes had turned into open civil war; this conflict is known as the period of 1509 to 1513. Ahmed's sanjak seemed advantageous because it was the closest to Istanbul. After Ahmed objected, the post of Selim's son Süleyman in Bolu was changed to Kaffa; Selim regarded this as a move in his brother's favor, asked for a sanjak in Rumeli and, with the support of the Crimean khan, obtained the sanjak of Semendire, but chose not to go there and stayed close to Istanbul. Bayezid took this for rebellion, defeated Selim's forces in August 1511, and Selim fled to Crimea.

Meanwhile Ahmed had been charged with suppressing the Şahkulu rebellion in Anatolia; but instead of fighting, he is said to have tried to draw the soldiers to his own claim to the sultanate and to have left the field. His important supporter Hadım Ali Pasha also died in that rebellion. Hearing of Selim's defeat, Ahmed proclaimed himself sultan of Anatolia, captured Konya and, although his father asked him to return, insisted on behaving there as a sovereign. He wished to march on the capital, but the soldiers blocked his way. Selim returned from Crimea, forced Bayezid to abdicate and took the throne as Selim I.

Ahmed held part of Anatolia in the early period of Selim's reign. He fought Selim's forces at Yenişehir, near Bursa, was defeated, arrested and executed shortly afterward. The sources give the date of the battle as 24 April 1513; in one place the same date appears as 24 March. The April date is adopted here because it is repeated in more sources.

The disaster did not stop with Ahmed. Osman, counted among Ahmed's sons, was killed on Selim's orders in Amasya on 14 April 1513 and buried in the Sultan Bayezid Mosque in Amasya; two other sons, Mustafa and Mehmed, are also recorded as having met the same fate in Amasya. These family losses show how devastating a period Bülbül Hatun passed through when she settled in Bursa. The same source records that in 1513 Fatma Sultan, daughter of Şehzade Mahmud, and her husband Mehmed Çelebi were placed under house arrest because of Qizilbash leanings, and that Fatma Sultan was pardoned only after Bülbül Hatun intervened. This information rests on a secondary source; it nevertheless suggests that Bülbül Hatun's word still carried weight within the dynasty even after she had lost her son.

Bursa and the Tomb at Muradiye

The sources report that Bülbül Hatun settled in Bursa after her son's death and died there in 921 (1515). The secondary source gives her death as "about 1515"; the exact day and month are unknown. The Tomb of Şehzade Ahmed in the Muradiye Complex in Bursa was built by an imperial decree of Yavuz Sultan Selim dated 1513. Its architect was Alâaddin; the building supervisor was Bedreddin Mahmud Bey, and its scribes were Ali, Yusuf, Muhiddin and Mehmed efendis.

On the place of burial there is an important detail. According to the entry describing the Muradiye Complex, the Tomb of Şehzade Ahmed holds, besides Ahmed and Şehzade Korkut, Şehzade Şehinşah, who died during Bayezid's lifetime, Bülbül Hatun, the mother of Şehinşah and Ahmed, and Şehinşah's son Mehmed. The owner of another sarcophagus in the same tomb is disputed; it is thought to belong to Ahmed's daughter Kamer Sultan. The same entry says elsewhere that the tomb of Şehzade Mahmud was built by his mother Bülbül Hatun and that she was later buried there. That these two records do not agree raises the possibility that two different ladies of the same name have been confused, but no definitive conclusion can be reached on the matter. In any case, Şehzade Ahmed's tomb is in Bursa, not in Amasya.

Bülbül Hatun in Amasya's Memory

Today the Hatuniye Mosque and the group of buildings around it are among Amasya's well-known architectural ensembles; the name of the quarter also comes from its founder. The princes have a large share in the city's being called the "city of princes", but the traces of the mothers who raised them and stayed at their side in their sanjaks also remain in stone, in endowment and in the name of a quarter. M. Fatih Müderrisoğlu's article "Şehzade Kenti Amasya'da Bir Kadın Bani: Bülbül Hatun ve Külliyesi" is a separate study that evaluates these traces from the standpoint of women as founders.

Chronology

1463-1466: Her daughter Hatice Sultan and her son Şehzade Ahmed are reported to have been born in these years.

1480-1483: Şehzade Ahmed is in the sanjak of Çorum; Bülbül Hatun accompanies her son.

1483: Ahmed becomes governor of Amasya; the post lasts until 1513.

1505: She is reported to have endowed part of her properties to the Enderun Mosque in Amasya (secondary source).

1510: The Hatuniye Mosque and its complex are built in Amasya.

1511: The first endowment deed is drawn up.

1512: Another complex and endowment are reported to have been established (secondary source).

1513: The second endowment deed is drawn up; Şehzade Ahmed is defeated at Yenişehir and executed; his tomb is built at Muradiye in Bursa.

1515 (H. 921): Bülbül Hatun dies in Bursa and is buried in the Tomb of Şehzade Ahmed at Muradiye.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Gündüz, Ahmet. "Vakfiyeleri Işığında II. Bayezid'in Eşi Bülbül Hatun Vakıfları", Vakıflar Dergisi, issue 55 (2021), pp. 25-53, DergiPark. dergipark.org.tr

Official sources

  • "Hatuniye Camii", Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Culture Portal.

Other sources

Online sources