In the Ottoman period Merzifon was known for its trade and weaving, but to describe the town's history only through market ledgers and caravanserais would leave something out. From the reign of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed (1413-1421) onward, the madrasa founded here sent professors, judges, muftis and Sufis out across Anatolia, and the people who came from the town or taught in it became some of the best-known names in the intellectual life of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Ahmet Suphi Furat, in his study of the scholars trained in Merzifon, stresses how important it is for urban history to bring these biographies together, and he lists them as scholars, men of letters, jurists, Sufis, judges and muftis. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar's History of Amasya describes the same people sometimes in a single line and sometimes over several pages; thanks to these records, gathered from gravestones, notes in the margins of books and endowment deeds, the nearly five-hundred-year life of the Merzifon madrasa can be followed together with the teachers who occupied its chair.

The Setting of the Town and the Founding of the Madrasa

Merzifon lies in the Central Black Sea region on the southern slopes of Mount Tavşan (Taşan), at the edge of the plain of the same name. Its altitude is about 750 metres, and because it stands on the road linking Istanbul and Ankara with the port of Samsun it has been a crossing point throughout history. The history of the area reaches back to the Chalcolithic age. The town is thought to stand on the site of a settlement known in Roman times as Phazemon, and under Roman and Byzantine rule it was attached to Amasya. After the Battle of Manzikert it was conquered by İltegin Gazi, one of the Danishmendid emirs; his son Sihâmüddevle Hüseyin Gazi lived here for a long time, and the place where he stayed survives today as the town's Samadolu (Buğdaylı) quarter. Passing from the Danishmendids to the Anatolian Seljuks, then to the Ilkhanids and the Eretnids, the town became the scene of the rivalry between Kadı Burhâneddin and the emirs of Amasya in the late fourteenth century; Bayezid I (Yıldırım) took it in 1393.

Traces of learning in the town go back further than the Ottoman madrasa. Hüsâmeddîn says that among Merzifon's old quarters he could find none older than the Erzincânî quarter, and he writes that the name survives from the scholar Şerefeddin Mehmed Erzincânî, who lived and taught there until 768 (1366-67); the name of a great city had become the name of a quarter because a teacher kept house and gave lessons there. The Kadı Mahbûb quarter likewise recalls Kadı İmâdeddin Mahbûb, who came from the Mahbûbî family, the well-known jurists of Bukhara. This judge's son, Cemâleddin Ahmed Çelebi, studied with his father and with the scholars of Amasya, became professor of the Merzifon madrasa and then mufti and judge of the town, and died around 847 (1443-44). According to Hüsâmeddîn, the family traced its descent to Sadrüşşerîa Ubeydullah b. Mes'ûd, the famous commentator of Hanafi law.

Merzifon began to take on the appearance of a typical Turkish-Islamic town under the Danishmendids. Its oldest monument is the Muînüddin Pervâne Süleyman Mosque (the Great Mosque), with an inscription dated 1265; it burned in 1904. Under Ottoman rule the town grew quickly. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), during the years he ruled in Amasya, came to Merzifon and had a palace built here; the town's prominence in Ottoman history began with this closeness. Records from 1520 show thirty-four quarters and an estimated population of five to six thousand; Muslims lived in twenty-eight of these quarters and non-Muslims in six. Some of the quarter names point to local notables of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The ground for intellectual life took shape within this picture: the madrasa in the Câmi-i Cedîd quarter, the soup kitchen built in the İmaret quarter in 1419 by Devlet Hatun, mother of Çelebi Mehmed, together with a mosque and a zaviye, the Medreseönü Mosque built by Murad II (1427) and the Tâceddin İbrâhim Paşa Mosque are recorded as endowed foundations in the registers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and they defined the physical appearance of the town in that age.

The Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa

The centre of educational life in Merzifon was the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa, known among the people as the Merzifon Sultâniyesi. According to the Arabic inscription in thuluth script over the arch of the entrance iwan, construction began by order of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed in 817 (1414) and was completed in 820 (1417) by Umur Bey b. Ali. Hüsâmeddîn gives the building's date as 818 (1415-16), adds that the sultan built a bathhouse along with the madrasa and arranged its endowments, and describes it as "a most magnificent house of learning in masonry"; in his view the madrasa raised the honour of Merzifon and multiplied its scholars. The inscription also names the architect: Ebû Bekir b. Muhammed Hamza el-Müşeymeş. The same master's name appears with the nisba "Dımaşkî" in one of the inscriptions of the Bayezid Paşa Mosque in Amasya, dated 1414; he belonged, that is, to a family of builders of Damascene origin who worked in Anatolia, and he was the father of Ahmed b. Ebû Bekir, who is named in the inscription of the Karaca Bey Mosque in Ankara, dated 1427-28.

The building stands out among early Ottoman madrasas for its monumental appearance. Its design, with an open courtyard and four iwans, is one of the oldest madrasa schemes of Turkish-Islamic architecture, and it counts among the examples in which this scheme was kept alive to a certain degree in the Ottoman period. The entrance iwan projects from the mass of the building and opens outward through a pointed arch built of dark red and pale yellow stone; this two-coloured masonry recalls Mamluk architecture. The clock tower above the iwan, whose cylindrical brick shaft resembles a minaret, was added later, in 1865, by Ziyâ Paşa, governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya. The wooden leaves of the courtyard door, decorated with geometric motifs, rumi patterns and hadith phrases in thuluth, are now displayed in the Ankara Ethnography Museum.

Its plan rests on perfect symmetry. At the centre is a square open courtyard about fifteen metres to a side, which once had a fountain in its middle. Opposite the entrance iwan is a domed iwan that served as the summer classroom, and on the other axis are two closed, that is winter, classrooms of the same size. Between these four units twenty cells are set, five in each interval. The cells are square in plan and vaulted; besides a door opening onto the courtyard, each was equipped with slit windows, cupboard niches and a hearth. The student's daily life was spent in these rooms, while lessons were held in the classrooms and in the iwans facing the courtyard. A barrel-vaulted portico, with pointed arches built of two kinds of stone, links all the units to the courtyard. The madrasa's resemblance to the Hacı Halil Paşa Madrasa in Gümüşhacıköy, built between 1413 and 1415, is striking; there, however, the courtyard is covered by a dome and the entrance iwan opens toward the courtyard.

The madrasa's endowment was known after its founder as the "Çelebi Sultan endowment" or "Evkâf-ı Sultâniyye," and for centuries it was managed by a trustee (mütevelli). Among those recorded in this office are Kâsım Çelebi, a descendant of Ahmed Çelebi, chief secretary (reîsülküttâb) under Mehmed II; in the seventeenth century İbrâhim Paşa, one of Kara Mustafa Paşa's men; and in the eighteenth century Hacı Yûsuf Ağa, sent to Merzifon from the palace. The endowment's revenues covered the costs of the professor, the students and the building; that the trusteeship went to men appointed from the palace and pasha circles shows that the madrasa was not regarded as an ordinary institution of the town.

The Professors Who Held the Chair

The Founding Generation: Ferîdeddin and Şücâeddin İlyas

After its foundation this madrasa, one of the important institutions of learning of the period, had distinguished scholars such as Ferîdüddîn-i Dîvânî, Seydî Şemseddin Ahmed-i Kırîmî, Rükneddin Abdülkerim of Amasya and Nizâmeddin Abdurrahman-ı Âftâbî as professors. Hüsâmeddîn gives these four names in the same order and says that the madrasa was renowned for such learned men until the year 1260 (1844). The madrasa's first professor was Ferîdeddin Mehmed b. İbrâhim; his nisba appears as "Dîvânî" in the TDV encyclopedia and as "Devvânî" in Hüsâmeddîn. He was a student of Seyyid Şerîf Cürcânî and rose as far as the office of military judge (kazasker). In the first years of Murad II, in 831 (1427-28), when the officers of state were replaced wholesale, he was dismissed from that office, returned to Merzifon and became professor of the Sultâniye for a second time. Hüsâmeddîn notes that he saw this date in a copy of the Şerh-i Mufassal in whose margin Ferîdeddin had recorded it in his own hand, in a fine ta'lik script. Ferîdeddin died in Merzifon in 842 (1438-39). Among those who passed through his classes were Tâceddin İbrâhim of Niksar, Mevlânâ Cündî, who became professor of the Torumtay Madrasa in Amasya, Zeyneddin Mehmed, son of the judge of Zeytun, and Teberrük Çelebi, who settled in Merzifon and taught at the Hacı Hasanzâde Madrasa; this last record shows that a smaller madrasa was also at work in the town beside the Sultâniye.

Ferîdeddin's successor, Şücâeddin İlyas b. Yahyâ b. Hamza el-Merzifonî, is counted the greatest scholar the town itself produced. After receiving his first lessons in Amasya from Gümüşlüzâde Celâleddin Abdurrahman Çelebi, he went to Transoxiana and studied in Bukhara with Hâfızüddin Muhammed b. Muhammed el-Buhârî, known as Hâce Muhammed Pârsâ. In 821 (1418) he returned to Merzifon with his diploma (icâzet) and devoted himself to teaching; his students became so numerous that, in Hüsâmeddîn's phrase, "in his age Merzifon became a university." On Ferîdeddin's death he became professor of the Sultâniye, then mufti and judge of Merzifon, and he died on 10 Cemâziyelâhir 852 (August 1448). Hüsâmeddîn visited his grave, read the date of death on the gravestone himself, and traced his chain of learning through Muhammed Pârsâ and Ebû Tâhir el-Buhârî back to Sadrüşşerîa; he presents him as a scholar deep in legal theory and the rational sciences, "the master of all in the province of Rûm." He is also the scholar called "İlyas er-Rûmî" in Furat's study, after whom, Furat notes, the chair passed to Seyyid Ahmed of Crimea. Şücâeddin İlyas's line continued in Merzifon as a family of scholars: his descendant Hasan Efendi became professor of the Sultâniye in the middle of the sixteenth century, while another descendant, Hayreddin Hızır Efendi, rose to become tutor to Şehzade Mustafa.

In these years there was frequent movement between the chair and the offices of mufti and judge. Celâleddin İlyas Çelebi of Merzifon, after studying in Amasya and Bursa, became professor of the Sultâniye, taught for years, and is seen as mufti of Merzifon and, in 834 (1430-31), as its judge. Bahâeddin Mehmed Çelebi of Aleppo, after studying in the Arab lands, settled in Merzifon; known for his learning and piety, he became professor of the Sultâniye and then judge of Merzifon, and he died around 863 (1458-59). The settling in the town of this man, whom the people called "Arab Çelebi," shows that the madrasa also drew teachers from outside.

Seyyid Ahmed of Crimea and the Age of Mehmed II

After İlyas er-Rûmî, Seyyid Ahmed b. Abdullah of Crimea took over teaching and instruction at the madrasa. Hüsâmeddîn presents him as a student of Mevlânâ Kemâl el-Kırîmî and writes that he was appointed professor of the Sultâniye on Şücâeddin's death in 852. His son Muhyiddin Mehmed, according to a note kept in his father's own hand, had been born in Amasya on 16 Şâban 841 (February 1438); Seyyid Ahmed had therefore spent some time in Amasya before coming to Merzifon. Among his students in Merzifon were men who would train the next generation of Amasya: Aydınzâde Hüsâmeddin Hasan, Kırıkzâde Hüsâmeddin Hüseyin, who rose to be chief judge of Amasya, Cemâlîzâde Bahâeddin Mehmed, twice judge of Sivas, and Ahîzâde Yûsuf, who completed his training in Istanbul under Molla Hüsrev. Seyyid Ahmed later moved to the Torumtay Madrasa in Amasya, and in 871 (1466-67) he went to Istanbul with his son.

Ahmet Suphi Furat wrote a separate article on this scholar and presented him as a man of learning who enjoyed the favour of Mehmed II. Davut Kılıç's study, based on Bursalı Mehmed Tâhir's Kırım Müellifleri, also lists his works: a gloss on Beyzâvî's Qur'an commentary titled Misbâhu't-ta'dîl fî keşfi envâri't-tenzîl, the Şerh-i Miftâhu'l-gayb written in 874 (1469-70), a Persian commentary on Şebüsterî's Gülşen-i Râz written in 879 (1474-75), and glosses on the Şerh-i Akâid and the Telvîh. Manuscript copies of the Telvîh gloss and of el-Muavvel are given in Furat's bibliography with various collections of the Süleymaniye Library. Seyyid Ahmed died in Istanbul in 879 (1474-75). Kılıç writes that he was buried at the mosque his son Muhyiddin Efendi built at Ağayokuşu; the record in the Künhü'l-ahbâr that he lies buried in Bursa has not been documented. Hüsâmeddîn likewise relates that his son built a masjid and a library beside his father's grave near the Molla Kestelli Mosque and endowed his books to it.

Another scholar who taught in Merzifon in the reign of Murad II was Abdullah el-Amâsî. Muhammed Kocevî, father of Muhyiddin Seyyidi Çelebi (d. 931/1524), whom Taşköprülüzâde mentions among the scholars of the age of Bayezid II, was also a professor at the Merzifon madrasa. What is known of most of these names rests on biographical works such as Taşköprülüzâde's eş-Şekâiku'n-Nu'mâniyye and its Turkish translation by Mecdî of Edirne. As a result, the lives of these people are mostly known from a record of a few lines, and detailed works are accessible for only some of them.

The Reigns of Bayezid II and Selim I

The madrasa was also closely tied to the princely circle of Bayezid II in Amasya. Nizâmeddin Abdurrahman Âftâbî (Âfitâbî in Hüsâmeddîn), whose name stands among the first holders of the chair, was a scholar and poet of Amasya. He presented odes to Şehzade Bayezid (Prince Bayezid), then governor of Amasya, and joined his circle of companions; in 883 (1478) he too suffered from the events that shook the prince's household and was sent to Ankara. When Bayezid came to the throne in 886 (1481), he became professor of the Merzifon Sultâniye, then served as judge of Ankara and Sivas; in 903 (1497-98) he retired and became trustee of the Sultan Bayezid endowments in Amasya and companion to Şehzade Ahmed, and he died early in 907 (1501). The biographical collections of Lâtîfî and Âşık Çelebi quote samples of his poetry; one quatrain recorded by Hüsâmeddîn runs: "Gafleti ko gözün aç ey gâfil / Elde iken koma reh-i talebi" (Leave heedlessness, open your eyes, O heedless one; while it is in your hands, do not abandon the path of seeking).

Koca Emîr İbrâhim Efendi, who held the chair in the same years, was the son of Sadreddin Mehmed, one of the Khorasani seyyids who had settled in Amasya, and he was born in Amasya in 844 (1440-41). He studied in İznik under Hocazâde Muslihuddin Mustafa and in Istanbul tutored the children of Grand Vizier Karamânî Mehmed Paşa; in 886, on the pasha's execution, he was sent away as professor to Şebinkarahisar, later came to the Merzifon Sultâniye, and in 896 (1490-91) went to Manisa as tutor to Şehzade Korkud. This example shows clearly that the chair served as a waiting place for scholars removed from the centre but not out of favour, and at the same time as a step on the road to a prince's tutorship.

Among the scholars of the reign of Selim I (Selim the Grim) is Molla Bünyad b. Muhammed b. Ivaz b. Murad b. Osman er-Rûmî el-Merzifonî. Hüsâmeddîn gives his life in more detail. Son of Mevlânâ Mehmed Çelebi of Merzifon, Bünyâd Efendi studied in Amasya and then went to Istanbul to attend the lessons of Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi, becoming his secretary and, during his tenure as military judge, his clerk of appointments (tezkireci). In 917 (1511), when his teacher was dismissed and his house plundered, he fled to Merzifon; when Müeyyedzâde was restored to the military judgeship of Rumelia, Bünyâd Efendi became professor of the Sultâniye, and he died after 926 (1520). He is remembered as a master of legal theory and theology. Hüsâmeddîn writes that he gathered his teacher's works and his own lines of descent and learning in a work titled Risâle-i Âşûriyye, and that he saw and read this treatise. His son Şeyh Abdülganî Efendi joined the ranks of well-known Sufis; the Ganîzâde family of Amasya descends from him.

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

In the sixteenth century the chair circulated within Merzifon's established families of scholars. Cemâleddin Mehmed Efendi, grandson of Abdurrahîm, the Zeynî order's deputy in Merzifon, studied in Amasya with Hatîb Kâsım Efendi and Şeyhîzâde Abdî Efendi and taught for years in his home town, becoming professor of the Sultâniye and mufti; later he turned to Sufism, became sheikh of his grandfather's zaviye and preacher of the Great Mosque, and died in 938 (1531-32). This example, in which the bond between the madrasa's first generation and the lodge continued within a single family, shows that the two circles in Merzifon were not cut off from each other. Hayreddin Hızır Efendi, one of Şücâeddin İlyas's descendants, was born in Merzifon around 890 (1485); after moving through the madrasas of Amasya he became tutor to Şehzade Mustafa on the death of Seyrek Muhyiddin in 947 (1540-41), held this post for six years, and died in 953 (1546-47). Hüsâmeddîn in one place calls him professor of the Sultâniye, and elsewhere writes that when he was appointed tutor he was teaching at the Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa in Amasya. He left a gloss on the tasdikât section of the Şerh-i Şemsiyye and several treatises.

In the same century an Ahmed Efendi, descended from Ahmed Çelebi son of Ahî Toy, chief secretary under Mehmed II, became professor of the Sultâniye, then mufti and judge, and died in 967 (1559-60). Bahşâyiş Çelebi of Merzifon, who studied with Hâfızeddin Mehmed Berdaî, professor of the Sultâniye, is seen in 958 (1551) as professor of the town's Ramazâniye Madrasa. By the seventeenth century the professorship of the Sultâniye and the office of mufti of Merzifon were usually united in the same person. Hayâtî Ebûbekir Efendi, from the village of Sehmüddevle near the town, studied in Amasya with Kadızâde Küçük Mehmed Ali Efendi, then taught in Merzifon for more than twenty years and died in 1068 (1657-58) as professor of the Sultâniye and mufti; he is also known as a poet and trained many students. In 1076 (1665-66), when Recebzâde Mehmed Efendi, mufti of Merzifon, died, he was succeeded by Müftüzâde Abdullah Efendi, professor of the Sultâniye; Iydî Bayram Efendi of Merzifon, for his part, rose from the professorship of the Sultâniye to the office of mufti of Amasya.

The prestige of the chair could not always protect those who held it. As Hüsâmeddîn relates in his records for the year 1128 (1716), Hasan Ağa, voivode of Merzifon, who had been charged with buying camels for the army, pocketed the aid money collected from the people together with Kadı Ali and Abdullah Efendi, professor of the Sultâniye and mufti, so that the camel purchase was a mere pretence. When this came to light, all three were dismissed, exiled to Samsun and imprisoned in the castle, and the money was recovered from them and returned to its owners. In their place Kamlıklı Mustafa Efendi was made professor and mufti, and Nûhoğlu Hacı İbrâhim Ağa, one of the notables of Merzifon, trustee of the Sultâniye endowment.

A Last Bright Period in the Eighteenth Century

The best-known professor of the chair in the eighteenth century was Abdîzâde Eşref Abdurrahman Efendi. He belonged to one of Merzifon's families of scholars and, according to Hüsâmeddîn, was related to the father of the poet Nedîm. He received his first lessons from İbrâhim Efendi, preacher of Gelgiras, studied in Amasya with many teachers, above all the mufti Çorumlu Ahmed Efendi, passed the rüûs examination in Istanbul and returned to Merzifon. After the professorship of the Sultâniye he became mufti of Merzifon in 1136 (1723-24), went to Istanbul in 1143 and received the judgeship of Cyprus, and returning once more to Merzifon died there in 1151 (1738-39). He wrote the Mir'âtü's-safâ, the Tezkiretü'l-hikem, the Uyûnü'l-ulûm, a commentary on Câmî's treatise on riddles and a divan. The most valuable of these for the town's intellectual history is his Tezkire-i ulemâ, which describes the teachers he studied with in his youth and the scholars who appeared in Amasya and its surroundings between 1100 and 1140 (1688-1728). Hüsâmeddîn counts this work among the sources of his History of Amasya and notes that it was printed in the margin of the Tezkiretü'l-hikem. That a professor from the Merzifon chair left a source for later historians by writing the biographies of his own circle shows that the madrasa was still a lively centre of learning in this period.

In the second half of the century the chair remained in the hands of local scholars. Hacı Müftü İbrâhim Efendi received his diploma in Amasya from Iydîzâde Âkif Mustafa Efendi and Laz Hoca İbrâhim Efendi, returned to Merzifon, and became professor of the Sultâniye and mufti; in 1188 (1774-75) he fled to Istanbul from the pressure of Canikli Hacı Ali Paşa and, passing the rüûs examination there, moved on to a professorship in Istanbul. Ma'kûlzâde İbrâhim Efendi studied with the same teachers and died in 1200 (1785-86) as professor of the Sultâniye and several times mufti. Drawing on the biographical work el-Mecmû', Hüsâmeddîn describes him as learned and a jurist, but so simple-hearted that he believed whatever he was told.

The Madrasas Beside the Sultâniye

Merzifon's intellectual life did not consist of a single madrasa. By Hüsâmeddîn's count, in 962 (1554-55) Ramazanzâde Mehmed Bey of Merzifon built a madrasa, and in 987 (1579-80) Süheyl Bey, one of the emirs, built another; these became known as the Ramazâniye and the Süheyliye. Hüsâmeddîn writes that the Süheyliye was later also called the Zeyneliye; elsewhere, however, he relates that Zeynel Bey, a descendant of Yûsuf Paşa, steward of Devlet Hatun, built a madrasa in Merzifon and endowed his property to it, that this was called the Zeyneliye, and that the madrasa provided a livelihood for many scholars. The Ramazanzâde family, according to Hüsâmeddîn, was a family of learning and the pen that produced a chief secretary, two military judges and some ten senior judges (mevâlî).

The neighbourhood schools also belong to this picture. The mosque and school of Kadı Mahbûb Çelebi, the mosque and school that Bozacı Ali Çelebi built in his quarter in 900 (1494-95), and the schools built by Osman Bey in 1018 (1609-10) and by the master of the horse Ali Ağa of Merzifon in 1072 (1661-62) were the institutions that gave children their elementary education. In the eighteenth century the number of madrasas rose again. Dürrî Mehmed Efendi of Merzifon, later şeyhülislam, built a madrasa in 1145 (1732-33). Because its endowments were arranged by his son, Şeyhülislam Dürrîzâde Mustafa Efendi, people also called it the Dürrîzâde Madrasa, but Hüsâmeddîn, relying on the records, stresses that it was built by the father. The TDV article on Dürrî Mehmed Efendi does not state his birthplace; Hüsâmeddîn, however, argues that all the historical evidence shows him to have been from Merzifon. Appointed şeyhülislam on 31 October 1734, Dürrî Efendi was the first member of the Dürrîzâde family, which produced six şeyhülislams.

These were followed by the madrasas built by Hacı Ali Ağa in 1178 (1764-65) and by Hacı Hasan Ağa in 1212 (1797-98). The Hacı Hasan Ağa Madrasa in the Hacı Âdil quarter became known as the "Şifâiye"; according to Hüsâmeddîn's annals, Şeyh Ahmed Nâsih Efendi was appointed its professor at the end of 1211 (1797) and devoted all his time to teaching Kadı İyâz's Şifâ-i Şerîf. The madrasa's name comes from this course. There was also the Eynel Bey Madrasa in the town; at the end of the seventeenth century Hacı Müderris Ebûbekir Efendi of Merzifon taught in this madrasa for many years.

The End of the Madrasa

The madrasa's scholarly life came to an end once the professorship began to pass by inheritance from 1844 onward. Hüsâmeddîn expresses this as "the method of inheritance brought this madrasa to a standstill." When the chair came to be reached through family ties rather than merit, the building lost its educational role and for a time served as an arms depot. Hüsâmeddîn writes that work toward its repair had begun in his own day; in the Republican period it was restored by the General Directorate of Foundations and assigned to various cultural activities. Hüsâmeddîn's remark that other madrasas such as the Dürriye were also run by learned dynasties, and that he therefore saw no need to list their professors one by one, suggests that the same arrangement had spread to all the madrasas of the town. Institutions that in the early period had stood on learning and competence grew heavy over time within an order of entrenched posts and inheritance.

The Lodges and the Sufi Tradition

Merzifon's intellectual life was not confined to the madrasa. While law, theology and the linguistic sciences were studied in the madrasa, Sufism was lived in the town's lodges, and many people passed through both settings. The best-known representative of these two currents is Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî. Born in Merzifon, the son of a man known by the nickname Sarı Dânişmend, Abdürrahîm received his first education in his home town and then went to Egypt. There he joined Zeynüddin el-Hâfî (d. 838/1435), founder of the Zeyniyye branch of the Suhrawardiyya order, and completed his spiritual training. He later went with his sheikh to Khorasan and stayed there for several years. On Hâfî's command, who said that they had lit a log of love and cast it into the land of Rûm, he returned to Anatolia, settled in his native Merzifon, and spent the rest of his life guiding disciples there. The text of the diploma dated 832 (1428-29) that his sheikh gave him appears in the Nefehât Tercümesi.

Abdürrahîm, who used the pen name Rûmî in his poems, became famous for the couplet "Tövbe yâ rabbi hatâ râhına gittiklerime / Bilip ettiklerime bilmeyip ettiklerime" (I repent, O Lord, of the times I took the road of error, of what I did knowingly and what I did unknowingly). The date of his death is given differently in the sources: the TDV article writes that he probably died in 850 (1446), while Hüsâmeddîn records that Şeyh Nizâmeddin Abdurrahîm el-Merzifonî, one of the Zeynî deputies, died in Muharrem 863 (November 1458) and was buried in his own tomb in Merzifon. The sources that mention him record his works İrşâdü'l-enâm, Vesâyâ, Dîvançe-i İlâhiyyât and Işknâme, but of these only the Işknâme has survived. A separate study of him was written by Berin Taşan. Hüsâmeddîn writes that a second lodge reserved for the Zeynîs was built in Merzifon by Şeyh Ali Çelebi of Merzifon, and that among the great saints the town produced was Sünbül Sinan Efendi, founder of the Sünbüliyye order. The zaviye founded in the Âdil quarter in 1035 (1625-26) by the Naqshbandi sheikh Sırrî Ali Efendi became known as the Sırrı Baba Lodge. Among the Sufis whose tombs still stand are also Kılıç Baba, İsmâil Dede, Topçu Baba, Pehlivan Dede, Fevzi Baba, Fîruz Dede and Dâvud Dede; Merzifon's spiritual map is therefore as crowded as its scholarly one.

The strongest figure of the Sufi tradition at the popular level, however, is Pîrî Baba. According to legend he came to Anatolia with the permission of Hoca Ahmed Yesevî; in reality he most likely lived in the second half of the fifteenth century, and the date of his death is unknown. What is known of his life rests on the Menâkıb-ı Pîrî Baba written by Hoca İbrâhim and on Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatnâme. Hoca İbrâhim says that he himself built the Pîrî Baba Zaviye mentioned in the tax register of 1520; Hüsâmeddîn, for his part, writes that "Horasânî Pîrî Baba" founded a zaviye and arranged its endowment in 868 (1463-64). That Pîrî Baba's nephew Ali Dede was still alive when the work was written indicates that not much time had passed since his death, and it has been suggested that the text was composed in the reign of Selim I. According to the Menâkıbnâme, Pîrî Baba came from the village of Narince and at the age of seven or eight was apprenticed to a shoemaker.

The Menâkıbnâme and Evliya Çelebi give particular attention to Pîrî Baba's relations with the sultan of the day, but they disagree about who the sultan was. According to the Menâkıbnâme, Pîrî Baba, who lived in the stokehole of the bathhouse, stayed on there even during the hours when women came to bathe, drew the anger of the scholars of Merzifon, and was denounced to the sultan; the ruler to whom he was denounced was Mehmed II (the Conqueror). Having seen his miracles, the ruler received from him the good tidings of the conquest of Istanbul. According to the same account, after the conquest Pîrî Baba refused the gifts and lands Mehmed II offered him and asked that they be given to the scholars of Merzifon in return for their prayers for him. Evliya Çelebi, by contrast, writes that the sultan was Murad II, and gives as the reason for the complaint that Pîrî Baba rubbed women's backs with the bath glove and soap and foretold the sex of the children pregnant women would bear; in his version the good tidings concerned the conquest of İzmir and, at the hands of Şehzade Mehmed, of Istanbul, and the sultan endowed the lodge with 366 villages and the town of Merzifon. That figure belongs to legend, not to any historical document.

The account in the Menâkıbnâme has been thought to reflect the tension between scholars and dervishes as well as the attitude of the sultans of the time toward dervishes; that Pîrî Baba, with his Qalandari temperament, was not much liked by the scholars of his day is also part of this interpretation. The Menâkıbnâme further relates that after his death his fellow villagers from Narince wanted to claim his body, but the scholars of Merzifon would not allow it. That the scholars who had denounced him in his lifetime wished to keep him in the town after his death reflects well a relationship between the two circles that began in conflict and ended in a kind of appropriation. The account is of interest because it shows that relations between the madrasa circle and the lodge circle were not always harmonious.

Poets raised in the nineteenth century are also remembered in the history of the area: Hilmi Dede, Hıfzî, Eyüb Sabri and Muallim Cûdî Efendi are among them.

Kara Mustafa Paşa and His Endowed Foundations

The figure who shaped Merzifon's educational and cultural landscape in the seventeenth century was Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa. Born in 1634-35 in the village of Marınca (today Karamustafapaşa) near Merzifon, the pasha was the son of Oruç Bey, a timar-holding cavalryman. When his father fell at Murad IV's siege of Baghdad he was orphaned at the age of four, and he grew up under the protection of Köprülü Mehmed Bey, then sanjak governor of Amasya, receiving a good madrasa education together with Köprülü's sons. According to another account he was the son of a cavalryman named Derviş and was born in 1626-27. In later years he became the son-in-law of Köprülü Mehmed Paşa, served as grand admiral and as deputy grand vizier, and became grand vizier on 5 November 1676. His grand vizierate is remembered for the capture of the fortress of Chyhyryn and for the siege of Vienna.

The pasha is known to have left works in the region where he was born. The complex he had built in Merzifon between 1666 and 1679 included a mosque (the Paşa Mosque), the Taşhan, a covered market (bedesten), a library, two bathhouses and shops; these buildings define the physical fabric of the town. Hüsâmeddîn's account shows its educational side more clearly: in 1087 (1676-77) the pasha enlarged the masjid his mother Âbide Hatun had built in Marınca into a mosque and a school, and in 1090 (1679) he built in the middle of the town a masonry mosque with a timekeeper's house, a library, a classroom and a fountain in front of it, and attached to the mosque a "dersiye," that is, a teaching post paid from the endowment. He had water brought to the town from Mount Taşan through two kilometres of underground conduits and some thirty masonry fountains built; his endowment's revenues were ample. These water channels, part of the complex's endowments, are considered to have brought important changes to Merzifon's social and economic life. Construction of the pious works was directed by the pasha's agent in Merzifon, Kürt Sefer Ağazâde Ahmed Ağa; in 1078 (1667), in the same round of appointments that made him voivode of Merzifon, Hacı Mustafa Efendi, who was ders-i âm (public lecturer) in the Paşa Mosque, became mufti of Merzifon and professor of the Sultâniye. The public lectureship of the Paşa Mosque continued in later generations; Şeyhülkurrâ Halil Efendi of Merzifon, who learned the Qur'anic readings in Amasya from Hâfız Mehmed Efendi of Crete and returned to his home town, held the lectureship in this mosque together with the post of imam of the Alaca Minare Mosque. The pasha is also known to have built a mosque in the village of Bahçekent in the name of his mother Âbide Hatun. No detailed record of how the library operated has been found.

The Nineteenth Century and the New Schools

In the nineteenth century Merzifon was a market town growing steadily in population and physical extent. Its population, about ten thousand in the middle of the century, rose to around twenty thousand by the century's end. Looking at people's occupations in the temettuât (income) surveys of the 1840s, one sees that a large part of the population worked in the branches of textile production. The new educational institutions were also founded in this setting. The American College, on the highest point in the north of the town, was a group of buildings notable for its hospital, school, library, laboratory and observatory. Its founding date is given differently in the sources: the TDV article on Merzifon cites 1876 as the first founding date, while Hüsâmeddîn gives the year 1300 (1882-83). According to Aslı Kırbaş's thesis, missionaries of the American Board began visiting Merzifon from 1850; after the Bebek Theological School in Istanbul was moved here, first a girls' school and then a high school were opened, and the college formally opened its doors on 8 September 1886. In time a theological school, a school for the deaf, a hospital, a library, a museum and workshops were added to the campus; the hospital served Muslim and Christian townspeople alike.

The same college also provided ground for the organisation of the Greeks in the early twentieth century; the organisation, which took the name Pontus Society in 1904, spread over an area including Amasya, Samsun, Ordu, Giresun, Gümüşhane and Trabzon. Hüsâmeddîn, too, acknowledges that the college followed a programme at the level of the rüştiye and idadi schools and contained a crafts workshop and a hospital open to all, but he believes that the school did more to stir the political feelings of the Armenian youths who attended it than to spread learning. In his view this situation also opened the eyes of the Ottoman Muslims: reform of the Islamic madrasas of Merzifon was begun, two primary schools were opened, a rüştiye was founded in 1310 (1892-93) and converted into an idadi in 1330 (1911-12), and the number of primary schools was increased. The college closed during the First World War, was entirely wound up in 1924 and moved to Thessaloniki, where it continues as Anatolia College. Some of its buildings in Merzifon were assigned to public institutions; the hospital building, restored, is used today as a science high school.

Within this new order the madrasas lost their former weight. Yet the scholars trained from the chair of the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa over the centuries, the Sufis who guided disciples in the lodges, and the tradition of endowment remained elements of Merzifon's cultural memory. The figures of forty-four quarters and four thousand houses given by Evliya Çelebi when he came to the town in 1648 prove exaggerated when compared with the tax registers; his descriptions of the town should therefore be read with care.

Chronology

1265: Date of the inscription of the Muînüddin Pervâne Süleyman Mosque (Great Mosque), Merzifon's oldest monument.

1366-67 (768): According to Hüsâmeddîn, the end of the years in which the scholar Şerefeddin Mehmed Erzincânî taught in the Erzincânî quarter.

1393: Bayezid I takes Merzifon after Kadı Burhâneddin establishes his headquarters there.

1414-1417: Construction of the Çelebi Sultan Mehmed Madrasa; according to the inscription it begins in 1414 and is completed in 1417 by Umur Bey b. Ali.

1418 (821): Şücâeddin İlyas el-Merzifonî returns to Merzifon with his diploma from Bukhara.

1419: The soup kitchen built by Devlet Hatun together with a mosque and zaviye.

1427: The Medreseönü Mosque built by Murad II.

1427-28 (831): Dismissed as military judge, Ferîdeddin Mehmed returns to Merzifon and again becomes professor of the Sultâniye.

1438-39 (842): Death of Ferîdeddin Mehmed; the chair passes to Şücâeddin İlyas.

1446 (probably): Death of Abdürrahîm-i Rûmî according to the TDV; Hüsâmeddîn gives the date as 1458.

1448 (852): Death of Şücâeddin İlyas; Seyyid Ahmed of Crimea becomes professor of the Sultâniye.

1474-75 (879): Death of Seyyid Ahmed of Crimea in Istanbul.

1481 (886): With the accession of Bayezid II, Nizâmeddin Abdurrahman Âftâbî becomes professor of the Sultâniye.

1511 (917): After the dismissal of his teacher Müeyyedzâde, Bünyâd Efendi takes refuge in Merzifon and later becomes professor of the Sultâniye.

1520: According to the tax register, Merzifon has thirty-four quarters and 1,025 households.

1554-55 (962): The Ramazâniye Madrasa of Ramazanzâde Mehmed Bey.

1579-80 (987): The Süheyliye (Zeyneliye) Madrasa.

1666-1679: Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa's complex is built; according to Hüsâmeddîn the mosque, library and classroom are completed in 1679 (1090).

1716 (1128): Abdullah Efendi, professor of the Sultâniye and mufti, who had embezzled aid money, is dismissed and exiled to Samsun.

1732-33 (1145): The madrasa of Dürrî Mehmed Efendi.

1797-98 (1212): The Şifâiye Madrasa of Hacı Hasan Ağa.

1844: The professorship begins to pass by inheritance; the madrasa's scholarly life comes to an end.

1865: Ziyâ Paşa has the clock tower built over the madrasa's entrance iwan.

1876: First founding date of the American College according to the TDV.

1886: Merzifon's Anatolia College formally opens as a college on 8 September.

1892-93 (1310): A rüştiye school is founded in Merzifon; it is converted into an idadi in 1911-12 (1330).

1924: The college closes entirely and moves to Thessaloniki.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Online sources