In the market quarter on the banks of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya, opposite the Hükümet Bridge, the Gümüşlü Mosque stands on a small rise that looks down slightly over Yavuz Selim Square. The building was founded in the early fourteenth century, when Amasya was under Ilkhanid rule, and over the following six centuries it changed shape many times through fires, earthquakes and shifting tastes. Today it is known as the only mosque in the city centre with a wooden dome and a single minaret. Behind this unusual appearance lies a long repair history that can be traced through inscriptions, endowment deeds, old photographs and the notes of Amasya's local historians. The mosque's name is itself part of that history: from its foundation until the eighteenth century the building lived in the hands of a single family, the Gümüşlüzâdes, whose emirs, chancellors, treasurers, governors-general and Halveti sheikhs repaired it generation after generation. Because it carries layers running from the Ilkhanid period through the early Ottoman centuries to late folk art within the same walls, it is one of the hardest buildings in the city to read.

Location and Name

The district in which the mosque stands appears in older records as the Gümüşlüzâde quarter, a name that keeps alive the family of its founder. As described by Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, the quarter lay to the east of Selağzı and was bounded on the east by Yassı Kaya and the Sofîler quarter, on the west and south by Selağzı and the stream, and on the north by the Sofîzâde quarter. The same author writes that the quarter's still older name was "Gıyâseddîn Şâh Mülkü" (the estate of Gıyâseddîn Şâh), a name left by Gıyâseddîn Mehmed Şâh, a prince of the Seljuk Sultan Mesud, who had lived there, and that the name Gümüşlüzâde entered the official registers later. Some present-day descriptions place the building in the Gümüşlü quarter; Fazilet Koçyiğit, who has studied the mosque's architecture, states instead that it now lies within the Mehmed Paşa quarter, on the corner where Atatürk and Mehmed Paşa avenues meet.

To the west of the building lies Yavuz Selim Square, to the east a small square, to the south Atatürk Avenue and to the north the Yeşilırmak. This position has made the mosque a natural stop along the riverside trade and transit route for centuries. The bridge just in front of it was formerly called the Helkis Bridge; according to Hüsameddin's records, those who repaired it included Gümüşlüzâde Şemseddîn Ahmed Çelebi in 800 (1397-98) and an Ahmed Bey in 880 (1475-76). That the mosque, the bridge and the Helkis gardens on the opposite bank were bound together by the charitable works of a single family shows the weight the Gümüşlüzâdes carried on this stretch of the river.

The building appears in the sources under several names. Besides Gümüşlüzâde Mosque, it has also been called the Tâciye Mosque and the Defterdar Ahmed Bey Mosque. The first recalls its original founder, Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi; the second recalls Defterdar Ahmed Bey, who had the building rebuilt in masonry at the end of the fifteenth century. The name Tâciye is reported to occur in an endowment deed dated 805 (1402-03). The present name, according to the common view, took hold after the repair of 1688. Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Bey (İbrahim Pasha in Hüsameddin and other sources), who had the mosque repaired that year, also expanded its endowments, and from then on the building came to be called by the name of his family.

The Gümüşlüzâdes and Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi

The Gümüşlüzâde family is one of the oldest and most numerous of Amasya's notable families. Hüsameddin names as its ancestor Emîneddîn Yûnus el-Müstevfî, a Seljuk emir known as "Emîr Gümüşlü". This man, who stood at the head of the Seljuk treasury, was the brother-in-law of the famous vizier Muînüddin Pervâne and came from the area of the small town of Gümüş near Amasya. It appears that the family's name derives from there. According to Hüsameddin the line divided over time into many branches, all of which kept the name "Gümüşlüzâde". One branch produced emirs and notables, another pashas, and another sheikhs and scholars; Pîr İlyâs, regarded as the founder of the Halvetiyye in Amasya, belonged to this last branch.

The mosque's founder, Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi, was the son of Sirâceddin İsmâil Bey, one of the Amasya emirs of this family. He was among the close associates of Emîr Timurtaş, the Ilkhanid governor of Anatolia, and, as Hüsameddin relates, was appointed governor of Amasya by Timurtaş after the death of the Amasya governor İşboğa Noyin in the month of Safar 720 (March 1320). When Timurtaş fled the wrath of the Ilkhanid ruler Abu Said in 1327 and took refuge with the Mamluks, the Amasya emirs of his circle were also taken to Egypt and imprisoned in the fortress of Alexandria. Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi and his companions were released in 732 and returned to Amasya at the beginning of 733 (autumn 1332). Hüsameddin counts him among the best-known Amasya dignitaries of the age. Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi died in Rabi al-Akhir 735 (December 1334), and his sons Abdullah, Ahmed and Kâsım Çelebi succeeded him.

The emir's traces in the city are not limited to the mosque. Hüsameddin writes that he built a pavilion and garden, that he brought the water of Soğukpınar, which comes down from Mount Lokman, to several fountains he had built in his own quarter, and that he also had the parts of the citadel damaged in the earthquake of 718 (1318) repaired. What he says about the emir's grave points to a small hexagonal tomb near the tomb of Pîr İlyâs, built of dark stone, its drum band decorated with floral motifs and Qur'anic verses. According to Hüsameddin the emir, his wife Döndü Hatun and his daughter Ayşe Hatun lie there, and it was Ayşe Hatun who set up the tomb's endowment. The tomb is known as the "Tâceddin Türbesi"; Hüsameddin considers it a mistake that certain people claiming the trusteeship presented it as the tomb of Kadem Pasha. Whether the emir is certainly buried in this tomb has not been confirmed by any other document.

Foundation in the Ilkhanid Period

The Gümüşlü Mosque was built in 1325, while Amasya was under Mongol-Ilkhanid rule, by Gümüşlüzâde Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi. Hüsameddin gives the year of construction as 725 and the organisation of the endowments as 727; these dates correspond to 1325 and 1326-27. Some publications give the construction as 1326; no document is known that resolves the difference between the two dates. If the dates are correct, the mosque rose in the years when Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi was governor of Amasya and Timurtaş was at the height of his power in Anatolia. What matters is that the mosque is one of the few buildings in Amasya dated to the Ilkhanid period.

The first building had a wooden roof. Hüsameddin's emphasis that the building was rebuilt "in masonry" in the fifteenth century, and the statement of the Amasya historian Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi that the wooden mosque was pulled down and a masonry mosque built in its place, suggest that the first structure was largely of timber. The stone walls and arches we see today are not the product of that first structure but of later reconstructions. What is known about the mosque's earliest form can largely be inferred from details that later repairs left in endowment deeds and inscriptions.

Among the mosque's earliest sources of income, the Helkis Garden on the opposite bank of the Yeşilırmak held an important place. Hüsameddin gives different accounts of this endowment in two places. In the section on the quarters he writes that Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi endowed the garden himself and that the mosque's name Tâciye is found in an endowment deed dated 805 (1402-03). In the biographical section, by contrast, he relates that one of Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi's grandsons, a judge who returned to Amasya after being dismissed from the judgeship of Ankara, endowed the Helkis Garden with all its appurtenances to his grandfather's mosque in 802 (1399-1400). Koçyiğit, too, accepts that the garden was endowed to the mosque by the emir's grandson Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi. Hüsameddin says he saw and copied this deed himself, but that the copy was burned in the Taşmusluk fire. According to the boundaries in the deed, the garden stretched from in front of the Clock Tower to a place called Leğen Kayası, and in Hüsameddin's day the area occupied by the Government House and the municipal building lay within the limits of this endowment.

The Halveti Zaviye and the Gümüşlüoğlu Lodge

The history of the mosque is intertwined with the establishment of the Halvetiyye order in Amasya. According to Hüsameddin, the open ground on the east and south sides of the mosque is the site of the Gümüşlüoğlu Tekkesi, the first dervish lodge built for the Halvetis in Amasya. Pîr Şücâeddin İlyâs, of the same family, withdrew into retreat here and began to spread his order. Elsewhere Hüsameddin records that in 809 (1406-07) Gümüşlüzâde Hâce Celâl Çelebi, treasurer of Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed), built a lofty Halveti zaviye for his relative Pîr İlyâs "on the site of the present Gümüşlüzâde Mosque". The slight difference between these two statements makes it hard to say with certainty whether the zaviye stood beside the mosque or exactly on its site. It is clear, nonetheless, that Pîr İlyâs's first lodge was founded immediately next to this mosque.

After Pîr İlyâs died in 813 (1410-11), the leadership of the lodge passed to his son-in-law Pîr Abdurrahman Çelebi, then to the latter's son Celâl Çelebi and to his grandson Pîr Hayreddin Hızır Çelebi. According to the long list Hüsameddin gives, the lodge was run for more than two hundred years by sheikhs of the Gümüşlüzâde family. The sheikhs were at the same time the keepers of the tomb of Pîr İlyâs and the trustees of its endowment. The sheikhs of the lodge also preached in the mosque; Hüsameddin's biographies mention Mevlânâ Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, who served as sheikh in the Gümüşlüzâde zaviye, preached and gave counsel regularly in the mosque, and died in 851 (1447).

In the middle of the eighteenth century the lodge gave way to a madrasa. Fâtıma Hatun of Amasya, one of the palace women of Sultan Mahmud I, acting on the advice of Sheikh İsmâil Efendi, the last sheikh of the lodge and keeper of the tomb of Pîr İlyâs, had a wooden madrasa built on the site of the Gümüşlüoğlu Tekkesi in 1153 (1740-41) and organised its endowment in 1158 (1745). The madrasa was known as the "Medrese-i Hâtuniye", the "Medrese-i Fâtımiye" and the "Gümüşlü Medresesi". The Sarı Alan and Ortaköy estates were assigned to its endowment, and shares of the income were set aside for the trustee, the teacher, the rent collector, and the lighting, fuel and repair costs of the madrasa. Its first teacher was Sheikh İsmâil Efendi; with his death in 1179 (1765-66) the teaching post and the keepership of the tomb were separated. Through neglect, the wooden madrasa fell into ruin towards 1280 (1863-64), and no trace of it remains today.

The Earthquake of 1415 and Chancellor Ahmed Pasha

An earthquake that shook Amasya badly also prepared the end of the first mosque. Its date differs in the sources. Most present-day descriptions give 1419. Hüsameddin, however, places the earthquake in 818, that is 1415-16, and Koçyiğit likewise dates the repair to 1415. The repair was undertaken by Gümüşlüzâde Ahmed Pasha, at that time the most powerful member of the family.

According to the biography Hüsameddin gives, Ahmed Pasha was a close relative and pupil of Pîr İlyâs. After Timur's Anatolian campaign of 1402 he had been exiled to Shirvan together with Pîr İlyâs, and after Timur's death he returned to Amasya with his teacher in 808 (1405-06). He attracted notice with a book on ethics and statecraft entitled "Mir'âtü'l-Mülûk", which he presented to Mehmed I; in 811 (1408-09) he became Mehmed I's chief secretary and in 816 (1413), when Mehmed became sole sultan, his chancellor (nişancı). In 822 (1419) he received the rank of vizier, was retired in the reign of Murad II, and died at the end of 827 (1423-24). The repair of the mosque falls in these years, when the highest pen of the Ottoman divan and an old Amasya family met in a single person. Hüsameddin adds that Ahmed Pasha also expanded the mosque's endowments and built a zaviye called Kasr-ı Sûfiyân at the head of the Sofular quarter for his brother, Şeyhülislam Pîr Abdurrahman Çelebi.

Defterdar Ahmed Bey and the Masonry Reconstruction

The building Ahmed Pasha had repaired was made unusable by a fire, and the new mosque was built by his great-grandson. Hüsameddin introduces this man as Defterdar Şemseddin Ahmed Bey, son of Abdullah Bey, grandson of Mahmud Bey and great-grandson of Chancellor Ahmed Pasha. Ahmed Bey had grown up in Amasya and entered the service of the future Bayezid II, who as a prince was sanjak governor in Amasya, becoming first a divan secretary and then his treasurer. When Bayezid II came to the throne in 886 (1481), he went with him to Istanbul and became chief treasurer. His rivals at court, however, accused him, together with Grand Vizier İshak Pasha and some other statesmen from Amasya, of being partisans of Şehzade Cem (Prince Cem). In 889 (1484) he was removed from office and exiled to Dimetoka (Didymoteicho).

The sources give the starting year of the reconstruction variously as 1480, 1481 and 1483, while its completion, according to the inscription, was 1485. According to Hüsameddin, Ahmed Bey endowed his farms at Dimetoka in 888 (1483) and had the verses carved over the door of the mosque he was rebuilding in Amasya written into this deed. The same author deduces from the verses that the mosque was begun in 888 and completed in 890; Koçyiğit, relying on Hüsameddin, writes that the numerical (abjad) values of the inscription's first two lines give the years 885 and 890, that is 1480 and 1485. Whichever reading is adopted, by the dates Hüsameddin gives the founder was in exile at Dimetoka when the mosque was completed. Defterdar Ahmed Bey died at Dimetoka early in 891 (1486) and was buried in the cemetery north of the town's Bayezid I Mosque. Hüsameddin went to Dimetoka in 1308 (1890-91) to look for his grave; he was told that a treasurer lay there, but at the spot shown to him he found nothing but a small, black, uninscribed stone. That elsewhere in Hüsameddin's work Ahmed Bey is said to have been killed in 890 shows that the author is not consistent with himself on the date and manner of his death.

Ahmed Bey, in Hüsameddin's words, built a new mosque "on the site of his ancestor's mosque", enlarging it. The mosque, which had originally been of wood, was rebuilt in these years in dressed stone, as a masonry structure. On the same occasion Ahmed Bey added on the western side the minaret that stands today at the north-western corner and had the mosque's endowments put in order. The inscription, written in thuluth script on marble, is a four-line Persian poem, and it still sits just below the hood of the portal. Its reading is given as follows:

Şud tamam in mescid-i cami be-tevfik-i Hüda
der zaman-i padişah-i adil daniş-pezir
ibtida-yi in bina ba-hayr-i Ahmed Bey be-hân
lik tariheş bud kad temme cami-i kebir

In translation the inscription says that this congregational mosque was completed with God's help in the time of a just sultan who valued learning, asks that Ahmed Bey, who began the building, be remembered with goodwill, and states that its date is given by the words "cami-i kebir" (great mosque) in the last line; the abjad value of these words is 890. The phrase "cami-i kebir" shows that the building was conceived not as a neighbourhood mescit but as a large mosque serving a broad congregation. That an exiled treasurer should praise, in his inscription, the very sultan who exiled him as just and a lover of learning is also a reminder of the set formulas of the inscription language of the age.

The sources do not fully agree on this date. The publications of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism place the second construction in 1491 and attribute it to Defterdar Mahmut Bey. Sources based on the text of the inscription and on Hüsameddin give the date 1485 and the name Defterdar Ahmed Bey. The fact that Ahmed Bey's grandfather was called Mahmud Bey may be one reason the two names were confused. Here the second view, which rests on the inscription, is adopted.

Fires, Earthquakes and Repairs

In a sense the history of the Gümüşlü Mosque is the history of its repairs. After 1485 the building met fire, earthquake and wear repeatedly, and each time the notables of Amasya or the trustees who managed the mosque's foundation stepped in. A fire in the early seventeenth century did heavy damage to the building. The mosque's wooden roof and wooden superstructure must have played a part in making the fires so destructive. Hüsameddin places this fire in 1011 (1602-03) and says it broke out during an "outbreak of brigandage"; this corresponds to the years when Amasya was shaken by the Celali revolts. Present-day descriptions, on the other hand, date the great fire to 1612. Koçyiğit treats the two dates as separate events: in her account the mosque was repaired in 1602 and burned again in 1612. The repair was carried out by Beylerbeyi Şemseddin Pasha, a descendant of Defterdar Ahmed Bey, who also had the endowments reorganised.

The repair of 1688 was the one that determined the mosque's present name. Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Bey had the building, which had suffered damage in several earthquakes, repaired, and he expanded its endowments. According to Hüsameddin's biography, İbrahim Pasha was the son of an Amasya family living near the Little Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and his lineage went back to Pîr İlyâs. He entered the service of Köprülüzâde Fazıl Ahmed Pasha when the latter came to Amasya in 1069 (1659), became head of the gatekeepers during his grand vizierate, then beylerbey of Eger, governor of Bursa, guardian of Kamianets and Timișoara with the rank of vizier, and after that governor of Erzurum, Baghdad and Damascus. In 1097 (1686) the sanjak of Amasya was granted to him as an arpalık (a revenue assignment). The year in which he had the mosque repaired, 1099 (1687-88), falls within the period of this assignment. A year later İbrahim Pasha had the Pîrler Türbesi, where Pîr İlyâs also lies, repaired anew and built a fountain at Selağzı in front of the tomb of Gümüşlüzâde Muhyiddin Mehmed.

After a new fire in 1720, the mosque was repaired in 1721 by the trustee of the foundation, Hacı Mustafa Ağa. Hüsameddin writes that the fire came in 1133 (1720-21) after several earthquakes and that Mustafa Ağa rebuilt the building "anew" in 1134 (1721-22). In 1823 Hacı Ali Bey, a notable of the Rahtvan Pashazâde family, had a preaching pulpit built for the mosque and endowed his shops to the office of the pulpit sheikh. In Hüsameddin's day these shops were being run as an endowment in the hands of the descendants of the Amasya historian Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi.

Endowments, Preachers and the Running of the Mosque

The mosque's survival depended less on the building than on its endowments. When Defterdar Ahmed Bey rebuilt the structure in 1485 he also had its endowments put in order, and each later major patron made a new addition to this endowment arrangement. Şemseddin Pasha reorganised the endowments in the repair of the early seventeenth century, Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Bey expanded them in 1688, and in 1823 Hacı Ali Bey tied the income of his shops to the pulpit sheikhdom. This sequence shows that with each repair the mosque was renewed not only in stone and timber but also in its financial footing. Many of those who undertook repairs came from the same family: Ahmed Pasha, Ahmed Bey, his descendant Şemseddin Pasha and İbrahim Bey are different links of the line carried by the name Gümüşlüzâde. The trustee, for his part, was the person who managed the foundation and, as in the repair of 1721, undertook the repair work himself when necessary.

The pulpit sheikhdom was an important office showing that the mosque functioned as a centre of teaching and preaching. The pulpit sheikh was the scholar who preached regularly to the congregation outside the Friday and festival sermons, and the office was supported by separate endowments. According to Hüsameddin's biographies, Hacı Sefer Ağa, who had several times served as deputy governor (mütesellim) of Amasya, endowed a sufficient sum of money before his death early in 1072 (1661-62) and set aside an allowance from its income for the mosque's pulpit sheikhdom. The same work also relates that the preaching post attached to the mosque by Hacı Sefer Ağa and Yakub Ağa was given to a madrasa teacher in 1074 (1663-64). Hüsameddin further mentions a Halveti sheikh who became pulpit sheikh of the Gümüşlü Mosque in 1099, a pulpit sheikh named Zileli Muharrem Efendizâde Abdurrauf Efendi, and other scholars who preached in the mosque for many years.

The mosque was also a place of teaching. Hüsameddin's records relate that a scholar who became imam of the mosque in 1188 (1774-75) taught classes there, that another teacher lived in the Gümüşlüzâde quarter and continued teaching "in its noble mosque", and that yet another taught the Qur'an commentary of Beyzâvî in the mosque until 1257 (1841-42). The imamate of the mosque was also a respected post; Hüsameddin speaks of a hafız who became imam in 1118 (1706-07) at a young age because of his fine voice, and of another who succeeded his father as imam in 1216 (1801-02) and brought the mosque to life "with his voice and delivery". The founding of the Fâtıma Hatun Madrasa beside the mosque also shows that it stood at the centre of a circle of learning; the imams and the teachers of the madrasa were at times the same people.

Repairs in the Twentieth Century

Most of the interventions that determine the mosque's present exterior were made in the last hundred and twenty years. In 1903 a wooden late congregation porch was added to the north façade. As the correspondence of the General Directorate of Foundations shows, the earthquake of 1939 damaged the building. In 1953 Hürrem Arpacıoğlu had the building repaired once more; in this repair the roof of the late congregation porch was mended, the wooden second storey to its east was removed, glazing was added to the side wings, and plastering, flooring and painting were carried out. In the repair of 1960 the blue, red and yellow painted decoration seen in the prayer hall today was made.

In 1981 the public applied to the General Directorate of Foundations, stating that the mosque had been kept standing until then by repairs paid for by benefactors, but that these had proved inadequate and that, without a thorough repair, the mosque, still open for worship, might collapse on the congregation. The mosque was then closed to worship for a long time. The repair begun by the Regional Directorate of Foundations in 1984 lasted until 1989. In the works of 1986 the east and west façades were pulled down to different heights and rebuilt, the east façade was covered with plaster and the upper windows were uncovered. In the same year, to make way for a ring-road connection, the sheds, unlisted wooden houses and rows of one- and two-storey shops around the mosque were demolished, giving the mosque its present open square. During these repairs older painted work in the interior, such as a view of Amasya and a depiction of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, was also removed. These interventions kept the building standing but changed its original plan and ornament markedly. The reports, the measured drawings of 1979 and the old photographs in the archive of the Samsun Regional Directorate of Foundations are the principal documents that make it possible to follow the extent of this change.

Architecture

The mosque has a plan close to square and its walls are built of dressed stone. The building consists of a central prayer hall and two side sections to its east and west. The side sections are entered from the prayer hall through Bursa arches; they have three parts each and today two storeys, and their upper floors hold galleries running north to south. The late congregation porch lies to the north and the single minaret to the north-west. This arrangement, with a central place of prayer and separate rooms and floors at its sides, recalls the building type called the zaviyeli mosque (a mosque combined with a dervish lodge) in early Ottoman architecture.

The prayer hall is covered by a transition that moves first to a sixteen-sided drum and then to an octagonal drum with a timber frame resting on it. The transition to the cover is made with pendentives. Each side of the octagonal drum has two wooden windows, and a conical cover closes it above; a narrow gallery with a wooden balustrade runs around the foot of the cone. The side wings are covered with flat roofs. The wooden superstructure over the central space is what distinguishes the mosque from the stone-domed classical mosques of Amasya, and it is the reason the building is known as the "only mosque with a wooden dome". When the present cover was made is not known. Koçyiğit suggests, on the basis of similar building techniques, that the cone may have been made together with the late congregation porch in the repair of 1903, and, looking at Amasya's early mosques, that the original cover was a dome. The floor of the prayer hall is stone, the galleries are wooden and the late congregation porch has a brick floor. The interior today is entirely plastered.

The mihrab in the south wall is a semicircular niche with a muqarnas hood; a colonnette stands on each side of the niche. The wooden minbar is not original. To the north of the prayer hall is the women's gallery, carried on wooden posts; in the middle of the gallery there is a semicircular projection. The building is lit by numerous windows opened in the walls and the drum: sixteen in the drum, twelve in the south façade, five each in the east and west façades and four in the north façade. The windows take two forms, pointed-arched and lintelled; the lintelled ones have blind pointed-arched tympana above them.

The main portal is on the north façade and is made of stone. Projecting from the body wall, the portal is framed by convex and concave mouldings; it has small niches with muqarnas hoods (mihrabiye) at its sides and colonnettes with hourglass capitals at its corners. Two pendants hang inside the portal's muqarnas hood. Some descriptions state that the portal consists of a segmental-arched opening, another that it sits within a pointed-arched niche. The portal, painted with white oil paint in later repairs, is the chief element that gives movement to a building of modest architecture. Symmetrically placed arched doors to the right and left of the portal open onto the stone stairs that climb to the upper-floor galleries. The low doors beside them lead to the side wings, and the door in the south wall of the east wing connects the interior with the outside. The stair to the minaret also begins at the landing in the west. The muezzin's balcony seen just west of the portal in old photographs is used today as a window.

The minaret has a cylindrical shaft and rises on a square base of dressed stone. The sources give the minaret's position differently: some speak of the north-western corner, others of the north-eastern; Hüsameddin's statement that Ahmed Bey built the minaret on the western side, together with its present placement, supports the north-west. The shaft is of brick masonry. The steps are brick; stone is used up to the shaft, the upper part is brick clad in wood, and the central pole is also of wood. It has a single balcony; the transition below the balcony is made with a row resembling a saw-tooth cornice, and the shaft is capped with a conical roof bearing a finial. This mixture of materials suggests that the minaret, too, was renewed piece by piece in the repairs the mosque went through.

The Late Congregation Porch and Courtyard

The late congregation porch to the north is the part that has changed the mosque's exterior most. Its present form dates to 1903. The section added to the north façade that year rises on six wooden posts and, as the posts are joined to one another and to the body wall by arches, forms a space of five bays. The middle section is kept higher than the side sections and a triangular pediment is set above it. This middle section is covered by a very shallow timber-framed dome, while the sections on either side have flat wooden ceilings. At the centre of the middle dome there is a six-petalled flower and around its base a row of palmettes. The dome was wrongly set on top of the portal's hood and has seriously damaged the crown of the hood. An ogee-arched door at the east end of the porch leads to the women's gallery, and an ogee-arched door at the west end opens both to the minaret and to the west wing. At the east end a small brick fountain with a pointed arch and a saw-tooth cornice was added later.

Opinions differ on what the late congregation porch looked like in the mosque's original form. Some descriptions report that it was an arcade covered by five wooden Baghdadi domes. Koçyiğit, acknowledging that no direct evidence for the original arrangement exists, starts from the masonry construction of the building and from the example of Amasya's fifteenth-century zaviyeli mosques, the mosques of Mehmed Pasha (1486) and Bayezid Pasha (1414). In her view the first porch was of masonry, higher than the present one and covered by five domes. The fact that the blind round arches, the imposts and the portal hood on the north façade are cut by the present roof is the evidence supporting this view. In the measured drawings and photographs of 1979 the sides of the porch appear closed with masonry walls; that these parts have been left open again today suggests that the closing was the work of a later repair.

In the middle of the courtyard in front of the porch stands an octagonal wooden ablution fountain (şadırvan). The fountain is thought to have been built later than the mosque. A letter of 1985 states that the mosque was listed as an immovable cultural property requiring protection, while the fountain, although not listed separately, lay within the mosque's protected area.

The Zaviyeli Mosque Debate

The most comprehensive academic study of the mosque's architecture is Fazilet Koçyiğit's article published in 2022 in the journal Art-Sanat. The author notes that, although the mosque holds an important place in Amasya's urban memory and is still in active use, no dedicated study of the building existed. The study rests on field examinations, on reports obtained from the Samsun Regional Directorate of Foundations and on old photographs. The conclusion reached is that in its original form the mosque was a zaviyeli mosque.

The zaviyeli mosque is a building type of the early Ottoman period, used both for prayer and for the lodging of dervishes and travellers, with a place of worship in the middle and rooms and iwans at its sides. Semavi Eyice's classic study set out the historical and social function of these buildings in detail. According to Eyice, the basic scheme of these buildings consists of two domed or vaulted spaces set one after the other on the same axis and of small rooms adjoining the space nearer the entrance. The side rooms were built for lodging, as the cupboards and hearths in them show, and are called tabhane, that is, guest rooms. These buildings were built frequently in the fourteenth century and continued to be built until the middle of the fifteenth. In fifteenth-century examples the inner courtyard disappeared and the guest rooms came to be entered from outside the mosque or from the late congregation porch. The mosques of Davut Pasha in Istanbul and Hatuniye in Tokat (1485), Mehmed Pasha in Amasya (1486), Taceddin Pasha in Vezirköprü and Bayezid II in Edirne are among these examples without a courtyard.

To the east and west of the Gümüşlü Mosque, guest rooms lie on either side of a Bursa-arched iwan. These rooms are entered both from inside the iwan and from outside: the northern room of the east wing is reached through a small ogee-arched door in the late congregation porch, the southern one through a low-arched door opening to the outside and a door inside the iwan; the west wing has a similar arrangement. The measured drawings and photographs of 1979 show that at that date these rooms were single-storeyed, covered by sloping roofs set lower than the cover of the prayer hall, and that a large blind pointed arch rose above the roofs. This arrangement, which gave the façade a two-storeyed movement, disappeared in the repair of 1986 when the side façades were raised to the level of the prayer-hall cover, and the blind arch was not rebuilt. The same documents also show that the opening now used as a door on the south-east façade was originally a window.

Earlier brief assessments, before Koçyiğit, had taken the building to be a single-space, centrally planned mosque on the strength of the phrases "mescid-i cami" and "cami-i kebir" in the inscription. Koçyiğit, by contrast, foregrounding the present plan and the 1979 documents, argues that with these features the building resembles the zaviyeli mosques of the fifteenth century. The three-part lower floors and upper galleries of the Gümüşlü Mosque's side wings fit this type. That the mosque stands immediately beside the first Halveti lodge in Amasya, and that the circle of Pîr İlyâs used the site for centuries, also provides a meaningful context for the function of the guest rooms. Yet the building has undergone so many repairs over the centuries that it is hard to give a firm verdict on how far this typology is original. Koçyiğit herself presents her result as a claim grounded in documents.

Painted Decoration

In the interior, stone, plaster and kalemkârı (painted) decoration are seen together, but the most striking of these are the painted ornaments. The decoration visible today was made in 1960. In other words the colourful painted work we see does not belong to the earliest period of the mosque. In this scheme the spandrels of the mihrab hood are decorated with blue scrolling branches and stylised flowers, and the mihrab and the windows around it are framed with bands of white branches, red and yellow flowers and green leaves on a blue ground. Above the windows, in medallions with green grounds and blue frames, is the word "Allah". The medallions on the pendentives bear the names "Muhammed", "Ebubekir", "Hasan" and "Ali"; those above the west and east entrances bear "Osman" and "Ömer", and on the façade of the women's gallery the name "Hüseyin" is written.

Koçyiğit's study treats this subject in more detail. Looking at old photographs obtained from the Foundations directorate and from the archive of a local photographic studio, the author shows that the decoration has undergone as radical a change as the architecture. In the old scheme the four main arches of the prayer hall were painted in interlocking alternations of yellow and white, a colonnette was painted on each side of the mihrab, and above the mihrab there was a band of Qur'anic verse that is now lost. The window surrounds were worked with acanthus leaves, spiralling branches and crown-like crestings, and on some windows Bektashi and Mevlevi headdresses were depicted. The most striking of the decorations was a depiction of the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne on the entrance wall of the prayer hall. The mosque, drawn with four minarets, domes, a seven-bay late congregation porch and a half-dome, was shown with its domes painted blue and with a four-legged fountain and various trees in its courtyard. Rüçhan Arık wrote that there were ten medallions in the dome's drum, eight of them with landscapes and two with still lifes, that some of the landscapes showed Amasya, and that the still lifes included flowers in a vase, fruit in a bowl and a sliced watermelon. None of these has survived.

The subject and style of the depictions in the photographs, according to Koçyiğit, as Rüçhan Arık and Gönül Cantay also note, may have come from the hand of the folk artist Zileli Emin Usta, who worked in the 1870s. Zileli Emin Usta is a well-known name in nineteenth-century Anatolian wall painting. The paintings in the Sofular Mosque in Merzifon and in the prayer hall and fountain dome of the Kara Mustafa Pasha Mosque there bear his signature and are dated 1875. The paintings of the Kara Mustafa Pasha Mosque fountain have been the subject of a separate article by Baha Tanman, and Bektashi and Mevlevi headdresses appear there too. The paintings of 1872 on the fountain of the Bayezid II Mosque in Amasya are also very close to this style. The Selimiye depiction in the Gümüşlü Mosque resembles the depiction of the Süleymaniye in Merzifon. The attribution made for the Gümüşlü Mosque is a possibility based on stylistic comparison, not on a document.

These decorations are an example of the provincial reflection of the process called the Westernisation period in Ottoman art. Western-influenced landscapes, architectural compositions and floral motifs had begun to appear, from the late eighteenth century, on the walls of mosques, tombs and houses outside Istanbul as well, and folk artists, interpreting these motifs in their own manner, had formed a wall-painting tradition peculiar to Anatolia. Because the local painters who learned the craft through apprenticeship from masters brought by provincial notables emulating the capital had no academic training, no unity of style is to be looked for in provincial examples.

The mosque itself also became a subject of the wall painting of this period. In the painted frieze running along the ceiling of the timekeeper's room (muvakkithane) built in 1840 by Kaptancızâde Hacı Hüseyin Zeki Efendi to the north-west of the Bayezid II complex, houses, a castle and, in the middle, a mosque with high walls, a broad drum and a broad dome are depicted. That this mosque is the Gümüşlü Mosque is a view most researchers accept. Füsun Aytekin, comparing it with photographs taken before the restoration, finds that the finial once visible on the mosque's dome in this depiction was painted out in the latest repair and that the trees around the mosque were altered. If the identification of the depiction is confirmed, it will also provide indirect evidence that in the mid-nineteenth century the mosque was perceived as a domed building.

The Mosque Today

The Gümüşlü Mosque is open for worship today and, because it stands in the city centre, is easy to visit. Outside prayer times it can be entered during the day. The fact that the building is in continuous use means that repairs have never ceased; this continuity of nearly seven centuries is the result of an upkeep sustained together by the endowment tradition and the neighbourhood congregation. The atmosphere created by the wooden superstructure and the painted decoration gives a more intimate sense of space than the stone-domed mosques of Amasya.

Chronology

1320: Gümüşlüzâde Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi is appointed governor of Amasya by Emîr Timurtaş (Safar 720 according to Hüsameddin).

1325: Gümüşlüzâde Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi has the wooden-roofed mosque built in Ilkhanid-ruled Amasya (1326 in some sources); the endowments are organised in 727 (1326-27).

1334: Tâceddin Mahmud Çelebi dies (Rabi al-Akhir 735).

1399-1400: The Helkis Garden is endowed to the mosque by one of the emir's grandsons (802 according to Hüsameddin).

1402-03: Endowment deed in which the mosque appears as the Tâciye Mosque (805).

1406-07: Hâce Celâl Çelebi builds a Halveti zaviye for Pîr İlyâs on the site of the mosque or beside it (809).

1415-16 or 1419: The mosque is damaged in an earthquake; Chancellor Gümüşlüzâde Ahmed Pasha repairs it.

1481-1485: After a fire, Defterdar Ahmed Bey has the mosque rebuilt in masonry; according to the inscription over the main portal, construction is completed in 1485 (890) (the start is given in some sources as 1480 or 1483).

1484: Defterdar Ahmed Bey is exiled to Dimetoka on a charge of supporting Prince Cem; he dies there early in 1486.

1602-03 or 1612: Fire; Beylerbeyi Şemseddin Pasha has it repaired.

1661-62: Before his death, the deputy governor Hacı Sefer Ağa sets up a cash endowment for the pulpit sheikhdom.

1688: Gümüşlüzâde İbrahim Bey (Pasha) carries out a repair and expands the endowments; the mosque begins to be known by this name.

1720-1721: Fire; the trustee Hacı Mustafa Ağa has it repaired.

1740-41: Fâtıma Hatun builds a wooden madrasa on the site of the Gümüşlüoğlu Tekkesi; its endowment is organised in 1745.

1823: Hacı Ali Bey of the Rahtvan Pashazâde family has a preaching pulpit built and endows his shops to the pulpit sheikhdom.

1840: The timekeeper's room of the Bayezid II complex is built; the mosque in its wall paintings is thought to be the Gümüşlü Mosque.

1863-64: The Fâtıma Hatun Madrasa falls into ruin.

1870s: It is suggested that the mosque's lost wall paintings may have been made by Zileli Emin Usta.

1903: The present late congregation porch is added to the north façade.

1939: An earthquake damages the building.

1953: Hürrem Arpacıoğlu has it repaired.

1960: The painted decoration seen today is made.

1979: The Regional Directorate of Foundations prepares measured drawings.

1981: The public applies for a thorough repair; the mosque remains closed to worship for a long time.

1984-1989: Comprehensive repair; in 1986 the side façades are rebuilt, the surrounding buildings are demolished and the old painted work is removed.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Koçyiğit, Fazilet. "Geçmişin İzleriyle Amasya Gümüşlü Cami". Art-Sanat 17 (2022): 299-326. amasya.bel.tr
  • Eyice, Semavi. "İlk Osmanlı Devrinin Dinî ve İçtimaî Bir Müessesesi: Zaviyeler ve Zaviyeli Camiler". İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 1 (1962): 3-80.

Official sources

  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye, Culture Portal, Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism: "Gümüşlü Camii". amasya.bel.tr
  • Amasya Municipality City Guide: "Gümüşlü Camii". kentrehberi.amasya.bel.tr
  • Amasya Governorship. Amasya Kültür Envanteri. Ankara, 2007.

Other sources

  • Aytekin, Füsun. "Amasya II. Bayezid Külliyesi Muvakkithanesinin Duvar Resimlerinin Tarih ve Usta Sorunsalı ile Son Restorasyonu Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme". Publication of the Atatürk Cultural Centre Presidency (online PDF, 2025), pp. 151 ff.
  • Özcan, Selim. "Gümüşlü Camii". Online Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi, 2019.
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism: "Gumuslu Mosque" (English-language description).
  • Gürelli, Mustafa. "Gümüşlü Camii / Amasya". Tarih Gezisi, 2020.
  • Tanman, Baha. "Merzifon, Kara Mustafa Paşa Camii Şadırvanının Kubbesinde Zileli Emin'in Yarattığı 'Osmanlı Dünyası'". Güner İnal'a Armağan, 1993.

Online sources