The Hazeranlar Mansion is a nineteenth-century Turkish konak on the northern bank of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya, below the Royal Rock Tombs and just east of the Hatuniye Mosque. Built in the timber-frame and mud-brick infill technique (hımış) on a basement and two storeys, it rests on the stretch of fortification wall that descends from the inner citadel of the Harşena Fortress toward the river. It is the best-known example of the Yalıboyu houses, and one of the few Amasya mansions whose harem and selamlık arrangement, central-hall plan with four iwans, and interior furnishing can still be read today. Arranged as an ethnography museum since 1984, it was closed to visitors in 2024 so that its displays could be renewed. Who commissioned the mansion is known; when exactly it was built, where its name comes from, and on what date it opened as a museum are points on which the sources do not fully agree.

History and Date of Construction

According to the most widely repeated account, the mansion was built in 1865 by Hasan Talat Efendi, the defterdar (chief financial officer) of Ziya Pasha, the Mutasarrıf (district governor) of Amasya. Hasan Talat's father, Aziz Mahmut Bey, had been serving at the Ottoman palace as an alchemist or chemist when he was appointed defterdar of Amasya and settled in the town. In Amasya he married a woman named Leyla, and the couple had two children, Hasan and Hazeran. It is also reported that Hasan Talat Efendi was later appointed by the sultan to another post in Albania. Hasan Talat is said to have been a poet and a close friend of Ziya Pasha, whose term as governor of Amasya lasted about two years, in 1864-1865.

There is no definitive document for the date of construction. In the entry on the Hazeranlar Mansion in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Encyclopaedia of Islam of the Turkish Religious Foundation), Mehmet Tektaş notes that the building is said to have been commissioned during Ziya Pasha's governorship, and that no written record fixes the date. Surveys made before the restoration found the tughra of Sultan Abdülaziz on the northern pediment of the selamlık main room, and on the projecting pediment above the entrance to the harem, the Ottoman phrase "mâşallāhu kân" together with a date. The tughra is set within a wreath of laurel branches, and a branching rose, naturalistically drawn, appears in the upper right corner; Abdülaziz reigned from 1861 to 1876. Tektaş reads the date beside the inscription as 1289 (1872). Relying on the length of Ziya Pasha's term, he finds it acceptable that the mansion was built around 1865, with 1872 indicating a year after the completion of construction. Museum texts give the same inscription as "1283 (1872)"; yet the Hijri year 1283 corresponds to 1866-1867 in the Gregorian calendar, and the Hijri year that matches 1872 is 1289. Some accounts say the mansion was built between 1864 and 1872, in the second half of the nineteenth century, a range that takes in both ends, the era of Ziya Pasha and the date in the inscription. "Mâşallahü kân" means "what God wills comes to pass" and was written to ward off the evil eye.

Origin of the Name

Three different explanations circulate for the name of the mansion, and none of them has been supported by a document. According to the first, Hasan Talat's sister Hazeran Hanım lived in the mansion for many years after her brother, and the house was therefore called "Hazeranlar". The second concerns the same lady: her husband is said to have dealt in woven reed chairs known as "hazeran", and the name comes from this. In the third account Hasan Talat lived in the mansion with three nieces, and one of them, Hatice Hanım, stayed there with her daughter for many years. Tektaş, for his part, writes that the name comes from the family nickname of the house's first owners. Which of these explanations is correct has not been established with certainty.

The Twentieth Century and Its Rescue

Over time the mansion changed hands several times through inheritance and sale. In the process it fell into neglect, was damaged in the 1939 Erzincan earthquake, and was also affected by the floods of the Yeşilırmak in 1944, 1948 and 1952. According to the account handed down, after the daughter of Hatice Hanım, one of the nieces, married and left the mansion, Hatice Hanım was left alone in the house and divided its interior sections in order to let them. The mansion remained neglected for years and was sold by its owners in 1968.

The new owners wanted to put a reinforced-concrete building in its place and began to demolish the mansion secretly from the inside. When this was noticed, the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums of the Ministry of Culture expropriated the mansion in 1976, and it was placed under protection as an Ottoman-period mansion. That the mansions of Amasya, once lined up along the riverside walls and reminiscent of the waterside yalıs of the Bosphorus, have been largely demolished in recent years makes the rescue of this building by restoration all the more important. Tektaş stresses that the mansion was expropriated and saved from destruction at a time when its owners were making great efforts to have it pulled down.

The dates of the expropriation and the restoration appear in the sources with small differences. Museum information texts place the expropriation in 1976, the start of the restoration in 1976, its completion in 1979, and the completion of the display and arrangement work in 1983; the Governorship of Amasya, by contrast, ties both the expropriation and the restoration to 1979. The TDV entry says the restoration began in late 1979 and ended in 1983. The opening date also appears in two forms: the museum account says the building opened to visitors as an "Ethnography-Museum House" on 12 June 1984, while the TDV entry gives 17 August 1984. Both accounts agree that the building went into service as a museum house in the summer of 1984.

Location and Setting on the Fortification Wall

The mansion stands in the Hatuniye Quarter, at the end of a dead-end lane branching south from Hazeranlar Street, a traditional Ottoman street. The roughly one-kilometre outer wall of the inner citadel of the Harşena Fortress carries layers from the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman periods together; the mansion was built on this wall, projecting toward the river. Because the wall, running parallel to the river, disturbs the evenness of the ground in this stretch, the basement was fitted to the slope of the plot, and the two-storey mass above it was seated on a projection built toward the river on five timber posts. In this way the mansion obtained a wide usable area and a regularly cornered, geometric mass even on sloping ground. The timber-supported façade arrangement built to carry this part, which extends beyond the wall, is cited as a rare practice among the old Ottoman houses of Amasya.

In the front garden to the south there is a section, called the boathouse (kayıkhane) in the museum account, in which five timber columns are joined by Bursa arches; its upper floor was used as a room and a kitchen. To the north of the mansion lies an open courtyard.

Structure and Façades

The building runs north to south, with two storeys over a basement. The spaces between the timber frame are filled with mud brick, that is, it is built in the hımış technique. It is covered by a timber gabled roof (semerdam) and clad with Turkish-style curved tiles. The undersides of all the eaves are covered with timber, and all the windows are of the guillotine type. The south façade, facing the Yeşilırmak, is fully symmetrical. Floors and rooms are marked out in horizontal and vertical lines by timber bands, and the two corner rooms of the upper floor give movement to the façade with a projecting bay each. The museum account gives the number of bays in more detail: the second floor is projected outward on diagonal brackets called eliböğründe, with bays under triangular pediments, two on the south façade, one on the west and one on the north. Three façades, all except the east, are enlivened by these bays.

The TDV entry explains why the east façade is different: the east side of the building has no windows because it was formerly built in an attached row with neighbouring houses. The windows on the other façades are vertical openings 90 centimetres wide in a ratio of one to two, and most are of the triple sliding type. On the façades the vertical and horizontal floor divisions, the bays and the room fronts are emphasised with timber board mouldings, producing a thoroughly symmetrical order. In plan and outward appearance the mansion resembles the houses of Kastamonu, Kula, Safranbolu and Tokat.

The Plan: Harem and Selamlık

In keeping with Islamic ideas of domestic life and the tradition of the old Amasya houses, the mansion consists of two parts. The haremlik (harem) is the closed section, set apart from the outside, in which the family's daily life went on; the selamlık is a separate space where male guests were received. On both floors of the haremlik the classic Turkish house plan with a central hall (orta sofa) and four iwans is applied. A room is placed between each pair of iwans, and the sharp corners of the rooms facing the central hall are chamfered so that the entrance doors open there. The central halls of the two floors are linked by staircases; the TDV entry describes this as an original example of the central-hall arrangement. This plan scheme was widely used in the pavilions and kiosks of Istanbul in the eighteenth century and after the reign of Mahmud II; the mansion is regarded as the most distinguished example of the scheme in Amasya. The central hall, or çardak, was turned from a square into an octagon to obtain a wider and airier space, and the hall and iwans were used for communal events such as weddings, henna parties and iftar meals. The mansion has eleven rooms in total.

The selamlık section is kept outside this arrangement. It was added to the west façade of the mansion as a rectangular mass running lengthwise and is separated from the haremlik; designed separately in plan and function, it is linked to the haremlik only through the hall of the upper floor. The entrances of the two sections are also separate. The selamlık entrance opens onto the courtyard of the Hatuniye Mosque to the west. The haremlik entrance is to the north, at the double-leaf timber courtyard door at the end of the narrow, cobbled lane, which looks like a dead end, between the boys' school (sıbyan mektebi) and the houses.

The Courtyard and the Basement

The open courtyard, enclosed by a high wall, is entirely cut off from the outside; the haremlik is designed so that it cannot be seen into from outside or out of from within. In the west corner of the courtyard is a large hearth niche, also used as a summer kitchen. The TDV entry describes this hearth as a cauldron hearth integrated with the building, and writes that it was used for boiling grape molasses and tomato paste, and for heating water for laundry and for washing the dead. In front of the entrance stairs there is a well with a windlass. From the courtyard one climbs to the haremlik floor by a double-flight stone staircase. On days when summer temperatures in Amasya reach 40 degrees, the household did its daily work in this cooler courtyard, which also served as a workshop. The name "hayat", meaning living space, comes from this; open hayat areas with a tandır oven, hearth, well and bakery oven are found in most of Amasya's old houses.

From the east corner of the courtyard a few stone steps lead down to the basement. This floor shows the timber construction of the building in its whole openness. During the museum arrangement an exhibition hall was formed with panels placed on the walls and between the posts that carry the main mass. The section with its supports of nine timber posts is called the samanlık (hay store), and it corresponds, in this mansion, to the common practice in Amasya's rural architecture of using the basement floor as a stable. Through a door to the west of the samanlık one passes into the vaulted section called the develik (camel stall). This space, facing the Hatuniye Mosque and having large pointed-arch windows, is thought to have been used to shelter the camels and pack animals of visiting guests or of the household. The TDV entry describes the develik as a space of two parts joined by a large arched opening in the middle; the arch openings facing west have been closed with glass, one part given over to an office and the other to conferences and film and slide shows. Today the samanlık and develik are used as a picture gallery. The Governorship's account states that the upper floors of the mansion function as a museum house and the basement as a fine arts gallery.

The Selamlık

The selamlık consists of three rooms, a çardak or salon, and a hall. From the courtyard west of the boys' school, a multi-step staircase paved with brick rises to a double-leaf timber door and gives access to the lower hall of the selamlık. Here there is a very narrow storeroom with a small window. The TDV entry describes this entrance space as a section with more of a "hayat" atmosphere, with a brick-paved floor and a low ceiling. The room of the selamlık servant opens onto this space, and beside it is a revolving cupboard (dönme dolap) through which the food prepared in the kitchen on the lower floor of the haremlik was passed to the servants. From here a steep, narrow timber staircase leads up to the selamlık hall. According to the TDV entry, this section consists of a coffee room, a small room and the main room.

The selamlık room to the right of the hall is a reception antechamber. Male guests arriving from outside were received here before being admitted by the master of the mansion; sherbet, ayran, tea and coffee were offered, and they were often kept waiting here before being taken into the main room. On the east side of the room is a fireplace with a plaster-decorated sherbet niche above it, and at either side of the hearth niche are double-leaf storage cupboards reaching to the ceiling. The west side is furnished along its whole length with a timber sedir (divan). The room is lit by six guillotine windows facing Hazeranlar Street and the Hatuniye Mosque. To the right of the narrow corridor is a small room without a fireplace; it has a small sedir and, behind a door, a shelf with two compartments, and the museum account interprets it as a place where guests who came to the selamlık spent the night. The double-leaf door to the left of the corridor gives the link to the haremlik; the timber console in front of the door is the landing where dishes were set down.

The main room of the selamlık, the başoda, is at the south-west corner of the mansion. It faces the Hatuniye Mosque and the Yeşilırmak, and has an easy view of the southern part of the town on the opposite bank. In this room the head of the household entertained his most important guests from outside and held long and serious conversations; because it was the place of great receptions and gatherings for conversation, it is also called the "pasha's room". It is the brightest room of the mansion, with the widest field of view, and the most imposing. On its north wall are a fireplace, a plaster sherbet niche above it, and timber storage cupboards on either side; the TDV entry notes that the plaster ornament of these niches bears the influence of the Baroque style. On the south side there is a sedir, and in the museum arrangement the two mannequins placed on the sedir are meant to bring back a conversation with music and song, and gatherings at which poems and mevlits were recited. The ceiling panelling of the room is original and is the only timber element not renewed in the restoration; all the other timber elements, including doors, windows and stair balustrades, were rebuilt after their original examples. In the middle are a traditional floor dining cloth, a copper charcoal brazier and a samovar, and on the wall an Ottoman-period mirror, a rifle and a sword; the floor is spread with nineteenth-century kilims, carpets and curtains.

The Haremlik: Upper Floor

From the double-leaf door to the left of the selamlık hall, or by the double-flight timber staircase in the west iwan of the first-floor selamlık section, one passes to the second floor of the haremlik. Here too is the arrangement of central hall, four iwans and four rooms between the iwans. The west iwan is a double-flight landing giving the link with the staircase and the selamlık; in the east iwan are the washbasins and toilets, and in the south iwan is the summer sitting unit overlooking the Yeşilırmak, the front garden and the view to the south of the town. In the ceiling of the central hall is a whirling-wheel (çarkıfelek) motif made in the çıtakâri technique; according to the museum account there is no ornament in the mansion other than this motif.

The north iwan, facing the courtyard, was also used as a summer sitting place, and today it is furnished as a nineteenth-century local iwan with a mannequin wearing the three-skirted dress (üç etek), a plaster-decorated mirror and a gas lamp. In the south iwan, Ottoman ceramic vessels are displayed in a cupboard; on the sedir are carpet cushions, covers embroidered in cross-stitch and velvet curtains. Here the museum account states that in nineteenth-century Amasya the sound of the kanun, oud and tambur rose from almost every house of the aristocratic families, and that in the long summer months the ladies of the mansion held musical gatherings in these cool iwans. In Ottoman mansions halls and iwans were the social space for such gatherings.

The dowry room is one of the most carefully arranged rooms of the mansion after the main room. In Anatolia, once girls reached a certain age, they prepared with cross-stitch and handwork a great many items for use in their own homes after marriage, such as covers, towels, curtains and kerchiefs, and displayed their dowries in a room of their own during the wedding, hanging them on the walls or arranging them in the room. On the last day of the wedding these dowries were put into a chest and sent to the groom's house. In the museum's dowry room three mannequins are dressed in bindallı, the bridal dress of the Amasya region, and the henna night is brought to life; the mannequins hold embroidered napkins and a henna apron. The room also contains a hand-woven carpet, a console against the wall, a wall clock, a dowry chest on the floor and velvet curtains. The room between the north and east iwans is the servants' room. It has a fireplace, a sherbet niche, a storage cupboard and ablution units (gusülhane); in small display cases are headpieces, bracelets and bags made of silver and of a material called bafom, and on the walls hand-woven prayer rugs are displayed.

The parents' bedroom, between the south and east iwans and facing the Yeşilırmak, is among the most imposing rooms of the mansion. The sedir, fireplace, storage cupboard and the ablution unit inside a cupboard are present here too. In the museum arrangement the bedroom is brought to life with a scene in which a bride in local dress tries to put a baby in a cradle to sleep, an elderly mother-in-law reads the Qur'an on the sedir, and a brass bed with a mosquito net stands on the right. The room between the south and west iwans is arranged as the sitting room where, in the old days when neighbourly visits were common, women gathered on long winter nights to drink tea and coffee and to eat fruit and dried nuts.

The Haremlik: Lower Floor

From the courtyard, a double-flight stone staircase paved with brick leads up to the entrance floor of the haremlik; from the landing, a double-leaf door leads to the north iwan and the central hall. The lower haremlik rests on the same plan with a central hall and four iwans. The north iwan gives entry from the courtyard; in the east iwan are the toilet and washbasin, and in the west iwan the staircase to the second floor; the south iwan faces the front garden, the Yeşilırmak and the south of the town. The lower haremlik has a winter kitchen, the parents' sitting room, and, to the right of the south iwan, the mabeyn (felted) sitting room and the mabeyn bedroom, made up of two interconnected rooms; to the right of the west iwan are the pantry and the staircase and door that lead to the selamlık.

In the display cases of the central hall are the jewellery of Ottoman women and the accessories they carried to the bath, such as a metal kohl holder, soap dish and clogs. On the walls of the south iwan hang hand-woven Caucasian carpets dated 1893, and on its sedir are traditional carpet cushions, lace cushion covers and curtains. In a case in front of the stairs the shalwar, çarşaf and crinkled cotton (bürümcük) that women wore as street dress in nineteenth-century Amasya are shown on a mannequin. In the parents' sitting room the preparation of a meal in a large patriarchal family is brought to life: a floor dining cloth on a traditional kilim, copper sahan dishes and covered vessels in a copper tray, female mannequins in bindallı dress, and, by the hearth, a nineteenth-century ceramic European stove. In the mansion, heating was done by taking the embers of the wood burned in the hearth into a copper brazier and placing it in the room.

The kitchen is where the daily meals for the household in the haremlik and for guests arriving at the selamlık were prepared by servants. In the middle are a floor dining cloth and the hearth on which food was cooked; on shelves are copper pails, sahan dishes, ewers and vessels, and on the floor, over a woven cicim rug, everyday kitchen vessels such as a güğüm and an earthenware jar; the mannequins wear the three-skirted dress and vest. The felted room between the south and west iwans consists of a front room, its floor paved with square terracotta tiles, and a bedroom; on the sedir the grandfather of the house is shown resting. In other spaces of the mansion, items used in daily life are also displayed: embroidered curtains, sedir covers, bedding and quilt sets, copper trays, a brazier, a samovar, carpets, kilims, tables, chairs, a gas lamp, a wall clock, a stove, baskets, glass demijohns, chests and chandeliers.

Creation of the Museum

When the mansion was arranged as a museum house, it was furnished with ethnographic objects from the storerooms of the Amasya Museum. According to the TDV entry, the interior arrangement of the surviving old Amasya houses was taken as the basis of the display work; the views of elderly people who remembered the mansion's former days were also drawn upon, and where necessary new additions were made, aiming at an arrangement as close to the original as possible. The paper presented by Kemal Soyer in 1984 treats the restorations of the Amasya Hazeranlar Mansion and the Safranbolu Kaymakamlar House together; Mehmet Tektaş's book on the mansion was published in Amasya in 1986.

According to the Governorship, some 355 ethnographic objects are used in the display. Among them are clothing reflecting nineteenth-century life, carpets and kilims, kitchen utensils in daily use, and women's jewellery. Carpets with inscriptions, bindallı dresses, silver ornaments and gold-coloured thread embroidery are regarded as especially important for reflecting the character of the period.

Current Status

The mansion stands on Hazeranlar Street in the Hatuniye Quarter and has been run as a unit attached to the Amasya Museum Directorate. According to the museum notice, it has been closed to visitors since 11 November 2024, until the repair and display-and-arrangement work is completed. Before the closure the visiting route ran from the ticket office in the haremlik section to the pantry, then to the selamlık stairs and the selamlık hall, then to the second-floor haremlik central hall, and finally, by the double-flight staircase, to the first-floor haremlik central hall. For the reopening it is necessary to consult the current announcements of the museum directorate.

Chronology

1864-1865: Ziya Pasha is governor of Amasya; the mansion is built in this period, around 1865, by his defterdar Hasan Talat Efendi.

1872: The date of the "mâşallāhu kân" inscription at the haremlik entrance is read as (Hijri) 1289; it is taken as the year construction was completed.

1939: The Erzincan earthquake damages the mansion.

1944, 1948, 1952: Floods of the Yeşilırmak affect the mansion.

1968: The mansion is sold by its owners; the new owners begin to demolish the building from the inside.

1976: The Ministry of Culture expropriates the mansion.

1979-1983: The restoration is carried out; the display and arrangement work is completed in 1983.

1984: The mansion opens to visitors as an "Ethnography-Museum House" (the date appears in the sources as 12 June or 17 August).

11 November 2024: It is closed to visitors because of repair and renewal of the displays.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

  • Turkish Museums, "Amasya Hazeranlar Konağı" guide text. https://www.turkishmuseums.com/museum/detail/1938-amasya-hazeranlar-konagi/1938/1
  • Soyer, Kemal. "Amasya Hazeranlar Konağı ve Safranbolu Kaymakamlar Evi Restorasyonları." Mimaride Türk Milli Üslubu Semineri, Istanbul 1984, pp. 141-151 (from the bibliography of the TDV entry). amasya.gov.tr
  • Tektaş, Mehmet. Hazeranlar Konağı. Amasya 1986; "Eski Amasya Evleri." İlgi, no. 67, Istanbul 1991, pp. 20-25 (from the bibliography of the TDV entry).

Online sources