In an Ottoman town the hamam was more than a place to wash; it was a public institution that met the shared needs of a neighborhood. It appeared in the endowment registers as the source of income that paid for a mosque or a madrasa, and sometimes it kept alive for centuries the name of the benefactor who had set a town's development in motion. In Amasya the links of this tradition can still be seen today. In the town center, on both banks of the Yeşilırmak, a few hamams with domes covered in traditional curved tile and crowned with lantern or elephant-eye skylights still stand, and most of them continue to operate. Alongside them were many hamams whose names survive only in endowment deeds, in descriptions of the old quarters and in the memories of older Amasya families. The history of Amasya's hamams makes sense only when the surviving buildings and the lost ones are read together.
Background of the Hamam Tradition in Amasya
Amasya's bathing culture did not begin with the Turkish period. Local records note that the town has monumental hamam examples from the Roman, Seljuk and Ottoman periods, and that some of them still operate. The abundance of water was the chief basis of this tradition. A hamam depends on two basic inputs, water and the wood burned in the furnace; the water supplied by the Yeşilırmak and by the springs around the town has never been scarce in Amasya. The endowment records quoted by Hüseyin Hüsameddin show that the conduits bringing water into town were often conceived together with a hamam. When Kaya Paşa of the Torumtay family had a spring channel cleared in 805 (1402-03) and built fountains at fifteen points, the same endowment also included a hamam and a school, and the whole income of the hamam was assigned to the school.
Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi attributes the town's earliest hamams of the Turkish period to Danishmendid and Seljuk rulers. According to him, the Seljuk Sultan Mesud repaired the inner citadel around 540 (1145-46) and built a mosque, a madrasa, a palace and a hamam there; next to the sultan's riverside palace in İçerişehir, on the site of today's Kurşunlu quarter, there was also a hamam. Among the ruined palace remains inside the citadel he mentions a "graceful" hamam buried in earth up to its dome. The records likewise credit to Melik Şehinşah the hamam at the head of the quarter below the Burma Minare, in the district called "Şehinşah's Garden" that later took the name Saraçhane. Most of these attributions rest on old documents that Hüsameddin says he saw, and they have not been independently verified; even so, this is the only detailed picture showing that the town's network of hamams began to take shape before the Ottomans.
In the Ottoman period Amasya grew as the seat of the princes' sanjak, and this growth was reflected directly in the town's stock of buildings. In the early sixteenth century the town is recorded as having nine mosques, ten madrasas, four zawiyas, six soup kitchens and fifteen hamams. That the hamams outnumbered even the mosques shows the weight of this building type in urban life. Most of those fifteen hamams no longer exist. What remains is a small part of the hamam network of that time, and most of it has survived thanks to its tie to a mosque complex or an endowment. A master's thesis of 2024 documenting the Turkish-period water structures of central Amasya catalogued ten hamams and found that all of them follow the traditional sequence of dressing room, warm room, hot room, furnace and water tank, and were built as single hamams.
The construction dates of the hamams coincide with the town's general building calendar. The Bayezid Paşa Mosque dates from 1414-1419, the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque from 1430, the Mosque Complex of Bayezid II from 1486, the mosque of Vizier Mehmed Paşa, tutor of Şehzade Ahmed, from 1486, the Madrasa of Kapı Ağası Hüseyin Ağa from 1488, the Dârülhadis Mosque from 1502 and the Hatuniye Mosque from 1510. The dates of the Mustafa Bey, Kumacık and Yıldız hamams fall within this sequence; in other words, the hamams rose in parallel with the town's investment in mosques and madrasas, as their branch of income.
The Endowment System and the Hamam's Income
The endowment tie explains why so many hamams were built in the Ottoman world. Because it offered a service the public needed constantly, a hamam provided charitable institutions with a dependable income. The expenses of institutions such as a mosque, a madrasa or a soup kitchen were met from the rent the hamam brought in. The family of Yörgüç Paşa, which governed Amasya in the fifteenth century, is the clearest example of this arrangement. According to Mustafa Çağhan Keskin's study of the family's endowment deeds, Yörgüç Paşa, his brother Hızır Paşa, his son Mustafa Bey and Hızır Paşa's son Mehmed Paşa built four hans, a bedesten, many shops, six mills and eleven hamams to support the charitable institutions in and around Amasya. Each of these hamams was tied to the budget of a zawiya, madrasa or soup kitchen belonging to the family. In Amasya itself, Yörgüç Paşa, Mustafa Bey and Hızır Paşa each had one hamam. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, drawing on the endowment texts and the tax registers, states instead that Yörgüç Paşa built two hamams in Amasya; the difference between the sources may come down to which hamam is credited to the pasha and which to his son.
To the southwest of Yörgüç Paşa's mosque, close to the carriage road, stood a small hamam known as the "Çardaklı Hamam". According to Hüsameddin this building too belonged to the endowment and worked until 1296 (1879); in that year a flood of the Yeşilırmak damaged its furnace and side walls. Hüsameddin recounts with some bitterness that the hamam, which a modest repair could have saved, fell out of use through neglect and that the endowment's income was lost. This brief note shows concretely how hamams were looked after as long as they paid, and abandoned to their fate once the income stopped.
The tie of income sometimes outlived the hamam itself. Kaya Paşa's hamam and school disappeared after the trusteeship of the endowment passed to the descendants of Rahtuvân Mehmed Paşa, one of the pasha's relatives, and all that remained was the annual income from the endowed water; this was still being collected in Hüsameddin's day. Above Kaya Paşa's ruined hamam rose a small mosque founded by Molla Bahşî Halife under an endowment deed dated 823 (1420). The disappearance of most Ottoman hamams can be understood within this framework, and the fall in the number of Amasya's hamams from fifteen to the five working today is explained by the same process.
The management of endowed hamams passed for centuries within the same families. Among the trustees of the Alaca Hamam, the town's old double hamam, were the Tâceddînzâdes, who served as madrasa teachers and judges in the seventeenth century. One of them repaired the "Alaca hamams" in 1063 (1652-53) and then handed the trusteeship to his three sons. The records also tell how, in the middle of the same century, an attempt was made to strip the Amasya mufti Tâceddîn Efendi of the trusteeship of the Alaca Hamam, and how the judge prevented it. In a town of this size a hamam was a privileged source of income, and its trusteeship was a post that brought standing to its holder.
The Classical Hamam Layout
An Ottoman hamam is built of three main sections. Bathers first enter a domed, usually spacious and impressive dressing room (camekân). With its raised benches and often a fountain at its center, this is a place for resting and waiting; since it is unheated, it is cool compared with the heat inside. Next comes the warm room, a transitional space between heat and cold. The hot room, the hamam's true bathing section, is arranged around a central heated platform; the basins and the small bathing cells called halvet are found here. At the rear of the building is the furnace where the water is heated, with the hot water tank above or beside it.
The plan of the hot room varies from hamam to hamam, and this variety can be traced in Amasya too. The arrangement in which the room opens in four directions onto vaulted iwans, with halvet cells in the corners, is a common type used since the oldest hamams of Anatolia and is linked to the four-iwan plan tradition that came from Central Asia. In Semavi Eyice's classification based on the plan of the hot room, this type is called "cruciform, four-iwan, with corner cells", and it was used without interruption from the twelfth-century hamams of Ani to the twentieth century. The hot room of the Kumacık Hamam follows this arrangement. The hot room of the Mustafa Bey Hamam is described as a domed space with four large niches on its four sides. In the Yıldız Hamam, the dressing room, cool room, hot room and furnace are ranged around a dome with a lantern.
Light is one of the finest details of hamam architecture. The dressing room takes its light from the lantern at the center of the dome and from a few windows. In the warm and hot rooms, bell-shaped glass set into the domes, the skylights called elephant eyes, carry daylight inside. High windows in the walls of dressing rooms became common from the sixteenth century onward, so some of the windows seen in Amasya's early hamams are traces of later repairs. In some hamams the sockets of the elephant eyes were given a star shape. There are accounts that link the name of the Yıldız (Star) Hamam to this detail; however, there is no firm document on the origin of the name, and it has also been suggested that the building received it only recently.
The Seljuk Hamams and the Alaca Hamam
Among the old buildings Hüsameddin dwells on most are two hamams built side by side at the head of the Alçak Köprü. They were known locally as the "Alaca Hamamı" and remained in the possession of Alaca Yahya Bey, of the line of Hacı Kutlu Şah, until 875 (1470-71). Judging by the position of the two hamams and the fact that they lie at the same level as the old hamam at the northern end of the bridge, Hüsameddin regards them as Seljuk work. That Yahya Bey descended from Hacı Şâdgeldi Paşa, emir of Amasya, and that the hamams had come to him by inheritance might suggest that Şâdgeldi Paşa built them; Hüsameddin rejects this possibility, noting that the hamams already existed before Şâdgeldi Paşa was born.
The same author also gives the hamam's older name through a detail he quotes from the endowment deeds of Bayezid Paşa. According to him, the double hamam now called the Alaca Hamam was known in Bayezid Paşa's day as the "Hacı Şâdgeldi Hamamı", and Şâdgeldi Paşa had inherited it from the Seljuks. Certain shares of the hamam had passed to Bayezid Paşa from Biçaroğlu Hamza Bey and from Sittî Hatun, daughter of Şâdgeldi Paşazâde Mustafa Bey, and his wife Benefşe Hatun. The name Alaca, in turn, came from the building's later passing into the management of Alaca Yahya Bey. That a hamam could be divided into shares and change hands shows that these buildings were also valued as property.
In the eighteenth century the Alaca Hamam became part of a new endowment. Hacı Osman Bey, son of the former governor of Anatolia Vizier Ömer Paşa and a descendant of Hacı Şâdgeldi Paşa, had served for many years as an emir in Egypt; when he was allowed to settle in Amasya in 1159 (1746), he built a hadith college and library at the head of the Alçak Köprü, opposite his mansion adjoining the Alaca Hamam, and endowed to these foundations his two-gated han above Samanpazarı, the Alaca Hamam and many other properties. Hüsameddin writes that the historic mansion east of the men's section of the hamams burned to the ground in the fire of 1333 (1915), and that "now there is no trace of the hamams or the mansions". Of Hacı Osman Bey's endowment he says that "today the madrasa, the han and the hamam have all been destroyed".
The hamams of the Hatuniye district are also associated with a Seljuk past. According to Hüsameddin, the Çukur Hamam west of the Hatuniye Mosque was built by Rıdvan Bey, one of Sultan Mesud's emirs, and the Yukarı Hamam at the western end of İçerişehir by Sultan Mesud himself. The relationship of these two buildings to today's Yıldız and Altuntaş hamams is discussed below. Another old hamam in the records is the Kağnı Hamamı in the Devehane quarter. Built around 620 (1223) by an emir named Aydın Bey, it was ruined in the earthquake of 999 (1590-91); his descendant Hacı Ali Ağa rebuilt it and in 1018 (1609-10) endowed it together with a han and shops he added beside it. All of them were destroyed in the fire of 1143 (1730-31); Hüsameddin writes that not even the site of the hamam could be found.
The Mustafa Bey Hamam (1436)
Among the hamams standing in Amasya today, the Mustafa Bey Hamam is the oldest whose construction date is documented. It was built in 1436 by Mustafa Bey, son of Yörgüç Paşa, tutor-guardian (lala) of Murad II. Hüsameddin likewise records the building as a "graceful hamam" built by "Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey" in 840 (1436-37). Yörgüç Paşa's name is also remembered in Amasya through his mosque of 1430; the works father and son left to the town bear the mark of a family of statesmen who settled in Amasya in the early Ottoman period and invested in the city. Mustafa Bey did not live long; according to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam he fell, together with his brother Hızır Bey, at the Battle of Varna. The same Mustafa Bey had also founded a soup kitchen and guesthouse in Havza and built a second hamam beside it; Hüsameddin writes that this hamam stood behind the great spa hamam of Havza and that the endowment deed of the soup kitchen was drawn up in 840.
The hamam stands in the town center, on Mehmet Paşa Avenue, north of the Bimarhane. Hüsameddin places it west of the Mehmed Paşa Mosque, whose inscription he reads as dated 900 (1494); other sources date the mosque to 1486. By either date the hamam was built half a century before the mosque; the buildings that later rose in this area must have gathered around the hamam. To the east of the hamam, Hacı Efendizâde Şeyh Mehmed Ağa built a school for Qur'an reciters in 1071 (1660-61); elsewhere in Hüsameddin the date appears as 1073. The school stood in the street behind the Mustafa Bey Hamam, and its income came from ten shops in the row of the Yâkûtiye Mosque and a large mill opposite them.
The building is constructed of rubble stone and brick, and one enters through a segmental-arched doorway set in a marble frame. Large niches can be seen in the walls of the square dressing room. The cool room, whose niches are topped with muqarnas, is covered by a dome. The hot room is a domed space surrounded on its four sides by four large niches. Covering the dressing room and the hot room with two separate domes gives the building a plain but balanced mass.
What sets the Mustafa Bey Hamam apart in architectural history is the size of its dressing room. Very large domed dressing rooms are known to have been built in the early Ottoman period. Along with examples in Gelibolu, Bursa and Edirne, the hamam of Mustafa Bey, son of Yörgüç Paşa, in Amasya belongs to this group, and in these buildings the dome diameters range between ten and fifteen meters. Because these domes show that the Ottomans could raise large domed buildings even before the conquest of Istanbul and their encounter with Hagia Sophia, they are often cited as evidence against the view that the Turks learned dome architecture from Byzantium.
The most vivid testimony to the hamam's daily life in the early twentieth century is found in Osman Fevzi Olcay's Amasya Hâtıraları (Memories of Amasya). Olcay recalls that in his childhood the open ground in front of the Bimarhane, the Mustafa Bey Hamam and the Çevikçe School was the neighborhood children's main playground. In those years the hamam was run by Dubaracıoğlu Hamamcı Hacı Ali Hafız Ağa, who also ran the Sinan Hamam at Selağzı. The women's sections of both hamams were managed by Hafız Ağa's wife, Ayşe Hanım. After the hamam closed in the evening, the attendants of both hamams stayed on night duty, feeding the fire according to the state of the furnace. Between the hamam and its furnace stood a raised coffeehouse; Olcay writes that most of its regulars were enthusiasts of turkeys and fighting cocks, and hunters.
The Kumacık Hamam (1495)
The Kumacık Hamam stands in the Bayezid Paşa quarter, opposite the Künç Bridge and west of the Bayezid Paşa Mosque. It was built by the palace gate officer Ayas Ağa. Ayas Ağa was one of the gate officers (kapı ağası) of Bayezid II during his years as prince in Amasya and was known as the "Lesser Gate Officer". In the Şamlar quarter, on the site of the ruined mosque of the Danishmendid Melik Gazi, he had founded a small complex consisting of a mosque, a madrasa and a primary school. Hüsameddin reports that the complex was built in 900 (1494-95); it has no inscription. The gate officer was a member of the palace household; in the same period Amasya also had the madrasa of Kapı Ağası Hüseyin Ağa, dated 1488, and these two examples show that palace officers were investing in Amasya at the end of the fifteenth century.
The hamam's name comes from the story of its plot. According to Hüsameddin, Ayas Ağa built the hamam in 900 on a plot he bought from Hoca Ahmed Çelebizâde Hoca Mehmed Çelebi, known by the nickname "Kocacık". The building was first called the "Kocacık Hamamı", and over time the name was corrupted into Kumacık; some old sources also call it the "Ayas Ağa Hamamı". An entry of 1495 for the endowment of Ayas Ağa, in register no. 582 in the archives of the General Directorate of Foundations, confirms this. The entry states that the hamam was built outside Amasya proper, at the head of the bridge called "Hunc köprü", on property bought from Hoca Mehmed and Hoca Ahmed, nicknamed Kocacık. Together with the hamam, the eight rooms to its east, the channel of the water flowing into the hamam and from the hamam to the river, and the garden through which this water ran were endowed for the expenses of the small mosque and the school in the Şamlılar quarter. Hüsameddin also counts within this endowment a mill in front of the gate of the Bayezid Paşa compound and the garden beside it. The hamam was raised on a separate plot, away from the complex, purely to generate income.
Over time other endowed buildings filled the surroundings of the hamam. In 990 (1582) Mirza Beyzâde Mehmed Bey, a member of the Âbâdoğulları, one of the leading families of Hakala, built a fine han on the road west of the Kocacık Hamam and endowed it to his madrasa in Hakala. Hüsameddin notes that the empty plot west of the hamam in his own day was the site of this han. Hüsameddin calls the bridge opposite the Kumacık Hamam the "Kuş Köprü" and places it in front of the Şamlılar quarter. In Olcay's memoir, the hamam stands "on this side of the Kunç Bridge".
The history of the building's plan has been the subject of scholarly research. According to Sibel Yarar's study, published in the journal Vakıflar Dergisi in 2020, the hamam was altered at different times in all three of its sections after its construction and has reached the present with an appearance different from its first plan. In its present state the building has a nearly square plan, and because it lies below street level one goes down a stair to enter. The domed dressing room is followed by a flat-ceilinged warm room laid out as a narrow corridor; the hot room has four iwans with halvet cells in the corners. The number of cells is given differently in the sources. The Vakıf Abideleri publication, based on the plan Albert Gabriel drew between 1927 and 1930, speaks of two corner cells, while Sultan Murat Topçu, in his book Amasya'da Türk Devri Hamamları published in 2018, speaks of three. Topçu regards the section south of the warm room, now used as a pool, as part of the warm room from the start. Yarar, however, argues that in its size and corner bevels this section is identical to the halvet cell to the north, and that the hamam was therefore originally built with a cruciform hot room with four corner cells.
According to Yarar's findings, the halvet cell in the southwest corner was merged with the warm room to form today's pool area, the square cell in the northeast was altered into a rectangular shaving room, and the storeroom northeast of the dressing room was added later. The unusual narrowness of the warm room compared with other hamams is also a result of these repairs. The southern cell is now used as a sauna. The only original elements left inside the building are two stone basins in the cell at the eastern corner; the marble facings, the wooden cabins and the other basins are later additions.
The square space of the dressing room is covered by a large dome reached through Turkish triangles. The Turkish triangle is an element made of faceted surfaces that provides the transition from a square space to a round dome and is often used in Turkish architecture. The octagonal opening at the center of the dome shows that there was once a lantern here; the 1990 restoration project drew a lantern, but it was not built, and the opening was closed with flat glass. The central dome of the hot room is reached through pendentives over a two-stage round drum, and a large octagonal heated platform lies on the floor. The muqarnas squinches in the corners of the iwans, the zigzag moldings narrowing upward above the doorways and the zigzag band running around the ceiling of the warm room are the chief ornaments that enliven the plain interior. Outside, the only decoration is an hourglass motif carved in relief on the keystone of the entrance arch. The domes are covered on the outside with traditional curved tile, and the eaves are of brick in a saw-tooth pattern.
The building's recent history can also be traced in documents. A plan of 1930, a photograph of 1957 and an undated photograph survive. In the 1957 photograph no window can be seen in the dressing room, and there is no lantern on the dome. The hamam was registered as a listed building in 1979 and underwent a restoration that began in 1990 and lasted several years. During this work windows were opened in the walls of the dressing room, and all but one of them were closed again in later interventions. When Yarar's study was published, the building was closed for repair of its worn parts.
The Yıldız Hamam (1510)
The Yıldız Hamam stands in the Hatuniye quarter, adjoining the Hatuniye Mosque, and is regarded as a unit of the complex built by Bülbül Hatun, consort of Bayezid II. Bülbül Hatun entered Bayezid's harem during his years as sanjak governor of Amasya and is known as the mother of Şehzade Ahmed. Hüsameddin writes that she was of Georgian origin, entered Bayezid's palace as a slave woman, and gained the standing of "valide sultan" when her son became governor of Amasya in 886 (1481). The sources date the complex with small differences. The accepted date for both the mosque and the hamam is 1510. Hüsameddin, however, records that work on the mosque, the school and the soup kitchen began in 912 (1506-07) and was finished in 917 (1511-12), and that the endowment deed was drawn up in 915 (1509-10).
The hamam's local name is the Çukur Hamam (Sunken Hamam), a name attributed to the building's lying at a lower level than its surroundings. It is said that a hamam stood on this site in the Seljuk period as well, and that the present building was most likely rebuilt on the foundations of that older hamam. The oldest written source for this account is Hüsameddin. According to him, the "Çukur Hamam" west of the mosque was built by Rıdvan Bey, one of Sultan Mesud's emirs. The hamam later became the property of Şâdgeldi Paşa, emir of Amasya, and then entered the holdings of Bülbül Hatun and was endowed in 915. Hüsameddin states plainly that he "estimates" its construction date at 550 (1155-56) and bases the information on "old documents". The biographical section of his work repeats that Rıdvan Bey died around 580 and that the hamam passed to Bülbül Hatun as property and was endowed by her. The documents Hüsameddin says he saw have not been published; the hamam's Seljuk origin, though a strong local record, therefore cannot be independently verified.
The hamam has a square plan and is covered by a dome with a lantern. South of the domed dressing room is the cool room, to the east the lavatories, and to the west the hot room and furnace. If it is true that the building is a rebuilt Seljuk hamam, this unusual ordering of the plan may have been dictated by the need to follow the old foundations; this, however, is an inference, and no excavation or study of the walls has been published for the building.
According to the family that has run the hamam for three generations, the building worked as a hamam until around 1924 and was then used as a wine store, with a grape press installed in the dressing room. In the earthquake of 1939 the main dome collapsed, flood water filled the interior with mud, and for a time the building became a place where rubbish was dumped. In 1948 the family repaired the hamam and ran it under the name Çukur Hamam until 1963; after a major repair its name was changed to the Yıldız Hamam. The building was thoroughly repaired once more in 2002. This account rests on family memory and cannot be considered supported by a written document; even so, it shows concretely the ruptures a hamam in Amasya went through in the twentieth century: losing its function, being damaged by an earthquake and being brought back to life.
Bülbül Hatun's investment in hamams was not limited to Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that she also built a mosque and a hamam in the town of Lâdik and drew up their endowment deed in the same year as that of her foundations in Amasya. In later centuries the trustees of the Hatuniye endowments included Yusuf Paşa, a descendant of Yularkısdı Sinan Paşa, vizier of Şehzade Ahmed; Hüsameddin introduces this family as the line of the Sinan Paşa "who had a hamam at Selağzı".
The Altuntaş Hamam, or Yukarı Hamam
The Altuntaş Hamam is also known locally as the Yukarı Hamam (Upper Hamam). It stands on Şifre Street in the Hatuniye quarter, near the Mâdenüs Bridge. Built of dressed stone, rubble stone and mortar, the building follows the traditional Ottoman arrangement of cool, warm and hot rooms, and also has a furnace. Its roof consists of domes and vaults. It has no building inscription; for this reason its construction date is not known with certainty, and present-day records state that the building most likely belongs to the seventeenth century. Inscribed hamams are in any case rare in the Ottoman world; the oldest known inscribed Ottoman hamam is the hamam of Bayezid I built in Mudurnu in 1382.
The information Hüsameddin gives about the "Yukarı Hamam" contradicts this dating. According to him, the Yukarı Hamam at the head of the Kurşunlu quarter in İçerişehir was one of Sultan Mesud's works surviving in Amasya and belonged to the Hatuniye endowments. The biographical section of his work completes the picture: the Yukarı Hamam, also called the "Çelebiler Hamamı", was the property of Çelebi Ahmed Paşa and had passed to his descendants; Bülbül Hatun bought the hamam from the children of this family and endowed it to her foundations. The location Hüsameddin describes, the riverside between the western end of the Hatuniye quarter and the east of the Kurşunlu quarter, matches the site of today's Altuntaş Hamam. According to Hüsameddin, the small mosque built in 821 (1418) by Paşa Hatun, sister of Bayezid Paşa, stood opposite the Yukarı Hamam. If the Yukarı Hamam and the Altuntaş Hamam are accepted as the same building, a reasonable explanation is that the present building was rebuilt in the seventeenth century on the site or on the foundations of an older hamam. This too remains an inference; no document reconciling the two views has been published.
The Yukarı Hamam was surrounded by the town's grand mansions. In the early eighteenth century the "magnificent mansion adjoining the Yukarı Hamam" of Hocazâde Abdullatif Çelebi, deputy of the marshal of the descendants of the Prophet, was sealed after his death. In the same years, while the house of Köse Mehmed Ağa in the Ahi Sadeddin quarter was being stoned and looted by a crowd, a fire broke out that spread as far as the Yukarı Hamam and reduced two quarters to ashes. Hüsameddin also mentions Hammamîzâde Halil Efendi, son of Ahmed Ağa, "keeper of the Yukarı Hamam" in the Kurşunlu quarter, who rose in the learned profession. Hamam-keeping was a trade settled enough in the town to give a family its name.
The Lost Hamams
Hüsameddin's quarter-by-quarter description yields a long list of Amasya hamams of which no trace remains today. Hızır Paşa, founder of the Hızır Paşa quarter, built two hamams alongside the mosque, madrasa, school and zawiya he completed in 870 (1465-66). The double hamam west of the mosque was a "most elegant" building, and because women visited it every year in hyacinth season and made an outing of it, it was called the "Sünbül Hamamı" (Hyacinth Hamam). Olcay's memoir also records a mosque, a hamam and a ruined madrasa in the Hızır Paşa quarter.
The "Kadı Hamamı" in the Fethiye quarter was built by the Amasya judge Muslihîzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi, known as "Molla Beylik"; his son, the chief military judge Molla Vildan Mehmed Çelebi, founded a madrasa above the hamam, and his grandson Abdurrahman Çelebi endowed the hamam in 912 (1506-07). The madrasa disappeared entirely over time, while the hamam remained an endowment in the hands of the Muslîzâde family for centuries. When the last member of the family died childless in 1298 (1880-81), the properties passed to the treasury; Hüsameddin writes that the hamam too burned in the fire of 1331 (1915), and that "there is neither trace of its endowments nor news of its descendants".
Another large hamam of the town center was the Sinan Paşa Hamam at Selağzı. Sinan Paşa, a freedman of Hızır Paşa and former beylerbey of Sivas, built and endowed this hamam in 917 (1511-12). In 1271 (1854-55), after heavy rain, a flood coming down the Selağzı stream destroyed bridges and houses and left one of the dome stones it carried on top of the hamam's dome; the stone could be brought down only with great difficulty. Describing the Selağzı market shop by shop, Olcay lists the door of the Sinan Hamam opening onto the women's side and the butcher's and greengrocer's shops beside it. In the captions of the memoir's photographs, the hamam appears in a view of old Selağzı, before the Yavuz Sultan Selim Square was opened, together with the Clock Tower and the Gümüşlü Mosque. The hamam's present state could not be determined from the sources examined.
Most of these buildings met their end in the same disaster. Olcay relates that five or six months after the Armenian deportation, on a Ramadan evening at the hour of breaking the fast, a fire that started in a carpenter's shop next to the han run by Gazzazoğlu Hamdi Ağa razed the town. By his figures, within four hours three thousand one hundred and thirty houses, two thousand shops, seventeen hans, nineteen mosques, three churches, seven hamams and ten dervish lodges burned. This fire of 1915, which Hüsameddin calls "the terrible fire of 1331", was also the end of the Alaca Hamam and the Kadı Hamamı. In his description of the market before the fire, Olcay also mentions a "Köprü Hamamı" (Bridge Hamam) standing in a hollow opposite the Alçak Köprü.
There were hamams outside the town as well. In the village of Ilıca in the Geldiklan district, Rıdvan Ağa of Amasya, a former chief gatekeeper, built a hamam over the hot spring and in 987 (1579-80) endowed it to his children together with the Ilısu farm. According to Hüsameddin the spring later changed its course and began to rise above the hamam, which was left on dry ground and fell into ruin, though its remains still showed their former splendor. In Hakala, Kâsım Bey of the Hacı Bey family built a madrasa and a hamam in 867 (1462-63), and Muhyiddin Bey of the same line built another madrasa and hamam in 947 (1540-41). The "ancient" hamam beside the Keçioğlu Mosque in Ziyare and the hamam of the mosque in the Upper Quarter there are also on Hüsameddin's list.
The Paşa Hamam in Merzifon (1678)
Among the hamams still working in Amasya province, the latest in date is the Paşa Hamam in Merzifon. It was built in 1678 by the grand vizier Kara Mustafa Paşa. Merzifon's hamam tradition, however, reaches much further back. Hüsameddin writes that Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) built a madrasa and a hamam in Merzifon in 818 (1415-16), Murad II a mosque and a hamam in 830 (1426-27), and Mehmed II (the Conqueror) a hamam as well. Ahmed Çelebi, son of Sefer Şah of Merzifon, served as building superintendent for the hamams of Murad and Mehmed II. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam also lists among Merzifon's notable monuments a Double Hamam in the Hacı Süleyman quarter, attributed to Murad I.
The complex Kara Mustafa Paşa had built between 1666 and 1679 consists of a mosque, the Taşhan, a bedesten, a library, shops and two hamams. The second of these is the Tuzpazarı Hamam, dated in the sources either to 1087 (1676) or to 1677. Like the classical Ottoman hamams, the Paşa Hamam consists of cool room, warm room, hot room and furnace. The domed dressing room is followed by a rectangular warm room; the hot room is covered by a dome on an octagonal drum. The records also give the name Eski Hamam (Old Hamam) for this building in Merzifon and state that, according to its inscription, it was built in 1678. The iwan-like niches and corner cells on the four sides of the octagonal hot room bring this hamam close to a plan type different from that of the hamams in the town center. Yarar, by contrast, counts the hot rooms of the Paşa Hamam and the Tuzpazarı Hamam among examples of the cruciform, four-iwan, corner-cell type she sees in the original plan of the Kumacık Hamam. The form of the dressing room is also described differently in the sources, as square or as an elongated rectangle.
The Place of the Hamam in Town Life
In Ottoman society the hamam was a gathering place as well as a place for washing. The tradition of the bridal bath is very old; it is recorded as known in Byzantium and continued among the Turks. In the women's sections one basin was usually worked with greater care than the others and was known as the bride's basin. The clearest written trace in Amasya of the hamam as a place of outing and meeting for women is that the visits paid to Hızır Paşa's double hamam in hyacinth season earned it the name "Sünbül Hamamı". The arrangement Olcay describes for the Mustafa Bey and Sinan hamams also shows that the women's section was run under separate management.
Double hamams, that is, buildings made of two sections side by side, one for men and one for women, are one of the distinguishing features of Turkish hamam architecture. In Amasya the known examples of this type, such as the Alaca Hamam and Hızır Paşa's Sünbül Hamamı, no longer stand. The hamams working today are single hamams, and women and men use the same building at different hours or on different days. One of the basic studies on the history of Amasya's hamams is Sultan Murat Topçu's book Amasya'da Türk Devri Hamamları (Turkish-Period Hamams in Amasya), published in 2018. Adnan Gürbüz's doctoral thesis on the endowment system of sixteenth-century Amasya, Gediz Uraz's 1994 thesis on the town's Turkish-period urban fabric and Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin Efendi's Amasya Tarihi are also among the sources consulted by those researching the place of hamams in the town's history.
In terms of heating, too, the hamam was closely bound up with the town's infrastructure. For centuries wood was burned in the furnace where the water was heated, while in recent years the working hamams have come to prefer diesel oil. In the furnace of the Kumacık Hamam, immediately in front of the boiler, a hypocaust chamber with an arched brick entrance and a brick chimney above it can still be seen. Hamams consumed both water and fuel, and their ability to meet these costs depended on a steady income. As the number of hamams grew in Ottoman towns, excessive consumption of water and wood caused difficulties, and in the eighteenth century measures were taken to limit this growth. In Amasya the bond between water and hamam is plain in the endowment deeds as well; Ayas Ağa's endowment counted among its rights the channel of the water flowing to the hamam and the course of the waste water draining from the hamam into the river.
The Hamams Working Today
Local records list among the hamams still in operation the Mustafa Bey, Kumacık, Altuntaş (Yukarı), Yıldız and, in Merzifon, the Paşa hamams. That these buildings, designed as sources of income, have sometimes kept working even after the economic order of their time collapsed shows the weight of the hamam as an institution in urban life. Although the buildings have come down to the present through repairs and alterations over the centuries, they have kept their sequence of dressing room, warm room and hot room. Of the dozens of hamams Hüsameddin enumerates, nearly all of those that survive are endowed hamams founded by a sultan's consort, a vizier's family or a palace officer, with their income tied to a mosque or a madrasa.
Chronology
Around 540 (1145-46): According to Hüsameddin, the Seljuk Sultan Mesud repairs the inner citadel and builds hamams in the citadel and in İçerişehir.
Around 550 (1155-56): By Hüsameddin's estimate, Rıdvan Bey builds the Çukur Hamam in Hatuniye.
Around 620 (1223): Aydın Bey builds the hamam later known as the Kağnı Hamamı.
805 (1402-03): Kaya Paşa endows his water conduit, fountains and hamam.
1436: Mustafa Bey, son of Yörgüç Paşa, builds the Mustafa Bey Hamam in Amasya.
870 (1465-66): Hızır Paşa completes, together with the other foundations in his quarter, the double hamam known as the Sünbül Hamamı.
875 (1470-71): The Alaca Hamam remains in the possession of Alaca Yahya Bey until this date.
1495: The palace gate officer Ayas Ağa has the Kumacık Hamam built on the Kocacık plot to provide income for his complex.
912 (1506-07): The Kadı Hamamı is endowed by Abdurrahman Çelebi.
915 (1509-10): Bülbül Hatun draws up her endowment deed; the Çukur Hamam joins the endowment.
1510: The accepted date of the Hatuniye Complex and the Yıldız (Çukur) Hamam.
917 (1511-12): Sinan Paşa builds and endows his hamam at Selağzı.
Early sixteenth century: Fifteen hamams are recorded in Amasya.
987 (1579-80): Rıdvan Ağa completes and endows the Geldiklan Hamam in the village of Ilıca.
990 (1582): Mirza Beyzâde Mehmed Bey builds a han west of the Kumacık Hamam.
1063 (1652-53): The Alaca hamams are repaired by their trustees.
1676-1677: The Tuzpazarı Hamam is built in Merzifon.
1678: The grand vizier Kara Mustafa Paşa builds the Paşa Hamam in Merzifon.
1143 (1730-31): The Kağnı Hamamı is destroyed by fire.
1271 (1854-55): In the Selağzı flood a dome stone lands on the dome of the Sinan Hamam.
1296 (1879): A Yeşilırmak flood wrecks the furnace of the Çardaklı Hamam; the hamam falls out of use.
1915: Seven hamams burn in the great Amasya fire; the Alaca Hamam and the Kadı Hamamı disappear.
Around 1924: According to the family account, the Yıldız Hamam loses its function; the main dome collapses in the 1939 earthquake, and the hamam is repaired in 1948 and 2002.
1979-1990: The Kumacık Hamam is registered as a listed building; its restoration begins in 1990.
Bibliography
Primary sources
- Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. 1-4, pp. 83, 91, 93, 97, 105, 110, 119-131, 134, 163, 166, 190, 195, 206-207, 436, 491, 515, 553, 622, 640, 653; vols. 6-8, pp. 106, 108, 117, 186, 424, 486; vols. 9-12, pp. 131, 222-223, 317, 371-376, 422, 449, 499-500, 610-611, Amasya Municipality e-book, amasya.bel.tr amasya.gov.tr
- Osman Fevzi Olcay, Amasya Hâtıraları: Bildiklerim-Gördüklerim-İşittiklerim ile Amasya, simplified by Turan Böcekçi and Mehmet H. Seçkiner, Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications, 2009
Academic studies
- Sibel Yarar, "Amasya Kumacık Hamamının İlk İnşasındaki Planına Dair Bir Değerlendirme", Vakıflar Dergisi 54 (December 2020), pp. 185-200
- TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, entries "Hamam", "Amasya", "Yörgüç Paşa" and "Merzifon", islamansiklopedisi.org.tr islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
- Buse Koçak, Amasya Merkezde Su Mimarisi, master's thesis, Ondokuz Mayıs University, 2024 (abstract)
Official sources
- Governorship of Amasya, "Hamamlar", amasya.gov.tr/hamamlar
- Kültür Portalı (Ministry of Culture and Tourism), "Mustafa Bey Hamamı" and "Yıldız Hamamı", kulturportali.gov.tr
Books
- Sultan Murat Topçu, Amasya'da Türk Devri Hamamları, Kayseri: Kimlik Yayınları, 2018
Other sources
- M. Baha Tanman, "Ayas Ağa Külliyesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 4, Istanbul 1991, pp. 201-202 islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
- Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, "Foundations and Real Estates of Yorguc Pasha Family Through The Ottoman Endowment System", European Real Estate Society (ERES), 2015 (abstract)
- Erol Şaşmaz, Tarihî Mekânlar Kişisel Ansiklopedi, "Amasya Hamamları", turkiyenintarihieserleri.com
- Tarih Gezisi, "Yıldız Hamamı - Amasya", tarihgezisi.com/hamamlar/yildiz-hamami-amasya
Online sources
