The inscription over the door of the Mehmed Paşa Mosque on the bank of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya states that the building was commissioned "in the days of the reign of Sultan Bayezid Han" by "the great vizier Mehmed Pasha" and completed in Muharram 891, that is, January 1486. This vizier was the son of Hayreddin Hızır Pasha, brother of Yörgüç Pasha, the lala (tutor-guardian) of Murad II. The sources call him Hızır Paşazâde or Mehmed Pasha son of Hızır Pasha. Like his uncle and his father, he spent most of his life in Amasya in the service of a prince as lala, and he died as lala of Şehzade Ahmed, son of Bayezid II.

Mehmed Pasha was one of the greatest benefactors of Amasya at the end of the fifteenth century. According to his endowment deed of 896 (1491), to keep his mosque complex in Amasya running he endowed his shares in ninety-three villages and hamlets, together with the revenues of mills, bathhouses, a khan, shops and a bedesten that he had built or bought in Amasya, Tokat, Niksar, Samsun and Tosya. Mustafa Çağhan Keskin regards him as one of the leading "local patrons" of the Amasya region in the reign of Bayezid II.

Family and Upbringing

Mehmed Pasha's father, Hayreddin Hızır Pasha, was a statesman who left a mosque, a madrasa and endowments in Amasya. According to the information Keskin brings together, Hızır Pasha served as lala to Şehzade Alâeddin under Murad II and to Şehzade Bayezid in Amasya under Mehmed II (the Conqueror), and died in 871 (1466). His uncle Yörgüç Pasha, as lala of Murad II and beylerbey (governor-general) of Rum, had founded a large mosque complex in Amasya. Mehmed Pasha thus grew up in a family that served generation after generation around the princely court in Amasya. The sources give no information on the year of his birth or his youth.

After his father's death, Mehmed Pasha is reported to have been close to Şehzade Bayezid. According to the local tradition recorded by the Amasya scholar Kara Müftîzâde Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi, when Mehmed II died he went to Istanbul with Bayezid and later returned as lala of Şehzade Ahmed, who remained in Amasya. His endowment deed also introduces him as "son of the Great Emir Hızır Pasha, brother of the Great Emir Yörgüç Pasha"; that the founder tied his identity to these two famous men of Amasya shows the family's standing in the city.

In the Service of the State

The sources give Mehmed Pasha's political career in different sequences. According to Ottoman historians such as Hoca Sadeddin Efendi and Müneccimbaşı, he became sanjak governor of Smederevo in the first years of Bayezid II's reign, was then appointed beylerbey of Rumelia in place of Davud Pasha, and rose to the vizierate in 888 (1483). Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, however, places the governorship of Smederevo earlier, linking it to the changes in Şehzade Bayezid's household after the commission of inquiry that Mehmed II sent to Amasya in 882 (1477-78): in these turbulent years, when Mahmud Pasha was executed, Tâcî Bey fled to Baghdad and Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi to Iran, he writes, "Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Pasha also became bey of Smederevo in Rumelia."

There are also two accounts of his rise to the vizierate. According to Hüsameddin, when Hamza Beyzâde Mustafa Pasha, second vizier in the imperial council, was killed in 887 (1482), "Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Pasha of Amasya" became third vizier in his place. The same author writes that in Zilhicce 888 (1483) İshak Pasha was dismissed from the grand vizierate and Mehmed Pasha from the vizierate, and that Mehmed Pasha was appointed lala to Şehzade Ahmed. Hoca Sadeddin, on the other hand, places his dismissal from the vizierate and his appointment as lala in 890 (1485). Whatever the exact date, Mehmed Pasha's office in the council was short-lived, and in the following years the weight of his career shifted to Amasya and the province of Rum. That the 1486 inscription of the Mehmed Paşa Mosque still calls him "vezîrü'l-kebîr" (great vizier) shows that the title continued to be used after he left the vizierate.

In the Mamluk and Dulkadir Campaigns

Mehmed Pasha commanded the troops of Amasya and the province of Rum in Bayezid II's long war with the Mamluks. According to Hüsameddin's records, in 890 (1485) he took part in the Egyptian campaign as commander of the Amasya contingent; an emir of Mecidözü whom Hüsameddin mentions fought in his retinue and returned with him when the Mamluks gained the upper hand.

An anonymous Ottoman chronicle of the sixteenth century, describing the battle fought in 891 (1486) on the Adana frontier against the Mamluk emirs Özbek and Temür Bey, records that "the Beylerbey of Rum, Muhammed Bey son of Hızır Bey" joined the battle with the beylerbey of Anatolia, Hersekoğlu Ahmed Bey, that the Ottoman army was routed and that Hersekoğlu was taken prisoner. Mehmed Süreyya's Sicill-i Osmanî writes that Mehmed Pasha too was captured together with Hersekoğlu and later freed. The same anonymous chronicle reports that in 894 (1489) Mehmed Pasha was still beylerbey of Rum and took part in the campaign against Alâüddevle of the Dulkadir dynasty. The combination of the offices of lala and beylerbey of Rum in one person in these years recalls the path followed by his uncle Yörgüç Pasha.

His Mosque Complex in Amasya

The complex Mehmed Pasha built in Amasya stands near the Yeşilırmak in the quarter that still bears his name, the Mehmed Paşa Mahallesi. According to the two-line Arabic inscription in thuluth script over the main door, the building was completed in Muharram 891 (January 1486). Hüsameddin, however, writes that the mosque was built in 900 (1494-95); the entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi and later studies take the inscription's date of 1486 as authoritative.

According to the endowment deed, the complex was laid out around a courtyard in the middle of a large garden. At the centre stood the mosque; on either side of it a cell open to travellers and dervishes, two winter guest rooms (tabhane) with a sofa in front of them, a kitchen, a bakery, a storeroom, and a madrasa of four rooms and ten cells; in a smaller adjoining courtyard were the stable and latrines. Of these, only the mosque, the cells and guest rooms attached to it, and the tomb survive today. Keskin notes that this arrangement, combining the prayer hall, the cells on either side and the winter rooms into a single building behind a six-domed portico, is related to contemporary buildings such as the Hatuniye Mosque in Tokat, the Taceddin Paşa Mosque in Vezirköprü, and in Amasya the Sofular (Abdullah Paşa) Mosque, the Ayas Ağa Mosque and the Hatuniye Mosque.

The most striking element of the mosque is its marble minbar. Almost its entire surface is covered with low-relief rumi and arabesque ornament, and its canopy is topped by a small onion dome. İ. Aydın Yüksel describes this minbar as "a subject for a monograph in its own right." The six-domed portico rests on seven marble columns and its façade is faced with marble. The door leaves are now in the Amasya Museum. The building was repaired in 1821 and in 1863-64, and when it was ruined in the earthquake of 1939 it was restored again by the General Directorate of Foundations.

The madrasa of the complex was one of the important madrasas of Amasya. In 934 (1528) its professor was Mevlânâ Şemseddin, and in 968 (1561) Mevlânâ Muslihiddin, who received twenty-five akçe a day; this salary shows that the madrasa belonged to the rank of "Haşiye-i Tecrîd" madrasas known as the "twenties." The madrasa, which appears with thirty-eight students in the Education Yearbook (Maarif Salnamesi) of 1899, was damaged in an earthquake and pulled down instead of being repaired. Hüsameddin, who saw the madrasa before it was demolished, writes that it stood to the north and east of the mosque and had spacious rooms. Osman Fevzi Olcay also relates that the madrasa consisted of a lecture hall and eleven rooms, with a bakehouse and an oven on its west side. Evliya Çelebi records that in the seventeenth century one of the ten soup kitchens operating in Amasya belonged to this complex.

According to Hüsameddin, in 890 (1485) Mehmed Pasha also built a dervish lodge for the Halveti sheikh Habib-i Karamânî on the road south of the mosque. When Habib-i Karamânî died, he was buried in the garden of this lodge. The lodge no longer stands. Mehmed Süreyya's record that he also built a mosque complex at İstinye is regarded by Keskin as unconfirmed, since no such building appears in the endowment deed and no such complex exists at İstinye.

The Endowment Deed and Its Network of Revenues

Mehmed Pasha's endowment deed, written in Arabic, is dated 896 (1491); the original and its Turkish translation are in the Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations. The deed lists one by one the permanent staff of twenty who were to work in the complex, four temporary employees and ten madrasa students. Twenty silver dirhams a day were allotted to the professor and two to each student; four to the imam, five to the preacher and two to the muezzin. The hafızes who recited sections of the Qur'an before the Friday prayer, the caretaker of the mosque, the attendant who prepared the guests' beds, the storekeeper, the cooks and bakers, the sheikh of the soup kitchen who organized the distribution of food and his assistant, the scribe who kept the accounts and the supervisor who inspected them are also recorded with their daily wages. In the soup kitchen bread was baked every morning and evening, and rice, wheat, fresh meat and greens were bought; a separate allowance was made for lamp oil and for the celebration of holy nights.

These expenses were met by the taxes from ninety-three villages and hamlets in which Mehmed Pasha held freehold (mâlikâne) shares, and by the revenues of commercial buildings. The endowed villages were spread over a wide area, from the Geldiklenâbâd, Argoma and Zünnûnözü districts of Amasya to Çorum, Mecidözü, Lâdik, Bafra, Niksar, Mesudiye and Tokat. The commercial buildings were four mills in Amasya; a khan, a bathhouse and two mills in Samsun; four mills, a bathhouse and thirty-three shops in Tokat; two bathhouses in Niksar; and a bedesten with the shops around it in Tosya. None of these has survived. The Tosya bedesten was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1943 and demolished by the municipality; the Kastamonu provincial yearbook of the late nineteenth century had wrongly attributed it to Nişancı Mehmed Pasha. Evliya Çelebi writes that every kind of goods could be found in this bedesten, but that since the people of Tosya lived by weaving, it was mostly cloth that was bought and sold there.

According to the deed, the first administrator (mütevelli) of the endowment was Mehmed Pasha himself, and one fifth of the revenue was set aside for the administrator. After him the administration was to pass to the most pious and capable of his sons and grandsons; if his line died out, to his freed slaves and their children, and failing them, to a person appointed by the kadi of Amasya. Hüsameddin's records show that the endowment remained in the hands of the pasha's descendants for centuries: he writes that in 1308 (1890-91) the administrator Mehmed Bey built another madrasa to the west of the complex, and that Ali Bey, the alaybeyi who became bey of Amasya in 1015 (1606), was also a descendant of Mehmed Pasha.

Death and Grave

The date of Mehmed Pasha's death is given in two ways in the sources. The entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi gives 900 (1494-95), and the verse inscription of 1306 (1888-89) on a grave outside the tomb also says that he died "in nine hundred." Nişancı Mehmed Pasha, Hoca Sadeddin, Ayvansarâyî and Mehmed Süreyya, however, record 904 (1498). Hüsameddin relates the death of the vizier Mehmed Pasha, lala and "deputy of the sultanate" of Şehzade Ahmed, after the events of 903-904 in Amasya, and writes that he was succeeded by Hacı Beyzâde Tâceddin İbrahim Pasha, known as Tâcî Bey. The sources collected by Keskin state that he died in Amasya.

The tomb attached to the east wing of the mosque, in the form of a domed iwan open to the east, is popularly known as the Tomb of Mehmed Pasha. The sarcophagus inside bears no inscription. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Mehmed Pasha's grave is not inside the tomb but is the second grave in front of its door; the first belongs to his father Hızır Pasha and the third to Habib-i Karamânî. The verse inscription on the gravestone renewed four hundred years later by his descendant Mehmed Bey likewise shows that the pasha lies outside the tomb. Relying on Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi's record that Mehmed Pasha buried his father in the tomb beside his own mosque, Keskin suggests that the sarcophagus in the tomb may belong to Hızır Pasha. Hüsameddin, by contrast, attributes the tomb and the uninscribed sarcophagus to Mehmed Pasha. The sources do not agree on this point.

His Traces in Amasya

Mehmed Pasha's name lived on in a quarter on the Yeşilırmak bank of Amasya, in his mosque, and in the other charitable works built around this mosque over the centuries. Hüsameddin lists together the bathhouse of Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey to the west of the mosque, the fountain built by Oruç Bey on the qibla side in 910 (1504-05), and the small mosque, Qur'an school and madrasas added in later centuries; this group of buildings was known as the "Mehmed Paşa Dairesi" (Mehmed Pasha Precinct). According to Keskin, Mehmed Pasha's building activity points to a competent community of masters that produced, between 1483 and 1489, buildings in Amasya such as the bedesten and madrasa of Kapı Ağası Hüseyin Ağa, the Sofular and Ayas Ağa mosques and the complex of Bayezid II; yet the name of the architect is inscribed on none of these buildings.

Chronology

871 (1466): Death of his father, Hayreddin Hızır Pasha.

882-883 (1477-1478): According to Hüsameddin, became bey of Smederevo during the changes in Şehzade Bayezid's household.

887 (1482): According to Hüsameddin, became third vizier.

888 (1483): Dismissed from the vizierate and appointed lala of Şehzade Ahmed (Hüsameddin); Hoca Sadeddin gives this date for his rise to the vizierate.

890 (1485): Built a dervish lodge for Habib-i Karamânî; took part in the Egyptian campaign at the head of the Amasya contingent. According to Hoca Sadeddin, his appointment as lala dates from this year.

Muharram 891 (January 1486): His mosque in Amasya completed.

891 (1486): As beylerbey of Rum, took part in the battle against the Mamluks on the Adana frontier.

894 (1489): As beylerbey of Rum, took part in the campaign against Alâüddevle of the Dulkadir dynasty.

896 (1491): Had his endowment deed drawn up.

900 (1494-95) or 904 (1498): Died in Amasya.

1306 (1888-89): His descendant Mehmed Bey renewed his grave.

1939: The mosque and tomb, ruined in the earthquake, were restored by the General Directorate of Foundations.

Bibliography

The following sources were used in this article:

Online sources