AMASYA 05

Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar · İKİNCİ BÂB · BİRİNCİ FASIL

İbrâhim Efendi — Sheikh of Yukarı Kal'a

Encyclopedia · History of Amasya, Volume 6, p. 75 • Edited by: Doç. Dr. Recep Orhan ÖZEL - Doç. Dr. Metin HAKVERDİOĞLU

Original Text (Ottoman Turkish)

Kal’alıdır. Harşena kal’ası ahâlisinden Ali’nin oğludur. Amasya’da Caniklizâde el-Hâc Mehmed Efendi’den ahz-ı ulûm edib Yukarı Kal’a’da kâin Bey Câmii vâ’izi, sonra oradaki Şeyh Baha’eddîn Tekkesi şeyhi oldu. Tûl-i müddet orada va’z u irşâd ile iştigâl ederek 1275’de vefât etdi. Âlim, kâmil, müteşerri’ bir zât idi. Mahdûmları Abdulkâdir, Hüseyin, [219] Mustafa Efendiler orada zâviyyedâr olmuşlardır.

Our Research Article Editor: Mevlüt Erdem Öztürk

In Modern English

He was from the citadel. He was the son of Ali, of the people of the Harşena citadel. In Amasya he acquired learning from Caniklizâde el-Hâc Mehmed Efendi, became preacher of the Bey Mosque in the Upper Citadel (Yukarı Kale), and then sheikh of the Şeyh Bahâeddîn Lodge there. He occupied himself for a long time in that place with preaching and irshad (guiding people to the right path) and died in 1275 [1858-59]. He was a scholar, mature in character and devoted to the sharia. His sons Abdülkâdir, Hüseyin and Mustafa Efendi became zaviyedars there.

Notes and Research

Old Words in the Text

  • ahâlî: the people, the inhabitants
  • ahz-ı ulûm: acquiring learning
  • vâ'iz: the official who preaches in a mosque
  • tûl-i müddet: a long time
  • irşâd: showing the right path
  • kâmil: mature, accomplished
  • müteşerri': devoted to the sharia, scrupulous in observing the rulings of religion
  • zâviyyedâr: the administrator or sheikh of a zaviye (lodge)

The Harşena Citadel and the Upper Citadel

The Amasya Citadel is built on Mount Harşena, which covers the north of the city, and for this reason it is also called the Harşena Citadel. Attacked and rebuilt many times under the Persians, Romans, Pontic kings and Byzantines, the citadel underwent an important repair after the Turks took Amasya in 1075, remained in use until the eighteenth century, and lost its military importance after that century. It has eight defensive tiers descending to the bank of the Yeşilırmak. Inside the citadel are cisterns, water reservoirs, the remains of an Ottoman-era bath, and the Pontic royal tombs carved into the rock. The citadel consists of three parts: the Inner City (İçeri Şehir) on the riverbank (today's Hatuniye quarter), the Palace of the Maidens (Kızlar Sarayı), and the Upper Citadel at the very top.

İbrâhim Efendi's life was spent in this uppermost section. Hüsameddin introduces him as "Kaleli" (of the citadel) and counts his father among the people of the Harşena citadel. So in the mid-nineteenth century a settled community still lived in the Upper Citadel. The archival records confirm this: in the Amasya census register of 1256 [1840] published by Selim Özcan there is a quarter named "Yukarı Kale," entirely Muslim, with 13 households. In the temettuat registers of 1260-1261 [1844-45], drawn up four years later, this quarter does not appear. Özcan notes that the registers of quarters that seem to be missing from the temettuat count may have been mixed into other classifications in the archive. That this settlement, evidently a small and scattered citadel quarter, had a mosque, a lodge and a preacher shows that the quarter had a religious life of its own.

The Mosque Remains in the Citadel

Archaeological excavations that have continued for years at the Harşena Citadel and the Palace of the Maidens uncovered the remains of a mosque inside the citadel in 2019. The excavation director, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emine Dönmez, said that the structure is about seven hundred years old and that they think it is the mosque Yıldırım Bayezid had built in the citadel when the Ottomans annexed Amasya; she recalled that Evliya Çelebi mentions a mosque of Yıldırım Bayezid and that Hüseyin Hüsameddin also speaks of the remains of a Yıldırım Bayezid Mosque in this area. From the many nails and pieces of wood found, the mosque is thought to have had a square plan and a wooden minaret, or one with wooden posts, in its northwest. Dönmez also stated that there may be a zaviye directly across from the mosque and that further on there are finds belonging to annexes such as a kitchen and a storeroom.

Whether the "Bey Mosque in the Upper Citadel" that Hüsameddin mentions in this entry and the mosque found in the excavation are the same structure is not certain. It is possible that the name "Bey" points to Yıldırım Bayezid, but this is a conjecture. Likewise, whether the zaviye that the excavators think stood across from the mosque was the Şeyh Bahâeddîn Lodge in which İbrâhim Efendi served as sheikh has not been verified. If it was, Hüsameddin's record would be a rare document showing that the two structures in the excavation area were still in use in the nineteenth century and were passed down within one family from generation to generation.

The Şeyh Bahâeddîn Lodge

According to Hüsameddin, after İbrâhim Efendi his sons Abdülkâdir, Hüseyin and Mustafa Efendi were in turn the zaviyedars of this lodge. No information was found in other sources about who Sheikh Bahâeddîn, from whom the lodge takes its name, was, to which order he belonged, or when the lodge was founded. İbrâhim Efendi's teacher Caniklizâde el-Hâc Mehmed Efendi is also mentioned in the neighboring entries of this volume as the teacher of many scholars; it appears that he trained a large number of students in Amasya in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar, Amasya Tarihi, Amasya Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2022, vol. 6, p. 75–75. amasya.bel.tr

Academic studies

Official sources

Books

Other sources

Volume 6 contents

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