In the Gökmedrese quarter of Amasya, formerly known as Recep, several tombs stand close together along Torumtay Street. One of them takes its name from the city's old judges: the Tomb of the Judges (Kadılar Türbesi). It is a plain rectangular tomb with an open vaulted porch (eyvan), standing directly opposite the Tomb of Hâlifet Gazi. It belongs neither to a ruler nor to a prince; inside lie members of a scholarly family who served Amasya for generations as judges, madrasa teachers and deputy judges. This family, which Hüseyin Hüsameddin calls the "Hallâtî" or "İmâdî" line in his History of Amasya (Amasya Tarihi), produced the best-known names in the city's legal life from the early fourteenth to the early fifteenth century, married into the family of the emirs of Amasya, and at times found itself in the very middle of political rivalries. In this respect the tomb recalls a second history of the city, apart from that of sultans and beys: the history of the people of law and learning.

Location and Surroundings

Torumtay Street runs along the north side of the tomb, and the Tomb of Hâlifet Gazi stands just across it. To the east a dwelling abuts the outer wall, to the south lies the Tomb of Şadgeldi Pasha, and to the west the Hâlifet Gazi cemetery. Attached to the northeast corner, with its façade facing the same street, is the Kadılar Fountain. Hüsameddin likewise describes the tomb as standing "at the edge of the Halifet Gâzi cemetery and opposite his tomb". The building is therefore less a free-standing monument than part of a small group made up of several tombs, a cemetery and a fountain. In the same area, opposite the Gök Medrese, stands the Torumtay Tomb, built in 1278 by the governor of Amasya, Seyfeddin Torumtay, where he lies together with his children and grandchildren.

The tomb across the way, that of Hâlifet Gazi, is octagonal and has two storeys, covered inside by a dome and outside by a pyramidal conical roof, and it is said to have been built on the remains of a Byzantine structure. With its geometric and stylised floral ornament concentrated on the south façade, it is a more ornate Seljuk example standing directly opposite the flat, plain Tomb of the Judges. The Seljuk-period monuments of Amasya are generally gathered south of the Yeşilırmak, and among them the Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb of 1209-1210 and the Torumtay Tomb lie in this area. The Tomb of the Judges and the Tomb of Şadgeldi Pasha are the late fourteenth-century links of the same street. Thanks to this proximity, a tradition of tomb building spanning roughly two centuries can be followed along a single street. Nor is the neighbourliness merely spatial: one of the judges buried in the tomb taught at the Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa across the way, and the family was bound by kinship to the emir who lies in the tomb to the south.

The Hallâtî Family and the İmâdîs

Among the old lineages of Amasya, Hüsameddin lists a separate "Halâtî lineage", by which he means the descendants of Necîbeddîn Mûsâ el-Hallâtî, a madrasa teacher of Amasya who died at the beginning of the 700s AH (around 1300). The family name suggests that its roots went back to Ahlat on the shore of Lake Van. Necîbeddîn Mûsâ taught at the Torumtay Madrasa. According to Hüsameddin, two great branches called the "İmâdî" and the "Mes'ûdî" grew out of this line, and in time each divided into several sub-branches. Of the İmâdîs, the Şeyh Mü'eyyedzâde, Küpelizâde and Çakalzâde branches remained in Amasya; the author also maintains that the family of the şeyhülislam Ebussuûd Efendi sprang from this branch at İskilip. We have not been able to confirm this last connection in any source other than Hüsameddin. In the author's summary, this lineage produced many renowned judges, şeyhülislams, senior scholars and emirs.

The man who established the family's legal tradition in Amasya was Necîbeddîn Mûsâ's son Şemseddîn Mehmed. Known as "İbnü'l-Hallâtî", that is, the son of the Hallâtî, Şemseddîn Mehmed studied under the chief judge of Amasya Ziyâeddîn Îsâ el-Hakkârî, became first a deputy judge and then for many years chief judge (kadılkudat) of Amasya. In the events of 721 AH (1321) he was removed from office for a few years and then returned to the same post. In 727 AH (1327), when Timurtaş, the Ilkhanid governor of Anatolia, fled to Egypt, he went to Damascus to escape reprisals and died there while teaching. His year of death differs in two places in Hüsameddin's book: in one passage it is given as 727, and in the biographical section as Muharram 729 (November 1328). The author presents him as a scholar who spoke three languages, knew the Mongol language and customs, and had a fine hand and prose style. His sons were İmâdeddîn Ömer, Şehâbeddîn Ahmed and Gıyâseddîn Es'ad; the branch of the family known as "İmâdzâde" descends from the first of these, İmâdeddîn Ömer.

İmâdeddîn Ömer appears as chief judge of Amasya in 731 AH (1330-1331). He later became the military judge (kazasker) of Eretna Bey, and when he fell from favour for opposing the accession of Eretna's son Mehmed Bey, he withdrew from the post at his own request and returned home, again as chief judge of Amasya. Hüsameddin describes him as a man born in Amasya, well brought up and respected for his learning and character; he also registered several pious endowment deeds drawn up in the city. When he died, Pîr Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd el-Cürcânî was appointed judge of Amasya, because İmâdeddîn's son of the same name, Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd Çelebi, was at that time deputy judge of Amasya. All of İmâdeddîn Ömer's sons, Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed, Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd and Hasan Çelebi, held posts as judges and deputy judges.

Kinship with the Ruling House

The record that best shows the family's standing in Amasya appears in Hüsameddin's section on women. According to him, Ümmü'l-Hayr Hundî Hatun was the daughter of the chief judge İmâdeddîn Ömer, the wife of Hacı Kutlu Şah, ruler of Amasya, and the mother of Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha. Hundî Hatun built a school near the mosque her husband had erected in the Sâbıkuddîn quarter, and a tomb for herself, but because she died in Sivas in 761 AH (1359-1360) the tomb later passed to Ehli Hatun. If this record is correct, Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed, who is thought to have built the Tomb of the Judges, was the maternal uncle of Şadgeldi Pasha, who lies in the tomb to the south. The fact that the two tombs stand side by side at the edge of the same cemetery and closely resemble each other gains meaning in the light of this kinship; the connection is a conclusion drawn from two separate records in Hüsameddin and is not stated outright in any other document.

The same family also took on other roles at the level of the emirate. Hüsameddin names the emir whom Hacı Şadgeldi sent to Tokat as the Eretnid state broke up, and whom the people of Tokat accepted, as "Kadı İmâdoğlu Şeyh Necîbeddîn Mûsâ Bey"; elsewhere he gives him as the son of Şehâbeddîn Ahmed, son of Şemseddîn Mehmed, that is, as a nephew of İmâdeddîn Ömer. The two records do not match exactly, but both attach Şeyh Necib, emir of Tokat, to the same lineage. Şeyh Necib was the brother-in-law of Şadgeldi's son Ahmed Pasha. In 791 AH (1389), when Kadı Burhâneddin sent him to Ahmed Pasha as an envoy to ask for the hand of one of the Pasha's daughters, Ahmed Pasha had the envoy arrested. Within a single generation, then, the İmâdîs held the judgeship of Amasya and also took part in the marriage and diplomatic dealings of the ruling family.

The Kadılar Fountain and Its Inscription

The fountain attached to the northeast corner of the tomb is the only inscribed work that documents the family's presence in this spot. Hüsameddin relates that, while searching for the tomb of Şadgeldi Pasha, he found it by following a suspicion raised by this fountain's inscription. The four-line Arabic inscription states that the fountain was built "in the days of the reign of the great emir el-Hâc Şâdgeldi Pâdişâh" and that its builder was "the weak servant Muhammed bin İmâd bin Muhammed, judge at Amasya". In Hüsameddin's printed text the year appears as "tis'in ve seb'în ve seb'i mie"; a recent study based on İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı's reading gives the inscription as 779 AH (1377-1378). The inscription also shows that in the years when Hacı Şadgeldi still appeared to be subject to the Eretnid state while in fact ruling the city in his own name, he was styled "great emir", a ruler whose reign was wished to endure.

The name "Muhammed bin İmâd bin Muhammed" in the inscription matches exactly the genealogy Hüsameddin sets out: Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed was the son of İmâdeddîn Ömer, who was the son of Şemseddîn Mehmed. In his seventh volume Hüsameddin likewise introduces Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi as the son of "the chief judge Mü'eyyedüddîn Mehmed, builder of the fountain opposite the Halfet Gâzi Tomb", and adds that Bedreddîn lies "in the Tomb of the Judges adjoining the said fountain". According to Hüsameddin, Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed became judge of Amasya around 768 AH (1366-1367), when the kazasker Pîr Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd Cürcânî died. After Şadgeldi was killed in 1381, a forged letter circulating in the city drove a number of Amasya's scholars away, and among them Judge Mü'eyyideddîn left for the Hejaz.

Those Buried in the Tomb

In his first volume, where he lists the tombs of Amasya, Hüsameddin writes that within the Tomb of the Judges lie "Kadı Pîr Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd", "Kadı Pîr Şemseddîn Mehmed", the judge of Kedağra (Vezirköprü) "Şemseddîn Mehmed", and the judge of Konya "İzzeddîn Hasan". Some recent works on the tomb give the name of the Konya judge as "İzzeddin Mehmed"; in Hüsameddin's text, however, the name is Hasan throughout. A widely repeated account of the tomb mentions Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd, who in the Seljuk period heard cases concerning maintenance, inheritance, the appointment of guardians and family disputes, together with the judge Şemseddîn Mehmed. İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, in his work Kitabeler, writes that the tomb contained seven marble cenotaphs belonging to the family of judges, and that the small cenotaph belonged to Seyfeddin Sungur. The present-day inventory, however, counts inside the building four graves without headstones, each enclosed by rectangular cut stones, and two children's cenotaphs. Cenotaphs detached from their bases and headstones are now in the Amasya Museum.

The biographical entries Hüsameddin wrote in later volumes tie this list to more concrete names and also give the texts of two headstones. Read against them, the honorifics in the first volume turn out not always to be accurate. The Mahmûd whose headstone was read in the tomb, for instance, is called "Bedreddîn" in the seventh volume, while "Nizâmeddîn Mahmûd" is the name of his uncle. The judge of Kedağra likewise appears in the seventh volume as Bedreddîn Mahmûd's son Pîr Mehmed Çelebi. These differences suggest that Hüsameddin wrote the tomb list as a brief summary, and the biographical entries with the help of headstones and court registers.

Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi

Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed's son, el-Hâc Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi, began teaching in 771 AH (1369-1370) after completing his studies, became a teacher at the Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa across the street in 776 AH (1374-1375), and on his father's death became chief judge of Amasya. He was dismissed in the time of Emir Fahreddîn Ahmed Pasha, remained without office for years, and was then sent to the provinces as judge of Tokat. When he was removed from that post as well in 805 AH (1402-1403), he returned to Amasya. According to Hüsameddin's third volume, during the Amasya alliance formed against Kara Devletşah he served as deputy to the ailing judge of Amasya, İzzeddîn Hasan Çelebi, and when the judge died in 806 AH (1403-1404) he succeeded him.

Bedreddîn Mahmûd's principal foundation in Amasya was the dervish lodge (zaviye) and public kitchen he built in 807 AH (1404-1405) in the western part of the Karatay quarter of the inner city, known as Yağıbasâniye. Hüsameddin calls it the "Mahmûd Çelebi Lodge"; it was a Nakshbandi lodge with an excellent guesthouse and generous table, and next to it stood a school for Qur'an reciters (dârülkurrâ), also built by him. A recent study of endowment records shows that the same lodge survived in later centuries under the name "Mahmud Efendi" or "Hacı Mahmud Çelebi Lodge", that the revenues of several villages and hamlets in the Argoma (Suluova) and Geldiklanâbâd areas were assigned to its endowment, and that it employed a doorkeeper, a Qur'an reciter, a cook and a halva maker. In these records the founder's name is written "Ammâd-zâde", which is clearly the same family name as Hüsameddin's "İmâdzâde". Bedreddîn's wife, Selâmet Hatun, was the daughter of Gümüşlüzâde Hâce Celâl Çelebi, treasurer (defterdar) of Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) at Amasya; she endowed the property she had inherited from her father and husband, attached it to her husband's lodge, and died after 817 AH (1414).

Bedreddîn Mahmûd died in the month of Rajab 808 AH (late 1405 to early 1406). Hüsameddin gives the Arabic text of his headstone in the Tomb of the Judges as follows: "This is the grave of the late Hacı Mahmud, son of Kadı Mehmed, and of his father. May God forgive both him and his father; he died in the month of Rajab of the year 808." The words "he and his father" on the stone suggest that Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed also lies in the same grave or right beside it; no separate headstone for the father is mentioned, however. In the heading of his lodge's endowment deed Bedreddîn is praised as the pride of judges and magistrates and a pilgrim to the Kaaba and to the Prophet's tomb.

Pîr Mehmed Çelebi

Bedreddîn Mahmûd's son Pîr Mehmed Çelebi, after completing his studies, became a clerk at the Amasya court and then judge of Kedağra. After his dismissal he died in the month of Rabi' al-awwal 814 AH (summer 1411) and, in Hüsameddin's words, was buried "beside his father in the Tomb of the Judges". Hüsameddin also gives his headstone: "This is the grave of the late Pîr Mehmed, son of Kadı Hacı Mahmud; he passed away, forgiven, in the month of Rabi' al-awwal of the year 814." The author describes him as a scholar, a clerk and a skilled writer of official prose. Bedreddîn Mahmûd's other sons, Ali and Ahmed Çelebi, also served as judges. His descendants were known in later centuries as the "Çakal Kadızâde"; according to Hüsameddin, the judge known as "Çakal Kadı", who was a companion of Bayezid II while the latter was governor of Amasya, was also among Bedreddîn Mahmûd's descendants.

Pîr Hasan Çelebi, Judge of Konya

Among those buried in the tomb there is also a figure from outside the family, though belonging to Amasya's scholarly circle. According to Hüsameddin's seventh volume, Mevlânâ İzzeddîn Pîr Hasan Çelebi was the son of Hüsâmeddîn Hüseyin Türkmânî, one of the scholars of Amasya; hence in the third volume he is called "Hüsâmzâde". He studied in Amasya with his father and with Aksarâyîzâde Cemâleddîn Mehmed Çelebi, served as his teacher's deputy during the latter's term as kazasker, and for a time taught at the Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa. In 783 AH (1381), when Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha died at the hands of Kadı Burhâneddin, he went with his teacher to the land of Karaman and won the favour of Alâeddin Ali Bey of Karaman. When his teacher died in 788 AH (1386), he became first head of the scholars in Konya, then chief judge of Konya and kazasker of Karaman.

According to Hüsameddin, when the land of Karaman passed to Bayezid I (Yıldırım Bayezid) and Alâeddin Ali Bey was defeated, Pîr Hasan Çelebi was sent back to his old home of Amasya, settled in the Şâmîce quarter and lived there for about eight years. His date of death is again given in two different ways: the third volume, among the events of 802 AH (1399-1400), states that the former judge of Konya held under residence orders in Amasya died "in this year", while the seventh volume says he died in Jumada al-awwal 806 AH (late 1403) at the age of fifty-four. Both volumes say he was buried in front of the Tomb of the Judges. Hüsameddin records that the side of his black marble headstone states that he was judge of Konya and that he died at the age of fifty-four.

Not every member of the family lies here. İmâdeddîn Ömer's son Pîr Hasan Çelebi, after teaching, served for a long time as judge of Kedağra, then returned to Amasya to act as deputy to his brother Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed, and died after 783 AH (1381). Of him Hüsameddin writes that "his grave could not be seen in the Tomb of the Judges, where his family is buried". The sentence also shows that the author clearly regarded the tomb as the family's burial place and had examined the graves one by one.

Date of Construction

Since the building has no inscription, the date of its construction is not known for certain. On the basis of the earliest dates on the cenotaphs, it is said to have been built between 1369 and 1375. Official descriptions generally give the second half of the fourteenth century and state plainly that the builder is unknown. That the family of judges buried here lived in the time of Hacı Şadgeldi Pasha, who was emir of Amasya under the Eretnid state and later acted independently, strengthens the view that the building belongs to the last quarter of the fourteenth century. The date of Şadgeldi's accession varies between sources; some give 1362, others August-September 1359. The difference does not affect the dating of the tomb, since in either case the dates on the cenotaphs fall within Şadgeldi's rule.

The fountain's inscription of 1377-1378 provides indirect support for the date of construction. Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed, who built the fountain, was alive and judge of Amasya in that year; according to Hüsameddin, his son Bedreddîn Mahmûd had become a teacher at the madrasa across the street in 1374-1375. The view that the tomb came from the same hand as the fountain, and that the family laid out this corner as its burial place in those years, is therefore reasonable, but no endowment deed or building inscription states it directly. What is known for certain is that those buried in the tomb whose headstones have been read died between 1403 and 1411; in other words, the building continued in use as the family's burial place during the first decades of Ottoman rule.

Amasya after the Eretnids

In the years when the tomb was built, Amasya's political position was constantly changing. The Eretnid state, centred on Sivas and Kayseri, began to weaken after the death of its founder Alâeddin Eretna in 1352. When Mehmed Bey's thirteen-year-old son Ali Bey was proclaimed sultan in his place, central authority dissolved and the emirs began to act on their own. Hacı Şadgeldi held sway in Amasya, Mutahharten in Erzincan, Hacı İbrâhim in Sivas and Şeyh Necib in Tokat. Ali Bey mounted campaigns against Amasya to restore central authority; during the second of these he contracted plague and died in 1380.

Şadgeldi, for his part, was among the rivals eliminated in 1381 by Kadı Burhâneddin, who that same year founded a state in his own name. After his death his son Ahmed defended the city against Kadı Burhâneddin with the support of the Ottoman ruler Bayezid I. Hüsameddin writes that in these years the two scholarly families of Amasya stood on opposite sides: the İmâdîs opposed the union of the emirate of Amasya with the Ottomans, while the Muslihîs were its strong supporters. According to him, in 788 AH (1386), when Bayezid's army approached Osmancık, Abdurrahman Celâleddîn of the Muslihî family and the emir Fahreddîn Ahmed Pasha went out to meet the prince, Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed was removed from office, and the chief judgeship passed to the Muslihîs. The dismissal of Bedreddîn Mahmûd in the time of Fahreddîn Ahmed Pasha falls in the same years as this change. Amasya was finally incorporated into Ottoman territory in 1398 and its administration entrusted to Bayezid's son Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed). The family's return to the judgeship after the Battle of Ankara, in Mehmed I's years at Amasya, shows that this old political division did not shut the city's native scholarly circle out altogether.

The Judges of the Period and Their Political Weight

In this century the judgeship had ceased to be a purely legal office and had become a post open to political influence as well. In the years when the Eretnid state was founded, Alâeddin Eretna sent the judge of Kayseri, Sirâceddin Süleyman, as his envoy to the Mamluk sultan. Under Ali Bey, Kayseri was lost in 1375 to an attack by Alâeddin Bey of Karaman, and was then retaken by the city's judge, Burhâneddin Ahmed. The same judge rose to the vizierate in 1378, and in the autumn of 1381 proclaimed himself sultan, ending Eretnid rule. The İmâdî family of Amasya did not assume a political role on this scale, yet the fact that one member was Eretna's kazasker, that a daughter was the wife and mother of emirs, and that another member ruled as emir in Tokat clearly shows the weight the title of judge carried in the same century. That those buried in the Tomb of the Judges also served in centres such as Kedağra, Tokat and Konya shows that they belonged to a circle of learning and law known beyond Amasya.

Architectural Features

The Tomb of the Judges is a rectangular building aligned north to south. Its north face takes the form of a broad arched eyvan, created by the opening outward of the slightly swelling pointed barrel vault that covers the building. Hüsameddin describes the same building in the language of his time as a large tomb "whose high façade facing north is open and whose vault is shaped like a fish's back"; the covering he calls a "fish's back" is the pointed barrel vault of today's descriptions. In its original state the tomb had no door, and entry was made directly through the eyvan opening. Well-dressed cut stone and reused material were employed on this façade. The main walls are built of roughly hewn rubble and mortar, while the interior is laid in regular courses of stone; in the foundations too, rubble and cut stones taken from other buildings can be seen. Some descriptions state that brick was also used in the building, whereas the detailed inventory speaks mainly of rubble, cut and reused stone. In its original state the tomb had two small round-arched slit windows in the south wall and one window in the west wall, and it is without ornament. The floor is of earth.

The building occupies a clear position in the development of tomb architecture. In tombs, which developed continuously from the early thirteenth to the early fourteenth century, a tendency toward simplification and diversification appears after the fourteenth century; one product of this tendency is the tomb whose eyvan opens entirely to the outside. The Tomb of the Judges belongs to this type. The main façade onto which the eyvan opens is plain and non-monumental in appearance, and with these features the building counts as a plain example from the last quarter of the fourteenth century. For comparison one need only look at the nearby Torumtay Tomb. That building of 1278 differs from other Seljuk tombs in having two storeys, stairs and buttresses, and in concentrating its ornament in the upper parts. The Tomb of the Judges, by contrast, is an unostentatious volume that does no more than shelter a burial space.

The tomb is one of two examples in Amasya built with an eyvan. The nearby Tomb of Şadgeldi is likewise an eyvan-type, rectangular-plan building with cut-stone walls and a vault, and it is recorded as closely resembling the Tomb of the Judges. That the two buildings stand side by side shows that at the end of the same century, in the same area, a family of emirs and a family of judges related to it by kinship built their own burial structures with a similar architectural approach.

Repair and Present Condition

The Tomb of the Judges was registered as a monument in 1992 and restored in 2007 by the General Directorate of Foundations. During this work the eyvan arch and pediment on the north façade, which had collapsed, were renewed. As a result, part of the present appearance of the eyvan façade dates from 2007 and cannot be regarded as entirely original.

Despite the restoration, an inventory note prepared in recent years records that the tomb appears quite dilapidated, neglected and left to itself. The front of the eyvan is half closed off by an iron railing. Entry to the tomb is through a small door opened on the east façade, reached by passing through the garden of the dwelling there. For this reason it may not always be possible to see the building from inside; from Torumtay Street the eyvan façade and the adjoining fountain are easily seen. The tomb is within walking distance of the city centre of Amasya and can be taken in on a short walk together with the Tomb of Hâlifet Gazi opposite and the Tomb of Şadgeldi to the south.

The State of the Sources

Much of what is known about the tomb rests on the History of Amasya by the city's native historian Abdizâde Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar (1869-1939). Hüsameddin was born in the Çeribaşı quarter of Amasya, continued his education in Amasya and Istanbul, and in 1903 was appointed deputy judge of Vezirköprü. This last detail coincides in an interesting way with the fact that one of the judges buried in the Tomb of the Judges is named as judge of Kedağra, that is, of Vezirköprü. He based his work on manuscript sources he found in places such as Istanbul, Salonica, Chania, Damascus, the Hejaz, Amasya and Bursa, on court registers, endowment deeds, inscriptions and headstones. Originally planned in twelve volumes, only four could be printed between 1912 and 1928, and the remaining volumes were published much later. Critical assessments note that Hüsameddin mostly did not cite the sources he used and on some subjects resorted to far-fetched etymological comparisons, so that the value of his information is at times disputed. In the case of the Tomb of the Judges, too, there are differences of honorific and date of death between the author's short list in the first volume and the biographical entries in later volumes; his record of the judges' names and identities should therefore be read in comparison with the inscriptions on the cenotaphs and with later inventory studies.

Uzunçarşılı's Kitabeler was published in 1927, that is, in the same years as the first volumes of Hüsameddin's History of Amasya, and records some of the cenotaphs in the tomb. The two authors' readings do not always agree. In a note on the headstone of the Konya judge, Hüsameddin writes that Uzunçarşılı was unable to read these inscriptions and took the phrase meaning "his age was fifty-four" for a year. This warning is a reminder that dates given on the basis of the cenotaphs may also vary with the reading; published sources do not show in detail which cenotaph and which reading the 1369-1375 range rests on. The later removal of the cenotaphs to the Amasya Museum also makes it harder for today's researcher to see them within the tomb itself. Because the building cannot be dated from first-hand documents, that is, from an endowment deed or an inscription, the fountain inscription, the texts of the headstones and the political period in which the family lived come to the fore.

Its Place among the Monuments of Amasya

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Amasya was a city with nine mosques, ten madrasas, four lodges, six soup kitchens and fifteen baths. Among the works that have survived to the present are the Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247), the Gökmedrese Mosque (1266-1267), the Gümüşlü Mosque (1326), the Saraçhane Mosque (1372), the Dârüşşifâ (1308), the Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb (1209-1210), the Torumtay Tomb, the Tomb of Şadgeldi Pasha, the Yörgüç Pasha Mosque (1430) and the Bayezid II Mosque and Complex (1486). In this list the buildings of rulers and statesmen predominate. The Tomb of the Judges, as the burial structure of a family of jurists, represents a different social group within the same ensemble. The same family's lodge in the inner city has not survived, and its name lives on only in endowment records; the tomb and the adjoining fountain are therefore the principal traces of the Hallâtî family in Amasya that have come down to us.

Chronology

1209-1210: The Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb are built in Amasya.

1278: The Torumtay Tomb, opposite the Gök Medrese, is built by the governor of Amasya, Seyfeddin Torumtay.

c. 1300: The family's ancestor, Necîbeddîn Mûsâ el-Hallâtî, teacher at the Torumtay Madrasa, dies.

1327: Şemseddîn Mehmed, chief judge of Amasya, leaves for Damascus during Timurtaş's flight to Egypt; he dies there in 1327 or 1328.

1330-1331: His son İmâdeddîn Ömer appears as chief judge of Amasya; he later becomes Eretna Bey's kazasker.

1359 or 1362: Hacı Şadgeldi becomes emir of Amasya under the Eretnid state; the date varies between sources.

1359-1360: Hundî Hatun, daughter of İmâdeddîn Ömer and mother of Şadgeldi, dies in Sivas.

1366-1367: İmâdzâde Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed becomes judge of Amasya.

1369-1375: The years in which the Tomb of the Judges was built, according to the earliest dates on the cenotaphs.

1374-1375: Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi becomes a teacher at the Hâlifet Gazi Madrasa.

1377-1378: Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed builds the fountain adjoining the tomb.

1381: Hacı Şadgeldi dies; in the same year Kadı Burhâneddin proclaims himself sultan.

1386: According to Hüsameddin, Mü'eyyideddîn Mehmed is removed from office and the chief judgeship passes to the Muslihî family.

1398: Amasya is incorporated into Ottoman territory; its administration is entrusted to Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed).

1399-1400 or 1403: Pîr Hasan Çelebi, former judge of Konya, dies and is buried in front of the tomb; the date differs between two of Hüsameddin's volumes.

1404-1405: Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi builds his lodge and public kitchen in the Karatay quarter of the inner city.

1405-1406: Bedreddîn Mahmûd Çelebi dies and is buried in the Tomb of the Judges.

1411: His son Pîr Mehmed Çelebi, judge of Kedağra, dies and is buried beside his father.

1992: The tomb is registered as a monument.

2007: The tomb is restored by the General Directorate of Foundations; the collapsed eyvan arch and pediment are renewed.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources