The Mehmet Pasha Mosque in Amasya stands near the Yeşilırmak, on Pirinççi Street, within the neighbourhood that carries its name. Its dome is built of cut stone and looks plain from the outside; the real richness of the building lies in the long portico in front and in the marble craftsmanship within. Before entering, it is worth pausing in the shade of the north-facing last-prayer portico and looking at the arches of alternating red and white stone. The account below considers the building's architecture, its inscriptions, the fate of the complex that once surrounded it, and the records of the endowment that sustained it.

The Mehmet Pasha Mosque in Brief

The mosque was built by Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Pasha, vizier to Sultan Bayezid II and lala (tutor-guardian) to his son Prince Ahmed. According to the two-line thuluth inscription above the main door, the building was completed in the month of Muharram 891, that is, in January 1486. Publications of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism likewise give 1486.

The sources show a small disagreement. The Amasya Governorate's list of mosques dates the building to 1485, and a local guide mentions an inscription dated 1494. Studies relying on İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, who read the inscription, give Muharram 891, and 1486 is therefore adopted here. An inscription dated 1494 could not be verified in the academic sources consulted.

Mehmed Pasha and Amasya

In the fifteenth century Amasya was a city where princes served as sanjak governors. Its position on the eastern frontier, and the fact that struggles along the border were directed from it, placed a prince here at an advantage for the throne in the eyes of both statesmen and the public. Bayezid II himself had been trained in this sanjak; after him his son Prince Ahmed, Süleyman's sons Mustafa and Bayezid, and Selim II's son Murad served in the same post. Poets, scholars and artists settled in the city together with the princes, and the princes and the officials in their entourage built madrasas, mosques and complexes that contributed to the city's development. Mehmed Pasha was one of these officials.

Two traditions exist about the pasha's ancestry. According to one, he descended from the Atabeyzâde family, named after Nasireddin Ahmed Atabey, who served as atabeg to the Seljuk Sultan Gıyaseddin Mesud II; according to the other, he came from the Mihaloğulları, the ghazi family. Muhammet Okudan writes that the inscriptions on the pious foundations built by his great-grandfather Yörgüç Pasha strengthen the first view. Even so, this is more an assessment than a definitive judgement. According to the sources, Mehmed Pasha served first as sanjak governor of Semendire and then as beylerbey of Rumelia, and reached the rank of vizier. When Bayezid II took the throne he came to Amasya as lala to his son Ahmed, and he spent most of his life in this city. The post of lala made him responsible for the prince's upbringing, and his gift of so large a complex to the prince's sanjak seat may be read as an expression of that devotion.

The sources do not agree on the year of his death. The Islamic encyclopedia entry gives 900 (1495), while Okudan gives 1498. A journal article on Halveti lodges states his death as 890 (1485); yet the pasha drew up a foundation deed in 1491 and endowed extra revenue to his father's foundation in 1493, so the date 1485 appears to be wrong. It is not possible to state a definite year. The pasha was buried in the cemetery of the complex he built.

The Mosque: An Inverted-T Plan

The mosque has an inverted-T plan. A square harim (prayer hall) with a single dome rises at the centre, and wing rooms extend on either side of it. Buildings of this kind are classed among the mosques with zâviye (dervish hospice) or tabhâne (guest rooms). In other words, the building was not conceived merely as a hall for prayer; its side rooms belong to an order that hosted travellers and dervishes. In the words of its founder, the foundation deed calls this central building a mosque "as beautiful as al-Aqsa, whose appearance recalls a vision of paradise".

The harim measures 8.70 × 8.60 metres, is built entirely of cut stone, and has ten windows. The dome, with squinches at its corners, rests on a drum. Publications differ on the shape of the drum: the Islamic encyclopedia entry calls it twelve-sided, while the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Turkey Tourism Encyclopedia say octagonal. For a visitor on site this makes a pleasant exercise in observation, as the number of sides can be counted with one's own eyes. The interior of the dome is decorated with multicoloured painted ornament (kalem işi). Since nothing is known about when or by whom this painted decoration was made, it should not be attributed to 1486.

The Last-Prayer Portico: Red and White Arches

The last-prayer portico, about 33 metres long, covers the whole front of the harim and the side rooms. It rests on seven marble columns; the columns are octagonal in section and every face of their capitals is decorated with rosettes and kabara motifs. The round arches carried by the columns are made of alternating red and white stone. This two-coloured arrangement is the most easily noticed decoration of the mosque from the outside.

The portico consists of six bays. The bay aligned with the door is covered by a barrel vault, the others by domes without drums. The mosque is entered through the arched door in the third bay from the left. The entrance takes the form of a deep niche, and the foundation inscription is set within this niche. The crown portal projects forward and is enriched with fine mouldings and hourglass motifs. Six-sided mihrâbiye niches open in its two side walls.

The Minbar and the Mihrab

The most striking element of the mosque is the marble minbar. The Islamic encyclopedia entry describes it as "a true work of art". Almost its entire surface is decorated in low relief with intricate rûmî and arabesque ornament; the records of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, for their part, emphasise the lively branch-and-leaf motifs and count the minbar among the rare examples of Turkish marble craftsmanship. A small onion dome stands above the pavilion, which has Arab-style arches. Its door has a pointed arch and is framed by a jamb decorated with curling branches. Above the door is a rectangular panel inscribed with the Verse of the Throne (Âyet al-Kursî).

The mihrab is much plainer: a marble niche with five sides, topped by five rows of muqarnas-like kavsara tiers. When the two are considered side by side, the decoration of the minbar becomes all the more evident. On a visit, looking first at the mihrab and then at the minbar makes the difference easy to see.

The Minaret, the Fountain and the Wing Rooms

The minaret is on the right side, set between the wall of the last-prayer portico and one of the wing rooms. The stone minaret, with a sixteen-sided shaft, has a single balcony. In front of the last-prayer portico, on the main axis, stands an ablution fountain (şadırvan) with an octagonal basin; its roof, resting on eight columns, is covered with lead.

The two rooms on each side, connected to the harim by a door from the east and the west, have square plans. Except for the room that holds the minaret, each is covered by a dome on an octagonal drum. The rooms at the two ends have a hearth and cupboards; this detail shows that the rooms were intended for lodging and hospitality. The doors giving access to the wing rooms were probably designed as windows originally. The sources describe these rooms as a tabhâne, that is, a guest room, and write "probably"; there is no definite document. For this section the foundation deed uses the phrases "a blessed halting place for guests" and "reserved for the residence of anyone of manners and righteousness who wishes it".

The Inscriptions

There are three inscriptions in the mosque, and each sheds light on a period in the life of the building.

  • Foundation inscription: Above the crown portal, two lines of Arabic in thuluth script. According to Okudan's translation it means: "This blessed imaret was built in the month of Muharram of the year 891, in the days of Sultan Bayezid Khan, by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasha."
  • First repair inscription: Above the side door to the east, four lines in Ottoman Turkish in thuluth script. It records a repair carried out on 15 Shaban 1236, that is, 18 May 1821. In its verses Seyyid Abdi Ağa is named as the benefactor who paid for the repair, and the reader is urged to pray and perform the ritual prayer here.
  • Second repair inscription: Above the side door to the west, four lines in ta'liq script. It states that Mahmud Beyzâde Mehmed Bey repaired and adorned the mosque in 1280, that is, in 1863-64.

As the inscriptions show, the mosque does not stand merely as a building surviving from 1486; it was repaired in two separate centuries, and those who took on its upkeep each time had their names carved in stone.

The Door and Window Leaves

The wooden door leaves of the mosque are today not in the mosque but in the Amasya Museum. Both the Culture Portal and the Islamic encyclopedia entry mention this door as one of the finest examples of wood carving. A local news report places the door among the notable wooden works of the museum, together with the door of the Gökmedrese. That the original window leaves were of the same quality can be understood from a photograph in Albert Gabriel's Monuments Turcs d'Anatolie. To see the building in its entirety two stops are needed: first the stone at the mosque, then the wood at the museum.

The Lost Parts of the Complex

The mosque is in fact the surviving part of a larger whole. The complex consisted of a mosque, madrasa, imaret (public kitchen), tomb, tabhâne, zâviye, fountain and cemetery. Of these, the mosque, its attached wing rooms and the tomb have survived. The madrasa and imaret, which should have stood at the edge of the fountain courtyard, were destroyed by fire, and nothing can be learned about their architecture. East of the cemetery, adjoining the enclosure wall, there was also a plain fountain with a pointed arch; it is known only from Gabriel's photograph and no longer exists.

The foundation deed examined by Okudan makes the purpose and arrangement of these buildings clearer. The madrasa stood to the north of the complex and consisted of ten rooms, "as lofty as the pleasant pavilions of paradise" in the founder's words. Okudan supposes that the rooms lay directly opposite the main door of the mosque and that the portico domes surrounded the whole building; since its physical structure is unknown today, this is a conjecture. The imaret consisted of four adjoining rooms serving needs such as a kitchen, a cellar and a bread store. To these were added the water channels that brought the building its water, auxiliary spaces such as a stable and a latrine, and a large, tended garden.

The lodge on the road south of the mosque was built in 890 (1485) in the name of Habib Karamânî, one of the Halveti sheikhs; this information rests on Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Târihi. In time the lodge came to be spoken of as part of the complex. Okudan explains this by two possibilities. After a disaster such as a fire or flood, the zâviye may have moved temporarily into Mehmed Pasha's guesthouse and in time come to be counted as part of the foundation. Or the pasha may himself have had the lodge built, assigned revenues to it, and given the trusteeship to Habib Karamânî and his descendants. That the foundation deed never mentions a zâviye, and that the accounting records show no payments to zâviye staff, supports the view that the real function of the building in the complex was a guesthouse in the modern sense. There is no definite document for either explanation.

The Tomb and the Cemetery

The group of buildings ends in the east with the tomb. The tomb stands on a platform raised 0.80 metres above the floor of the mosque, measures 4.60 × 3.85 metres, and is covered by an eight-segmented dome on an octagonal drum. Its pointed-arch door is on the north; the east façade is a wide arched opening. The sarcophagus inside bears no inscription.

According to the Islamic encyclopedia entry, Mehmed Pasha's grave is not inside the tomb but outside, the second grave in front of the door. The first grave belongs to the pasha's father Hızır Pasha, and the third to Habib Karamânî. Names such as his grandsons, the trustees Mehmed Ağa and Mahmud Bey, and Rahtuvanzâde İbrahim Bey, who was not of the family, also lie in the cemetery; these are known from the gravestones.

Habib Karamânî is an important figure for the Halveti tradition of Amasya. Born in Ortaköy near Niğde, he went to Shirvan to attach himself to Yahyâ-yı Şirvânî, the second pir of the Halvetiyye, served the sheikh for twelve years and then received the caliphate of the order. He must have returned to Anatolia between 1450 and 1455; he spent his life travelling between cities such as Ankara, Aydın, Kayseri, Konya and Karaman, and made the pilgrimage to Mecca three times. In İskilip he married Rukiye Hatun, daughter of Sheikh Yavsî Efendi and sister of Ebüssuûd Efendi, and after a dispute with his father-in-law he came to Amasya and founded a zâviye. The Islamic encyclopedia gives his death as 902 (1496); the journal article on Halveti lodges writes 903 (1497). The article also states that his tomb lies in the garden of the lodge. The sheikhdom of the lodge was then continued by his caliph Seyyidüddin Ali, known as İmamzâde Seydî.

The Foundation Deed: An Endowment of a Hundred Villages

Mehmed Pasha's foundation deed is dated 896 (1491) and written in Arabic. In its introduction the pasha is presented as the son of Hızır Pasha, one of the great statesmen of the Ottoman state; the purpose of the endowment is explained as "the wish to belong to the company of those who give alms" and the hope that the foundation would serve humanity for centuries. It is a family endowment. Its administration was reserved for the founder's descendants and, once their line ended, entrusted to his freed slaves. According to the documents, Mehmed Pasha's male line died out in the middle of the seventeenth century, and from then until the Republican period the trusteeship continued through the descendants of his granddaughters.

The revenues of the foundation were spread over a wide geography. Besides Amasya, the deed lists more than a hundred villages, hamlets, farms, inns, baths, mills, shops and slaves in Samsun, Bafra, Kavak, Ladik, Tokat, Kazâabâd, İskefsir, Çorum, Mecidözü, Sonisa and settlements within the borders of present-day Ordu; a bedesten (covered market) in Tosya was also endowed. Bayezid II granted Mülk village in Sonisa to the pasha as malikâne and dîvânî. Okudan deduces from the land registers that most of these villages had passed from the hands of Seljuk-era lords to Ottoman officials.

At its founding the foundation employed nearly thirty people. The imam was to receive four dirhams a day, the preacher five and the muezzin two; for the imam, knowledge of jurisprudence, the ability to recite the Qur'an according to the seven readings, and a good voice were required. In the mosque five cüzhans (Qur'an reciters) were to gather at the same hour every day and read a section each, and when the recitation was completed they would pray for all Muslims. The madrasa was to have one professor and ten students, and the professor was to be paid twenty dirhams a day; from this it can be understood that the madrasa began with the status of a "twenty" madrasa. The founder wished the madrasa not only to train students but to be "filled with the highest scholars to debate scholarly questions". The teaching of both transmitted and rational sciences was required; sources from later periods report that works such as Baydâwî's commentary, Taftazânî's Mutawwal and Marghinânî's Hidâya were taught in the madrasas of Amasya.

The Imaret: Food Cooked Every Day

The imaret, the third element of the complex, was established to cook and distribute food to students, guests, foundation staff and the poor. The arrangement in the foundation deed is very detailed. For the bread baked every morning and evening, seven batmans of pure wheat flour, by the batman measure known in Amasya, were to be bought, and each loaf was to weigh eighty dirhams. Sixteen dirhams' worth of fresh meat was added to the meals, half in the morning and half in the evening. One hundred and fifty dirhams were set aside for the Regaib, Berat and Kadir nights and for the ashure and helva of the month of Muharram. In Ramadan the allowances for meat, rice and clarified butter were increased, and keşkek was also cooked. If food was left over, it was to be shared among the poor near the imaret. If the foundation's revenues declined, expenses were to be cut in the same proportion; that is, the founder had also taken disasters such as drought or fire into account.

Strict standards applied to the staff as well. The naqib distributed bread and food to students and entitled persons morning and evening and received arriving guests. The storekeeper guarded the provisions and locked the stable door after the night prayer and opened it before the dawn prayer. The baker had to be known for his skill in bread-making. The cook prepared various dishes with skill, while the wheat-pounder pounded the grain. For the farrash serving in the guesthouse, "a pleasant appearance" was required.

Problems Reflected in the Records

Although the foundation set up a generous order on paper, the archive documents show that practice did not always follow it. According to the seventeenth-century Islamic court registers, lawsuits were brought when trusteeship passed from one holder to the next: when Hızır Bey died childless, Mehmed Çelebi, descended from the pasha's freed slaves, claimed the trusteeship for himself, while Ayşe Hatun and her sons took the post by proving through witnesses that they were the pasha's descendants. Because trusteeship brought a fifth of the foundation's revenue, the post was in demand and more than one person from the same generation came to be appointed.

In a document of 1643 the complex was inspected; the mosque was found standing but its mats worn, while in the imaret there was found neither cauldron, nor bowl, nor provisions. The trustee Hızır Bey said that food had been distributed for seven years, and when he saw that the inspectors did not believe him, he claimed that the revenues were collected by the professor of the Hızır Pasha Madrasa. In the same year the former professor Mürsel Efendi complained that the revenue assigned to the professorship from the foundation's villages had been sold and that he had not been paid; when the accounting book was checked, no money was found in the treasury. In a document of 1626, three hundred thousand akçe were found in the possession of Ali, trustee of the Hızır Pasha and Mehmed Pasha foundations; Ali handed over his vineyard in Amasya against the debt, but could not escape dismissal.

The complaints continued into the twentieth century. In 1907 two madrasa students reported to Istanbul that the daily sum allotted to them in the foundation deed had not been paid for fifteen years, that their bread entitlement had been halved and that no food was given to the poor. In 1917 Abdülkadir Efendi, who performed the duties of muezzin, farrash, lamp-keeper and custodian together, sued the trustee, saying that he received 2,400 kuruş a year and could not live on it, and the court raised his salary to 4,200 kuruş. In 1919 the imam Hafız Sururi Efendi asked for a raise on his monthly salary of two hundred kuruş; the trustee found 325 kuruş acceptable, and the imam agreed to it.

The Foundation and the Madrasa in Figures

The revenues of the foundation shrank over time. According to the land register of 1520, the foundation drew 9,498 akçe from four villages; a record of 1530 shows six villages, eight mills and a dye-house; in 1576 the income rose to 12,548 akçe. Considering the hundred and more items in the foundation deed, this shows that most of the original endowment had been lost. In the 1844 accounts the total income is 4,193.5 kuruş, and in 1872 it is 43,720 kuruş; Okudan attributes the roughly tenfold increase in between to inflation rather than production. Among the expenditure items of the 1844 records are 847.5 kuruş for repair of the madrasa and 400 kuruş for lighting the mosque; in the expenses of the year 1286, 9,000 kuruş was allotted to baking bread in the imaret.

The madrasa also became more crowded than its founder had foreseen. The deed asks for ten students; the records show twenty-four in 1846, thirty-eight in 1899 and thirty in 1903. In the 1846 population register the twenty-two students living in the madrasa range in age from fifteen to seventy; some came from around Amasya, some from distant places such as Akhaltsikhe, Gerger and Acara. The French traveller Georges Perrot visited Amasya in 1861 and described the town as "the Oxford of Anatolia", writing that in a city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants there were eighteen madrasas in which two thousand students studied. Since the Mehmed Pasha Madrasa is still mentioned in a document of 1922 that Okudan found, it remained in existence until the Republic.

Repairs and Earthquakes

The building was damaged in the earthquake of 1939; the mosque and the tomb were repaired by the General Directorate of Foundations. The earlier repairs are recorded in the inscriptions: 1821 and 1863-64. No published document could be found on the scope of the work after 1939. The lodge, for its part, became a private house in 1879 when Caucasian refugees were settled in it, and never returned to its original function.

Is There a Legend

No established legend attached to the mosque could be identified. Well-known stories of Amasya such as that of Ferhat and Şirin do not belong to this building. The story of the building is made up of inscriptions, the foundation deed and archive records. Legend enters only on the question of the pasha's ancestry and is limited to the two views described above.

Location and Access

The mosque is in the Mehmet Paşa neighbourhood in the centre of Amasya; its address is recorded as Pirinççi, Mehmet Paşa Caddesi No:48. It is close to the Yeşilırmak and next to the Mustafa Bey Bath. Because the nearby car park is reserved for tour vehicles, groups arriving on tour programmes visit this building most of all. The Mustafa Bey Bath is reported to have been built in 1436 by Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey.

Notes for Visiting

  • The mosque is a place of worship. To avoid disturbing worshippers, it is better to plan the visit outside prayer times.
  • The general dress rules for mosques are expected to be observed; local officials can be consulted for details.
  • One can look first at the red and white arches and the column capitals in the portico; comparing the mihrab and the minbar inside is where the building reads best.
  • The painted ornament inside the dome requires looking upward.
  • No current, official publication could be found on visiting hours and possible fees. For information, one should consult the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism.

Sights Nearby

  • Mustafa Bey Bath: Next to the mosque, a bath dated 1436.
  • Amasya Museum: The mosque's original wooden door is exhibited here; it can be seen together with the door of the Gökmedrese.
  • Bayezid II Complex: Begun by Prince Ahmed and finished in 1486, this complex is another large building completed in the year the mosque was built.
  • Hızır Pasha Madrasa: The madrasa built by Mehmed Pasha's father Hızır Pasha; it is mentioned together with the Mehmed Pasha Foundation in the foundation records.

Chronology

1436: Construction of the Mustafa Bey Bath (Özcan).

1485: Construction of the lodge in the name of Habib Karamânî (890 AH).

1486 (January): Date on the foundation inscription (Muharram 891).

1491: Drawing up of the foundation deed (896 AH).

1493: Mehmed Pasha's endowment of additional revenue to his father's foundation.

1496-1497: Death of Habib Karamânî (two different years in the sources).

1520: Land register records the foundation's income: 9,498 akçe.

1626: Determination of three hundred thousand akçe in the possession of the trustee Ali.

1643: Inspection of the complex and the absence of provisions in the imaret.

1821: Repair of the mosque (Seyyid Abdi Ağa).

1863-1864: Repair by Mahmud Beyzâde Mehmed Bey.

1879: The lodge becomes a private house with the settlement of Caucasian refugees.

1907: Petition to Istanbul by madrasa students over unpaid allowances.

1922: Latest document mentioning the madrasa.

1939: Earthquake damage; repair by the General Directorate of Foundations.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Ebru Karakaya, "Mehmed Paşa Külliyesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 28, 2003, pp. 511-512 (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Muhammet Okudan, "Amasya Mehmed Paşa Külliyesi", İslam Medeniyet Tarihi Araştırmaları I: Kültür, Müessese, Eğitim, ed. M. Okudan, Ankara: İlahiyat Yayınları, 2020.
  • Kadir Özköse, "Amasya'da Bulunan Halvetiyye Tekkeleri", Akademiar Dergisi, no. 5, Ankara 2018, pp. 91-118.
  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 2015.

Official sources

  • Türkiye Kültür Portalı, "Mehmet Paşa Camii - Amasya" (kulturportali.gov.tr). kulturportali.gov.tr
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Mehmet Paşa Cami" (amasya.ktb.gov.tr).
  • Amasya Governorate, "Camiiler" (amasya.gov.tr).

Other sources

  • Kamil Şahin, "Habib Karamânî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 1996. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Şerif Baldıran, "Mehmet Paşa Camii", Online Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi, 2019. turkiyeturizmansiklopedisi.com
  • Albert Gabriel, Monuments Turcs d'Anatolie, II, Paris 1934 (via the citation in the TDV entry).

Online sources