Step into the imaret building of the Sultan Bayezid II Complex and a city lies in front of you. It has a mountain, a river, bridges, houses, minarets and a small train, and it is a model of Amasya as it looked a century ago. Looking at the real Harşena, you can only tilt your head back; here you look down from the top of the citadel. After a while the lights in the hall go out, stars appear overhead, and the town enters the night once more beneath two thousand three hundred stars.

The Miniature Amasya Museum is a city model that the Amasya Governorate Special Provincial Administration began building in 2008 and opened to visitors on 14 May 2010. Official presentations describe it as "Turkey's largest city model in terms of scale." The building that holds it deserves as much attention as the model itself, because the hall was set up in the kitchen, pantry and stable of one of the best-documented examples of Ottoman complex architecture.

How a Model Came to Be

The official presentation states that the Amasya Governorate Special Provincial Administration began work on the model in 2008 and that the museum opened on 14 May 2010. Public cultural and tourism publications give the same dates. An entry in the tourism literature adds that the building process took about two years, which fits the start and opening dates.

The starting point was a photograph taken in 1914. The official text describes the model as "a historical city model built inspired by a photograph taken in 1914," while the culture portal says the photograph was "drawn upon." The sources we could reach do not say who took the photograph, from which vantage point, or in which archive it is kept. It is therefore hard to say from the outside where "inspired by" ends and "copied exactly" begins. The same official text nevertheless claims that the model offers "a nostalgic view that reflects the urban fabric and cultural structure of those years exactly."

The name of the producing firm, the architect or the model makers does not appear in the sources examined either. That information is left blank because it is not known.

Scale, Figures and Method

The technical details of the model are listed in the official presentation and in the tourism encyclopedia entry in a way that confirms each other. The scale is 1/150. The model contains 1,860 architectural buildings and structures, accompanied by human, animal and vehicle figures. The buildings and architectural structures were produced on three-dimensional printers from high-strength composite material. Mount Harşena, on which the citadel stands, was surveyed by scanning 125,000,000 points and then shaped on CNC machines with 1/1000 precision. A simulation of 2,300 stars and city lighting were used for the night scene.

A small calculation shows what a 1/150 scale means. A structure fifteen metres tall in reality comes down to ten centimetres on the model. The complex's outer courtyard, about 160 x 120 metres, fits into an area of roughly 107 x 80 centimetres at the same scale. The kitchen of the imaret beside the mosque, with real dimensions of about 10.9 x 17.3 metres, takes up no more room than the palm of a hand. Building Amasya's narrow streets, bridges and minarets one by one at this size demands a patience close to that of a jeweller.

Producing Harşena by a separate method is an understandable choice. The rock faces are steep, the folds irregular, and it is hard to stay faithful to the terrain in a model made by hand. The survey, called a rölevé in architecture, is the process of producing a measured drawing of an existing structure or piece of land. This drawing, obtained by point scanning, made it possible to cut the surface of the mountain by machine. For the buildings, three-dimensional printing suited serial production; cutting and gluing each of the 1,860 structures by hand would have been difficult within two years.

The Largest Model?

The claim of "Turkey's largest city model" should be read carefully, because the official presentation makes it "in terms of scale." The same text also offers a comparison: on a world scale it is smaller than the 900-square-metre New York model and larger than the Zurich and Sydney models. This comparison is the official source's own statement, and no independent confirmation could be found.

The sources diverge on the area. The official presentation and the tourism encyclopedia say that the museum occupies 80 square metres, while the culture portal gives the hall that houses the model as "about 300 square metres." A reasonable way to reconcile the two figures is to take 80 square metres as the area of the model itself and 300 square metres as the whole hall around it. This is an interpretation and not documented; still, it suggests that the two figures measure the same space in different ways. The phrase "an eighty-square-metre hall" found in earlier presentations of the museum has therefore been dropped.

A City from Day to Night

What sets the model apart from an ordinary scale model is that it moves. According to the official presentation, besides place and architecture the model includes mountains, the flowing Yeşilırmak, a train, and figures that move at certain points. The daytime scene is watched through these movements, while the night scene is built from a simulation of 2,300 stars and city lighting. Visitors can listen to presentations in Turkish and English and sense the texture of the town to the accompaniment of improvised instrumental passages (taksim).

According to the culture portal, the visit lasts about twenty minutes. In that time one hears the sounds of the city to light music, and the Amasya of a hundred years ago is brought to life in an atmosphere created with play of colour and light. The same source stresses that, unlike comparable models, this one was designed to show a living Amasya instead of reflecting only places and architecture. The museum's real claim is to build the daily rhythm of a town before it builds stone and timber.

The Model's Home: The Sultan Bayezid II Complex

The museum is inside Amasya's largest complex. The mosque and the group of buildings around it rise on the bank of a stream, the Yeşilırmak, as the complex at Edirne does. There is no trace to support the claim that the complex stands on the site of a Church of the Virgin Mary, about which nothing is known except that it stood on the river bank. In the middle of this broad group of buildings stands the mosque, with the madrasa on one side and the soup kitchen-imaret and guesthouse (tabhâne) on the other.

According to the three-part building inscription above the main door and on the two side walls, the mosque was completed in Rajab 891, that is, July 1486. The calligrapher of these inscriptions, written in thuluth script, was Ali b. Mezîd. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Bey, on the other hand, claims that construction began right after Bayezid's accession, in Rajab 886 (September 1481). Relying on İdrîs-i Bitlisî, the same author reports that the construction, begun as thanks for being granted the sultanate, was entrusted by Bayezid to Prince Ahmed; the Künhü'l-ahbâr of Âlî and the Mir'âtü'l-kâinât of Nişancızâde Mehmed repeat the same information. For this reason the starting date appears as 1481 in some sources and as 1485 in others; for completion, 1486 is the common point. The complex's endowment deed was written in mid-Jumada al-Awwal 901 (January 1496) and lists the complex as a mosque, an imaret, a madrasa and a children's school (sıbyan mektebi).

The complex has paid the price of standing on a riverbank and in an earthquake zone many times over. According to Hüsâmeddin Bey, in the earthquake of Muharram 999 (November 1590) the mosque was badly damaged, its dome and arches and part of the domes of the imaret collapsed, and the building was repaired at once. The date of this earthquake is also written as 1591 in other studies. In the earthquake of 1079 (1668-69) the damage was heavier: domes fell, two minarets tilted, and the domes of the imaret and guesthouse collapsed. Even so, the endowment's administrator, İbrâhim Ağa of Merzifon, repaired all the damage within a year. In more recent times the earthquakes of 1939 and 1943 severely damaged the building, and the complex underwent extensive repair by the General Directorate of Foundations between 1952 and 1971. It is also recorded that in the flood of 1980 a deposit of 70 centimetres built up inside the mosque.

Additions were made to the complex over time. In 1782-83 Hacı Ali Ağa had taps and a water-heating room built on the river side so that ablutions could be made with warm water in winter; in 1813 Ayşe Hatun added a fountain for ablutions (şadırvan), in 1820-21 Hacı Osman Ağa a public fountain (sebil), and in 1840 Kapancızâde Hacı Hüseyin Zeki Efendi a timekeeper's lodge with a library (muvakkithâne) and one more şadırvan. Between 1909 and 1911, by the bequest of the Yamuk Osmanzâde family, a library was built at the foot of the courtyard wall together with a new şadırvan fed by specially brought water. The five-couplet verse inscription over the door of the muvakkithâne gives the date 1840; in the painted decoration (kalem işi) covering its walls one sees trees, landscapes, some buildings, and a picture of the nearby Bayezid Mosque.

The Courtyard of the Complex According to a Document

The source that best describes the original layout of the complex today is an undated three-page document registered under number D. 10232 in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive. Written in vocalised naskh script, the document does not say who drew it up or for what purpose. The archive card dates it to the end of the 15th century; the resemblance of the paper's watermark to examples from the last quarter of that century, and the fact that the Tomb of Prince Osman, built in 1513, is not mentioned at all, support this dating. Abdulkadir Dündar, who identified the document in 1997, published the text in 2003 and compared the buildings of the complex with their present state.

According to the document, the buildings are lined up on an orderly axis inside a large courtyard surrounded by an enclosure wall. The document describes this order in a striking phrase: the fronts and backs of the madrasa, the imaret and the kitchen are even, so that if a rope were stretched, it would not come out a finger's breadth too long or too short. The perimeter of the courtyard wall is given as twelve hundred zira, that is about 910 metres. The top of the wall along the riverbank was paved with flat stones so that people could sit on it. Five gates open into the courtyard: two beside the river, one toward the city, one toward the Gök Madrasa, and one behind the kitchen. The gate behind the kitchen is for carrying barley and wheat. In front of the imaret a stone pavement runs from one gate to the next, four zira (about three metres) wide and three hundred and fifty zira (about 265 metres) long.

The planting of the courtyard is also recorded in detail in the document. In front of the mosque a cypress was planted opposite each column, and four cypresses around the şadırvan. There are chinaberry trees, and poplars along the riverbank whose shade falls on the stone-paved wall. A hundred and thirty grafted saplings were planted in the garden on the qibla side. The spaces between the buildings were filled with rows of plantings, and every place was strongly protected so that no horse would enter the courtyard. Of these five gates, the four other than the one south of the mosque still keep their relatively original form today.

Mosque, Madrasa and School

The prayer hall of the mosque consists of two domed spaces joined by squinches and of side wings with three domes each. The first dome has a diameter of about 13 metres and the second, on the qibla side, about 15 metres; a great arch 2.37 metres thick separates the two. The mosque stands in the middle of an outer courtyard of about 160 x 120 metres and has no separate inner courtyard. The five-bay last-congregation portico rises on marble columns. With its muqarnas crown and two-coloured marbles, the portal has the magnificent appearance seen in Bayezid's other mosques. The right-hand minaret is decorated with red inlays of zigzag lines and lily motifs, and according to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi this decoration is not found on any other minaret. The shaft of the left-hand minaret is built of red and white stripes in keeping with the old Turkish minaret tradition.

The document gives particular weight to the painted decoration in the mosque. The transition zone of the dome in front of the mihrab is muqarnas and ornate, while the rear dome is left plain. In the centre of each dome is a sun-shaped ornament called a şemse. In the middle of the first is the verse "Inna awwala baytin wudi'a," and around the second the verse "Innamā ya'muru masājidallāh," both in mirror-image calligraphy. None of these decorations exists today. In the earthquakes and the 1952-1971 repairs the painted decoration was removed and new ornament was made on the domes and their skirts. One further detail of the document is that it mentions a pair of lamps hanging from the arch; these were probably not put back after the arch collapsed in the 1939 earthquake.

A disputed point about the mosque is the side wings. Semavi Eyice, looking at their connection to the outside and at the one-step separation from the qibla space, is of the opinion that these three-domed sections were originally guesthouse rooms (tabhâne). That Sultan Bayezid II's other two great complexes also have guesthouses supports this possibility. Eyice adds that if traces of chimneys are found in the vaults, the question will be settled for certain. The document's description of four guesthouses is also consistent with this reading.

The madrasa, built together with the mosque in 1486, is also known as Sultaniye. Facing the entrance stands a square, domed lecture hall-mosque; colonnaded porticoes enclose, on three sides, a courtyard with a şadırvan in the middle, and behind them domed cells with hearths are lined up. According to the document, the lecture hall measures 14 x 14 zira (about 10.6 metres), and there are seventeen cells and a teaching-assistant's (muid) hall; the portico consists of sixteen stone columns, and the building has twenty domes in all. According to the TDV entry the professorship of the madrasa was assigned to the muftis of Amasya, and its first teacher was the famous shaykh al-Islam Zenbilli Ali Efendi. The madrasa was saved by a good repair and has been used as a public library for many years.

The children's school (sıbyan mektebi), stated in the endowment deed to have been built near the imaret on the east side of the valley, lay outside the enclosure wall. According to Hüsâmeddin Bey, this building, constructed in 890 (1485), was converted into a primary school in 1883 and vanished without leaving any trace within the last century. That the document says nothing of it is explained by its location outside the wall.

The Story of the Imaret Building

The hall of the model is a part of the imaret. An imaret is an Ottoman charitable institution that serves meals to the poor and to students and hosts guests. The imaret at Amasya is an L-shaped building, and in front of its courtyard-facing fronts runs a portico of pointed arches and domes resting on columns. The TDV entry says that the building was used for a long time as a military depot and perhaps was altered, so that the function of some parts cannot be fully understood today.

The Topkapı document clears up most of these unknowns, because it describes the building not as an "imaret" but as separate spaces whose functions are named outright. Five sections are entered through four doors opening onto the portico. In the document these sections are the refectory (mut'imehane), kitchen (matbah), pantry (kilar), bakery (fırın) and stable (ahır). In front of these spaces the document records a portico with eleven stone columns and twelve domes; today the portico still has eleven columns but is covered by ten domes, and this difference probably stems from later repairs. The document also records that the mosque and madrasa were covered in lead on top and that, since lead was expensive, the imaret sections were not.

The refectory is given in the document as 14 x 14 zira, and in front of it stood a şadırvan for students to wash their hands after eating. Today the building, about 10 x 9 metres, is rectangular rather than square, has a square pier in the middle and is covered with a vault. It is joined to the kitchen to its east by a serving window. The kitchen measures 18 x 14 zira. It has two piers in the middle, three domes extend on one side, and the tops over the hearths are open so that smoke can escape. According to the document there are also two guest hearths, and water flows from a separate spout into each cauldron. The two great hearths of the kitchen, which measures 10.87 x 17.25 metres today, still stand in place.

The pantry is described as a square space of 16 x 16 zira with a store of five compartments inside: two compartments for rice, three for other needs. The pantry today is a room of 8.85 x 10.22 metres under a groin vault, and in its walls there are thirty-four cupboard niches in all, in upper and lower rows. The bakery to the north of the pantry is given as 16 x 14 zira, and in its hearth there is a spout that supplies water to the cauldron. The stable measures 24 x 16 zira, and in front of its door there is a fountain for watering guests' horses; according to the document, the water of this fountain was plentiful enough to serve the neighbourhood. Nothing remains of the fountain today. The north door of the stable is wide enough for a horse to enter easily, while the other door opening on the portico is for people only.

The document also mentions two houses and two granaries behind the kitchen. One of the houses is a woodshed large enough to hold four thousand loads of wood, the other a place for the use of the repairmen. One of the granaries holds a hundred and fifty müd of wheat, the other three hundred müd of barley. None of these structures has survived. According to Hüsâmeddin Bey, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th the bakery and stable sections were used as a guesthouse and a military weapons depot. In the 1939 earthquake the stable's roof and portico collapsed completely, latrines were probably built in their place in the 1940s, and these were removed in the 1952-1971 repairs so that the present portico could be built.

The sections that today house the illuminated model of a small city were once places where the sounds of hearths, provisions and horses' hooves could be heard. The TDV entry (1992) says the imaret was repaired together with the guesthouse and made into a dormitory. Some sources say the imaret was also used as a soup kitchen for a time. In what order and in which sections these uses took place could not be determined with certainty from the sources examined. When and by what arrangement the museum hall was adapted to its present purpose also appears not to be documented.

The City the Model Shows

According to the sources, the model includes mansions along the Yeşilırmak, bridges, historic mosques and madrasas. Because of the narrowness of the valley it is hard to fit Amasya into a single frame at full size, whereas the model shows the town as a whole from a bird's-eye view. Standing before the model, the eye goes first to the citadel. Amasya Castle stands on the steep rock faces of Mount Harşena and, according to local accounts, rises 700 metres above sea level and 300 metres above the Yeşilırmak. The castle takes its name from Mount Harşena. Arab historians attribute it to the "Turkish ruler Karsan Khan," Western historians to Mithridates, King of Pontus. These two accounts are traditions that differ between sources, and it cannot be said that they rest on a definite document. Evliya Çelebi, visiting in 1640, says that the castle has "forty-one five-cornered towers" and that it contains palaces, arsenals, storehouses and water cisterns. The four gates of the Inner Castle are the Helkis (facing Nerkis), Saray, Midenos and Meydan gates.

The second stop is the Yeşilırmak and its bridges. It is related that the Low Bridge (Alçak Köprü) was built in the Roman period to connect the castle and its surroundings to the opposite bank of the river, and that the clock tower was built in 1865 by Ziya Pasha on the Nergis Bridge. Looking for the real counterparts of the fine lines on the model is a useful preparation before going out into the city.

The third focal point is the complex in which the model stands. The Tomb of Prince Osman lies southeast of the mosque, level with the qibla wall; it is square, covered by a dome and built of cut stone with three courses of brick bonding. Above its door there was an inscription, which no longer exists, giving the year 919 (1513) by abjad reckoning. The tomb is accepted as that of Prince Osman, son of Prince Ahmed, who was put to death by Yavuz Selim in 1513, but there is no sarcophagus inside today. That Uzunçarşılı mentions a marble sarcophagus here is therefore noteworthy. The model does not show such details; the history of a princely sanjak must be sought in the real courtyard.

The Question of the Lost Fabric

The model can also be read as a document, but one must be measured about this. Its recreation of Amasya's appearance in 1914 gives a chance to compare it with the present town. According to our sources, Amasya was shaken by great earthquakes in 1939 and 1943 and was tested again and again by river floods. Many buildings were repaired and some were lost. The complex's children's school, and the woodshed and the wheat and barley granaries behind the imaret, are among them.

The documentary value of a model, however, depends on the data it rests on. The sources say that the model was made inspired by, or drawing on, a single photograph. A photograph shows only the visible face of buildings; back façades, courtyards and interiors need other data. Since it is not known what these data were, it would not be right to count the model as a definitive architectural document. What can be said with confidence is that it is a scaled and detailed interpretation that tries to describe the Amasya of 1914. The state of the complex in the 15th century, on the other hand, can be learned not from the model but from the Topkapı document described above.

Visitor Information

The museum is in the city centre, inside the Sultan Bayezid II Complex, on the municipal building side and within walking distance. The address given is Hacı İlyas Neighbourhood. The Out-of-School Learning Environments page states that it is closed on Mondays and open Tuesday to Sunday from 08:00 to 17:00. Other publications may show different hours, so it is advisable to ask the governorate or the provincial directorate of culture and tourism before going. Different figures also appear in the sources for the admission fee; for current information one can contact the operator, the Special Provincial Administration.

The museum is mentioned as a stop for families with children as well as for history enthusiasts. The hall is dark and only the model is lit, so according to one travel writer's note, those who want to take photos with a phone should switch to a night mode.

According to the culture portal, photographs and video may be taken in the museum and the visit lasts about twenty minutes. The notes on the Out-of-School Learning Environments page, on the other hand, advise not touching the models and not using flash. The presentations are in Turkish and English. The same page presents the museum as a suitable stop for student groups and links it to topics such as light, scale and geometry. The 1/150 scale is also a convenient example for a student who wants to practise conversion calculations.

Seeing the model first and then going out to the real thing gives a different grasp of the walk along the citadel and the Yeşilırmak. The Amasya Museum, the Hazeranlar Mansion, the Şehzadeler Museum and the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery are other museums that can be taken in on the same city tour. The Aynalı Cave, 3.3 kilometres from the city centre, is the monumental tomb of Thes, a priest of Mithra who lived in the Hellenistic age. The model does not replace walking, but it gives that walk an introduction that is easier to follow than a map.

Chronology

1481: According to Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Bey, the start of the complex's construction (a claim reported in the TDV).

1485-1486: According to some sources, Prince Ahmed had the complex built in the name of Sultan Bayezid II. According to the TDV the mosque was completed in July 1486.

1496: The complex's endowment deed was written.

1590, 1668-69: Earthquakes that caused damage in the complex (TDV).

1840: Construction of the muvakkithâne according to its inscription.

1914: The year the photograph that inspired the model was taken.

1939, 1943: Earthquakes that caused major damage in Amasya (DergiPark article).

1952-1971: Major repair of the complex by the General Directorate of Foundations (DergiPark article).

2008: Construction of the Miniature Amasya model began.

14 May 2010: The museum opened to visitors.

2016: Restoration began in the complex.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Abdulkadir Dündar, "Bir Belgeye Göre Amasya II. Bayezid Külliyesi", Ankara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, XLIV/2 (2003), pp. 131-172. amasya.gov.tr

Official sources

  • T.C. Amasya Valiliği, "Minyatür Amasya Müzesi", amasya.gov.tr.
  • T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, Türkiye Kültür Portalı, "Minyatür Amasya Müzesi" (source: Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism), kulturportali.gov.tr. kulturportali.gov.tr
  • T.C. Amasya Valiliği, "Valimiz Sultan II. Bayezid Külliyesi'nde Büyük Ölçüde Tamamlanan Restorasyon Çalışmalarını Yerinde İnceledi", amasya.gov.tr.
  • T.C. Amasya Kültür ve Turizm Müdürlüğü, "Amasya Kalesi", amasya.ktb.gov.tr.
  • T.C. Amasya Belediyesi, "Amasya'nın Tarihi", amasya.bel.tr.
  • Okul Dışı Öğrenme Ortamları (ODÖO), "Minyatür Amasya Müzesi", okuldisiogrenme.eba.gov.tr.
  • Tarih Gezisi, "II. Bayezid Külliyesi - Amasya" (citing Muzaffer Doğanbaş, Amasya II. Bâyezid Külliyesi, Amasya Valiliği Yay., Ankara 2010).

Other sources

  • Serap İnceöz, "Minyatür Amasya Müzesi (Maket Amasya)", Online Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi, 2019. turkiyeturizmansiklopedisi.com
  • Semavi Eyice, "Beyazıt II Camii ve Külliyesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 6, Istanbul 1992. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Anadolu Ajansı, "Amasya'daki 531 yıllık külliye restore ediliyor", 27 October 2017.

Online sources