The Mustafa Bey Hamam, standing in Amasya's Mehmed Paşa quarter near the Bimarhane, is one of the early Ottoman buildings of the city that still works as a bathhouse today. It was built in 1436 by Mustafa Bey, son of Yörgüç Paşa, the lala (tutor-guardian) of Murad II. Although almost six centuries have passed, the hamam preserves its classical sequence of cold room, warm room and hot room, along with its domed spaces. It is mentioned less often than the city's other bathhouses, yet it is one of the tangible traces of the years immediately after Prince Murad's upbringing in Amasya, when the family of Yörgüç Paşa settled in the city and filled it with buildings. The short life of its founder, his endowment in Havza, the Qur'an school founded behind the hamam in later centuries and the daily life around it at the beginning of the twentieth century are the links that tie the history of this small building to the wider history of the city.

The Founder's Family

To understand the founder of the hamam, one must first look at his father. When Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) sent his twelve-year-old son Şehzade Murad (Prince Murad) to Amasya in 1414 as governor of the province of Rum, Yörgüç Paşa was attached to the prince as his lala. This province, which took in Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Çorum and Osmancık, was home to Mongol and Turkmen populations left over from the Ilkhanid period, and binding these nomadic crowds to a central administration was no easy task. When the revolt of Düzmece Mustafa, the pretender who tried to seize İznik with Byzantine support, broke out in the first year of Murad's reign, the young sultan marched against it at Yörgüç Paşa's urging and put it down. After this revolt his lala was appointed beylerbey (governor-general) of Rum (1423); Yörgüç Paşa brought rebellious lords such as the Kızılkocaoğulları, who preyed on the roads, to obedience, reported to the sultan the plundering of Qara Qoyunlu troops around Tokat, and was finally raised to the rank of vizier. When he died in the spring of 1442 he was buried in the tomb of the mosque he had built in Amasya. According to endowment deeds and tax registers he founded a mosque, a madrasa, an imaret (public kitchen) and two hamams in the city, as well as various charitable buildings in Tokat, Gümüş, Köprü, Havza, Kavak and İskilip.

Mustafa Bey was the son of Yörgüç Paşa by his first wife, Safiye Hatun. Safiye Hatun was the daughter of Mustafa Bey, son of Şadgeldi (Şahgeldi) Paşa, and Mustafa was her only child. By his other wife, Şahbulu Hatun, the Paşa had sons named Abdi, Hızır, Ali and Yunus and daughters named Sitti and Hundi; these were Mustafa's half-siblings. Şahbulu Hatun herself built a masjid, a fountain and an elementary school in Amasya. The graves of Yunus Bey and the two daughters lie in the single-domed tomb, open on two sides, at the north-western corner of Yörgüç Paşa's complex. Mustafa Bey's own grave, however, is unknown. According to Ferruh Toruk's study his date of death is not certain, but it appears that he fell in the Battle of Varna in 1444. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam likewise writes that among Yörgüç Paşa's sons Hızır and Mustafa were killed at Varna; Mustafa Çağhan Keskin also gives Mustafa Bey's year of death as 1444.

The identity of the Hızır who died alongside Mustafa Bey at Varna is disputed in the sources. Toruk takes him to be Yörgüç Paşa's brother, that is, Mustafa's uncle Hızır Hayreddin Paşa. According to Keskin's research on Mehmed Paşa, son of Hızır Paşa, however, Yörgüç Paşa's brother Hızır Paşa served as lala to Şehzade Alaeddin under Murad II and to Şehzade Bayezid in Amasya under Mehmed II, and died in 871 (1466). Another study drawing on Hüsameddin also records that he built a hamam in 1466 in the Amasya quarter named after him. In that case it may be considered the stronger possibility that the Hızır who died with Mustafa at Varna was, as the TDV entry and Şimşirgil write, Mustafa's half-brother Hızır Bey; this is an inference, and there is no conclusive document. The TDV entry also notes that the information given about Yörgüç Paşa's genealogy is inconsistent and that the accuracy of these genealogies is doubtful.

In the endowment deed Mustafa Bey is called "emîr-i kebîr", that is, the great emir. In the inscription of his imaret in Havza he appears with the same title, as "the great emir Mustafa Bey, son of Atabek Yörgüç Paşa". In Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yasar's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) his name is given as "Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey". The same work lists persons bearing this very name among the administrators and notables of Amasya in later centuries; they should not be confused with the Mustafa Bey who built the hamam and are treated separately below.

Date of Construction and Sources

The date most often given for the construction of the hamam is 1436. Describing the Mehmed Paşa quarter, Hüsameddin Yasar writes that in the hijri year 840 Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey built a "hamâm-ı latîf", an elegant bathhouse, on the western side of the Mehmed Paşa Mosque. The hijri year 840 began in the summer of 1436 and ended in the summer of 1437; for this reason the building is dated to 1436 in some publications and to 1437 in others. Toruk associates the hamam with 1437. The building has no inscription, and the cultural inventory notes that it has no separate endowment deed. The date is not read from the building itself but rests on the information transmitted by Hüsameddin.

Mustafa Bey's endowment deed dated 840 is kept in the Archive of the General Directorate of Foundations. As Toruk reports, this document concerns the expenses of the imaret and han (inn) in Havza and gives no direct information about the Amasya hamam. It is nevertheless the most detailed source known about the founder. The text draws the portrait of a man who in his youth understood that this world is no lasting home, and then describes the domed han with its decorated rooms in Havza and the imaret beside it. Mustafa Bey's charitable activity was thus not confined to a single hamam; within a few years of each other he had buildings raised both in Amasya and in Havza.

The Hamam within the Family's Endowment System

When the buildings of Yörgüç Paşa's family in and around Amasya are examined as a whole through their endowment deeds, it becomes clear that the hamams had a particular function in this system. According to Keskin's study based on the family's deeds, the family built four hans, one bedesten (covered market), numerous shops, six mills and eleven hamams around Amasya to provide revenue for the imarets, zawiyas and madrasas they had founded. In this list Yörgüç Paşa is credited with a han, seventeen shops and a hamam in Amasya, a han and a hamam in Tokat and a hamam each in Gümüş and İskilip; Mustafa Bey with a hamam in Amasya and a hamam and a han in Havza; Hızır Paşa with a hamam in Amasya; and Mehmed Paşa with hamams in Samsun, Tokat and Niksar. Here the hamams are revenue properties, that is, buildings let out for rent to meet the expenses of the religious and educational foundations.

This picture does not fully match the other sources on two points. The TDV entry states that Yörgüç Paşa had two hamams in Amasya, whereas Keskin's list credits the Paşa with only one there; whether the second hamam in the TDV entry is the building commissioned by his son Mustafa Bey is a possibility that may be considered, but the sources make no explicit identification. Moreover, the deed of 840 studied by Toruk does not mention the Amasya hamam; on what document Keskin bases his inclusion of Mustafa Bey's Amasya hamam among the endowed revenue properties cannot be determined from the available abstract. A similar example from the same period is the Kumacık Hamam at the other end of the city: according to Ayas Ağa's endowment record of 1495, this hamam was built on land purchased away from the complex in order to provide income for the masjid and school of the complex. It is likely that the Mustafa Bey Hamam was likewise built to bring income to his imaret in Havza or to another charitable foundation of the family, but we have no concrete document showing this.

The Imaret and Endowment Deed in Havza

The complex in Havza is the best point of comparison for interpreting Mustafa Bey's hamam in Amasya, and the sources diverge on its dates. On the main east-facing doorway of the imaret there is a marble inscription that begins above the right-hand niche, runs over the arch of the door and ends above the left-hand niche. According to Ahmet Tüfekçioğlu's reading, the inscription states that the imaret was built for the poor and destitute in the time of Sultan Murad by the great emir Mustafa Bey, son of Atabek Yörgüç Paşa, in the hijri year 833 (1429-30). Hüsameddin, on the other hand, writes that Mustafa Bey built an imaret and guesthouse in Havza in 835 and set up its endowment in 840. According to Toruk, Mustafa Bey founded a complex of mosque, imaret and hamam in Havza in 1436-37. The TDV entry counts the Havza imaret among Yörgüç Paşa's buildings, while the inscription, Hüsameddin and Toruk attribute it to his son Mustafa Bey. If the date of the inscription is accepted, the Havza imaret was built a few years before the Amasya hamam, and the endowment deed was drawn up in the same year as the hamam.

The date of the deed is given in M. Sami Bayraktar's thesis on the buildings of Samsun as 21 Dhu al-Qa'dah 840. Bayraktar converts this as 15 September 1436; but when the month of Dhu al-Qa'dah 840 is calculated with conversion tables it falls in the spring of 1437, towards the end of May, so there is a discrepancy between the two dates. The document is registered in the General Directorate of Foundations on page 356 of register no. 747. The sentence describing the han runs as follows: Mustafa Bey "built and erected in the village of Havza, among the dependencies of Amasya, a han containing domed, decorated rooms and a lofty hall." The deed says that the qualities of this han recall the attributes of paradise and drive sorrow from the heart, mentions two facing winter rooms and an elegant storeroom within the enclosure wall, and states that the whole building was given the name of imaret. Looking at the sentence stating that the building was endowed for the poor and destitute of the community who come and stop there, Bayraktar considers that the imaret served as a kind of tabhane, a guesthouse.

The deed defines the running of the imaret in detail. A learned and devout sheikh was to receive visitors according to their rank; an imam was to lead the five daily prayers and the tarawih prayers in congregation; a muezzin was to give the call to prayer; and four hafızes reciting the Qur'an according to the rules of tajwid were to attend the imaret daily, each reciting one of the thirty sections and dedicating the merit to the soul of the founder. To these were added a nakib, a ferraş (who also served as lamplighter), a cook, a baker, a storekeeper and a clerk who kept the endowment's accounts. Wages were fixed in dirhams and müds. As sources of income, more than thirty villages, hamlets and vineyards around Havza, Ladik, Vezirköprü, Kavak and Amasya were attached to the endowment; among them was a half share of the village of Kuşçular near Amasya. The endowment's property could not be sold, given away or mortgaged; only the mills, houses and shops could be let, and then for no more than three years. If the imaret fell into ruin, it was to be rebuilt from the endowment's income. As trustees, first the founder himself, then his sons, and if their line died out his daughters and relatives were designated.

The founder of the hamam in Havza is also disputed. Hüsameddin writes that to the east of, that is behind, the large Seljuk-period hamam in the town there was a small hamam not much resembling it, and that it was built by Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey, who built the imaret. Toruk likewise states that the addition of a men's section to the Seljuk hamam beside the imaret gave the building the character of a double hamam. For this thermal bath, known locally as the Mustafa Bey, Men's or Small Hamam, Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi also names Mustafa Bey as founder on the basis of the same deed. Bayraktar, however, points out that the translation of the deed does not mention a hamam among Mustafa Bey's endowments in Havza. Judging from the material, workmanship and facade arrangement of this freely planned building, which consists of a domed changing room and two private bathing cells, one large and one small, he dates it to between the second half of the fifteenth century and the end of the seventeenth century and concludes that nothing certain can be said about its founder. Mustafa Bey's only hamam outside Amasya thus also remains disputed in documentary terms.

The Mehmed Paşa Quarter and Its Surroundings

In the topography described by Hüsameddin, the hamam lies within the Mehmed Paşa quarter, east of the Tımarhane (today's Bimarhane). The quarter is bounded on the east by the Pirinççi and Yâkûtiye quarters, on the south by the Yakup Paşa quarter and on the north by the Yeşilırmak. The quarter, whose old name was Tuğrakiye (Dugrâkiye), took this name from the masjid built on the riverbank in 631 (1233-34) by Nureddin Tuğrak, governor of Amasya, and from his tomb adjoining it to the south. According to Hüsameddin, it began to be called the Mehmed Paşa quarter from 890 (1485) onwards, and the name Tuğrakiye survived only for the madrasa. The complex that gave the quarter its new name was built by the vizier Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Paşa, lala of Şehzade Ahmed. Relying on the door inscription of the mosque, Hüsameddin gives the year 900 (1494-95); Keskin, however, shows that Mehmed Paşa's endowment deed of 896 (1491) already describes the complex with its mosque, guest cells on either side, tabhane, kitchen, bakery, storeroom and a madrasa of ten cells. The reason for this discrepancy is not explained in the sources.

According to Hüsameddin, the complex consists of a masonry mosque in a spot overlooking the Yeşilırmak, together with a minaret, a public kitchen, a madrasa and the founder's tomb; south of the mosque there was also a Halveti zawiya built by the Paşa. Mustafa Bey's hamam lies to the west of this mosque, which means that it was built more than half a century before the complex that gave the quarter its name. Considering that Mehmed Paşa was the son of Mustafa's uncle Hızır Paşa, the man who built the hamam and the man who gave the quarter its name were first cousins. According to the sources compiled by Keskin, Mehmed Paşa died in Amasya in 904 (1498). In the same section Hüsameddin also lists the buildings added around the hamam in later periods: in 910 (1504-05) Oruç Bey built a fountain on the qibla side of the mosque, and in 987 (1579-80) Hayreddin Efendi, one of the judges, built a masjid. According to the tax register of 1523 for the quarter, 43 households, 19 unmarried men and one imam lived there.

The Qur'an School behind the Hamam

To the east of the hamam, in Hüsameddin's words south of the Mehmed Paşa Mosque and in the lane behind the Mustafa Bey Hamam, there was a dârülkurrâ built by Hacı Efendizâde Şeyh Mehmed Ağa. A dârülkurrâ is an institution where the recitation of the Qur'an was taught. In Hüsameddin's work the year of construction is given as 1071 in the account of the quarter and as 1073 in the list of Qur'an schools; the founder's biography, on the other hand, states that he set up its endowments in 1077 (1666-67). For the expenses of this institution Şeyh Mehmed Ağa endowed ten shops in the row of the Yâkûtiye Masjid and a large mill he had built opposite them. In the biographical section of the work, too, this dârülkurrâ is described in two separate places directly as being "in the vicinity of the Mustafa Bey Hamam"; in Hüsameddin's descriptions of location, the hamam serves as the principal landmark of the district.

The life of the man who founded the institution reflects the ties that reached from seventeenth-century Amasya to the palace. Şeyh Mehmed Ağa was the son of Hacı Efendizâde Sarı Mehmed Ağa, a former mütesellim (deputy governor) of Amasya. In his youth he was taken into the Enderun, the palace school, through the favour of the grand vizier Bayram Paşa, and after his training there he entered the seferli chamber. When his father was killed in 1058 (1648), he was sent out to the provinces as a sipahi, stayed in Amasya for about eight years and served several times as kethüdâyeri (town steward), returning to the palace after Köprülü Mehmed Paşa became grand vizier. In 1073 he became steward of the seferli chamber, and in 1077 dülbend ağası and confidential secretary in the sultan's suite, winning the favour of Mehmed IV (Avcı Sultan Mehmed). Hüsameddin writes that this rise drew the attention of Köprülüzâde Fâzıl Ahmed Paşa, that in 1080 (1669) he was removed from his post as mîr-âlem, and that he died in 1081. The dârülkurrâ is a charitable work that its founder left to his home town in the years when he shone most brightly at the palace.

Two sections of Hüsameddin's work do not fully agree on the first sheikh of the dârülkurrâ. The list of institutions states that the famous chief reciter Hasan Efendi, and after him Ehlullah Efendi, were sheikhs here. The biographical section, however, relates that Şeyh Mehmed Ağa built the dârülkurrâ for Sun'ullah Efendi, son of Hasan of Amasya, and had its sheikhship conferred on him. After memorising the Qur'an, Sun'ullah Efendi went to Istanbul, learned the science of recitation and its variant readings from the palace imam Evliya Mehmed Efendi of Amasya, and on his return became well known for teaching recitation and Arabic literature to hafızes. Whether the Hasan Efendi named in the list was Sun'ullah's father or a shortened form of the name cannot be determined from the source. The fact that buildings belonging to the Mehmed Paşa complex, such as a fountain, a masjid and a madrasa, are listed in the same section shows that the hamam stood within a neighbourhood fabric interwoven with masjids, a Qur'an school and madrasas.

Architectural Features

The Mustafa Bey Hamam follows the sequence of changing room, cold room, warm room and hot room found in Ottoman hamam architecture. This sequence leads the bather through progressively warmer sections. The hamam is entered through a round-arched doorway set within a marble frame. The main walls are built of rubble stone and brick. A master's thesis on the water structures of central Amasya states that the city's ten historic hamams were built in accordance with the traditional Ottoman bathhouse form, consisting of a changing room, warm room, hot room, furnace and water tank, that all of them are sound and in use, and that they were built as single hamams, that is, without separate sections for women and men.

The changing room is square in plan, with large niches in its walls. The tops of the niches carry muqarnas, and the space is covered by a dome. The cold room is likewise a square space with niched walls, closed by a dome. The hot room consists of two parts. The first is a central space shaped like a four-armed cross opening in four directions, with a dome in the centre and four large niches; the inventory calls this arrangement cruciform with iwans. The second part contains the private bathing cells. Behind the two private cells on the west side lie the cistern, the hamam's water tank, and the furnace in which the fire was lit. From outside, the square changing room and the hot room read as two separate domes.

In hamam studies the plan of the hot room is regarded as the principal criterion for classifying buildings. In Semavi Eyice's six-group classification, the "cruciform, four-iwan, corner-cell" type is, together with the star-shaped type, one of the two plans most widely used in Anatolia. According to the examples compiled by Sibel Yarar, this type continued from the Seljuk hamams of Ani in the twelfth century, the Sahip Ata Hamam in Konya in the thirteenth and the men's section of the Orhan Bey Hamam in Bursa in the fourteenth, right down to the twentieth century. With its four-iwan cruciform hot room and private cells, the Mustafa Bey Hamam may be considered a member of this widespread family; whether its private cells are placed in the corners between the iwans or only on the west side, however, should be verified separately against a published measured survey.

The placing of the furnace and cistern at the rear of the hamam conforms to the heating arrangement seen in classical Ottoman hamams: the heat of the fire lit in the furnace passed through the voids beneath the floor of the hot room, while water was drawn from the cistern and heated. This mechanism can be assumed here too, but no document describing the building's installations is known. The architectural historian Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi examined this hamam in Amasya, together with a plan drawing, in his work on the period of Mehmed I and Murad II; the drawing in Toruk's article is also based on this work. In the same work Ayverdi also published Mustafa Bey's imaret and thermal bath in Havza together with their plans.

Other Hamams of Amasya and the Family's Buildings

There are other buildings in Amasya mentioned alongside this hamam. Describing Amasya in the period of the princes, Selim Özcan lists the city's hamams in the order Mustafa Bey Hamam (1436), Hızır Paşa Hamam (1466), Kumacık Hamam (1495) and Sinan Paşa Hamam (1511); of these four, the Mustafa Bey Hamam is the oldest. The Kumacık Hamam was built by Ayas Ağa, the Kapıağası, in the Bayezid Paşa quarter, in line with the Künç Bridge; its first name came from the family nicknamed Kocacık who sold the land. Its changing room is covered by a large dome carried on Turkish triangles, and its hot room is built with a main dome, four iwans and corner private cells. Like the Mustafa Bey Hamam, it is counted among the historic hamams still in operation. Yarar's study shows that this building underwent significant changes to its warm room and private cells through the 1990 restoration and later interventions, and that even the windows of its changing room were opened and later closed. This observation suggests that the present plan of the Mustafa Bey Hamam may also have changed through repairs over the centuries; no published document showing the hamam's repair history, however, has been found. Hüsameddin also notes that the Çifte Hamam was known in the time of Bayezid Paşa as the Hacı Şadgeldi Hamam.

The buildings of Yörgüç Paşa's family in Amasya are not limited to the hamam. As Hüsameddin describes it, the Paşa built a small, solid mosque set within an enclosure, with a marble facade and reddish stone around it, a minaret on its east side, a tomb beside it reserved for himself and his children, a public kitchen opposite it, and madrasas of four cells each on either side of the mosque, completing them in 834 (1430-31). In the inscription above the mosque's door the Paşa's name appears as "Atabeg Yörgüç". The door is now displayed in the Amasya Museum, and the writing on its central post reveals that its master was Ebu's-Silm en-Neccâr. There is no explicit record in the documents associating the Mustafa Bey Hamam with this complex. The quarter in which the hamam stands, meanwhile, takes its name from the complex of Mehmed Paşa, of another branch of the family. The Mustafa Bey Hamam thus stands in a quarter lying between two complexes of the same family.

The Yörgüç Paşazâdes in Later Centuries

Although Mustafa Bey died in 1444, the name "Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey" appears again and again in Hüsameddin's work over the following two centuries. In 918 (1512), during the struggle for the throne between Şehzade Ahmed and Selim, when Mustafa Paşa, son of Davud Paşa, came to Amasya as beylerbey, Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey became alaybeyi (commander of the provincial cavalry) of Amasya. In the seventeenth century someone bearing the same name served in 1030 (1621) as mütesellim on behalf of Seyyid Ali Paşa, who governed the sanjak of Amasya from Karahisar-ı Şarkî; in 1035 (1625-26) he became trustee of the Yörgüç Paşa endowments, and after Sultan Murad IV had Ömer Bey, the mütesellim of Amasya, executed, he was again appointed mütesellim. According to Hüsameddin, the trustee Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey built in 1044 (1634-35), because of the growing number of students, a wooden madrasa of twelve cells on the east side of the courtyard of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque; around 1271 (1854-55) this madrasa fell into ruin and became a garden.

It is not clear whether all of these were the same man; it appears that the name was passed down within the family from generation to generation. The biographical section of Hüsameddin's work shows this continuity clearly: Süleyman Bey, son of Mustafa Bey bin Ali Bey, trustee of the Yörgüç Paşa endowment, became trustee of the endowment of the "imaret of Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey" in Havza when his father disappeared in 1086 (1675-76); in 1099 (1687-88) he also took over the trusteeship of the Yörgüç Paşa endowment in Amasya, and he died in 1123 (1711-12) as a member of the council of notables. The endowment that Mustafa Bey, builder of the hamam, founded in Havza was thus still administered within the family more than two centuries after his death, in keeping with the trusteeship clause of the deed.

The Hamam in the Early Twentieth Century

The most vivid information about the daily life of the hamam in the recent past is found in Amasya Hâtıraları (Memories of Amasya), in which Osman Fevzi Olcay recounts the years of his youth. According to Olcay, Hacı Hafız Ağa ran both the Sinan Hamam in Selağzı and "the Mustafa Bey Hamam in front of the Bimarhane"; the women's section of the two hamams was managed by his wife Ayşe Hanım. Given that Amasya's hamams are of the single type, what Olcay calls the women's section was probably the days or hours set aside for women rather than a separate space; this is an inference. In the evening, after the hamam closed, the attendants of both hamams would keep watch on the furnace through the night and stoke the fire as needed. After his evening meal Hacı Hafız Ağa would sit in the seat opposite his street door and, smoking his nargile, entertain his neighbours with coffee; he was also a hunter who rode out to the vineyards of Göllü and Köle Mezarı to hunt.

Olcay also relates that there was a raised coffeehouse between the hamam and its furnace. The regulars who climbed up there in the evenings were mostly fanciers of turkeys and turkey cocks, and hunters. Şirvanlı Balaş Efendi, Sakızcıoğlu Mehmet, Kestekoğlu Ahmet Ağa and Kalaycıoğlu Bekir were foremost among the cock fanciers, while Şefik Paşazâde Rıza Bey and Yusuf Ağa, son of Attar Kerim, were counted among the leading hunters; on some nights they would bring their cocks and set them to fight. Directly on the opposite corner from the hamam stood the house of Mumcu Hakkı. As Olcay lists the houses around the Bimarhane one by one, he uses the hamam as the marker of a street corner.

Present State

The hamam is among the first-degree protected buildings under the responsibility of the General Directorate of Foundations. The cultural inventory states that the building is still used as a hamam and has water, electricity and heating installations; a problem of damp is also noted separately. Its address is Habibi Sokak in the Pirinççi quarter, on Mehmet Paşa Caddesi, north of the Bimarhane. Official descriptions present the building as an Ottoman hamam built in 1436 by the son of Yörgüç Paşa, lala of Murad II. The inventory records it under the name Mehmet Paşa (Mustafa Bey) Hamamı, so that the names of its quarter and its founder are mentioned together.

Chronology

1414: Şehzade Murad is sent to Amasya as governor of the province of Rum; Yörgüç Paşa is attached to him as his lala.

1423: Murad II appoints Yörgüç Paşa beylerbey of Rum.

1429-30 (hijri 833): Date in the inscription of the Mustafa Bey Imaret in Havza; Hüsameddin gives 835 (1431-32) for the imaret.

1430-31: Yörgüç Paşa's mosque and imaret group in Amasya (hijri 834) is completed.

1436 (hijri 840): Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey builds the hamam in the Mehmed Paşa quarter; 1437 also appears in the sources.

1437 (21 Dhu al-Qa'dah 840): Mustafa Bey's endowment deed for the imaret and han in Havza is drawn up; Bayraktar converts this date as 15 September 1436.

1442: Yörgüç Paşa dies and is buried in the tomb of his mosque in Amasya.

1444: Battle of Varna; it appears that Mustafa Bey fell in this battle.

1466 (hijri 871): Hızır Paşa, brother of Yörgüç Paşa, dies; the hamam bearing his name in Amasya is also dated to this year.

1485 (hijri 890): According to Hüsameddin, the Tuğrakiye quarter begins to be called the Mehmed Paşa quarter from this year.

1491 (hijri 896): The endowment deed of the complex of Hızır Paşazâde Mehmed Paşa is drawn up.

1494-95: Date of construction given by Hüsameddin for the Mehmed Paşa Mosque (hijri 900).

1495: Ayas Ağa builds the Kumacık Hamam as a revenue property for his complex.

1498: Mehmed Paşa dies in Amasya.

1512: A person bearing the name Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey becomes alaybeyi of Amasya.

1523: Population of the Mehmed Paşa quarter in the tax register: 43 households, 19 unmarried men, 1 imam.

1625-26 (hijri 1035): Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey becomes trustee of the Yörgüç Paşa endowments.

1634-35 (hijri 1044): The trustee Mustafa Bey builds the twelve-cell wooden madrasa in the courtyard of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque.

1660s (hijri 1071-77): Hacı Efendizâde Şeyh Mehmed Ağa builds the dârülkurrâ behind the hamam and sets up its endowments.

1675-76 (hijri 1086): Süleyman Bey becomes trustee of the endowment of the Mustafa Bey Imaret in Havza.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

  • Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, "Foundations and Real Estates of Yorguc Pasha Family Through The Ottoman Endowment System", 22nd Annual European Real Estate Society Conference, Istanbul 2015 (abstract). https://eres.architexturez.net/node/170792
  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri" (section on hamams).

Online sources