On Atatürk Street, which runs along the Yeşilırmak, a rectangular courtyard lies behind a facade of cut stone. The building has stood for more than seven centuries. For much of that time it treated the sick and trained physicians; in later centuries it lost its function and fell silent; since 2011 it has received visitors as the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of Medicine and Surgery. Those who enter by the same door today can see how a broken bone was set in the fifteenth century, how a remedy against snake venom was tested, and with which modes and instruments the mentally ill were soothed.

The museum carries two layers of story together. The first is the history of the building itself, the only Ilkhanid work in Amasya. The second is the exhibition named after Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, the physician and surgeon whom Amasya produced. Building and exhibition complement each other around the same courtyard.

Location and Access

The museum stands in the centre of Amasya on Atatürk Street, which runs parallel to the Yeşilırmak. In the Amasya Municipality's City Guide the address is given as "Gümüşlü, Atatürk Cd. No:15". Sources differ on the neighbourhood: the Governorate and some travel writing place the building in Yakutiye, older travel texts say Pirinççi, and municipal records give Gümüşlü. Neighbourhood boundaries have shifted over time, so the discrepancy is hardly surprising. For the visitor the real landmark is the Ilkhanid portal that stands out at once on the riverside street.

The building is within walking distance of the town's main sights. It fits easily into the same route as the Yalıboyu Houses, the bazaar and the riverbank. An hour is generally enough for the exhibition; a visitor who wishes to sit in the courtyard and read the plant labels in the garden may stay longer.

History of the Bimarhane

"Bimar" means sick person in Persian; a bimarhane or darüşşifa is an institution where the sick were cared for and physicians trained. The Amasya example is a medical madrasa built on the plan of a Seljuk madrasa. Students were trained here while patients were treated, and surgical procedures were demonstrated to students in practice. In later periods the building also became a centre where the mentally ill were looked after.

Above the portal runs an Arabic inscription that wraps around the door niche on three sides in a single line. From the inscription we learn that the building was erected in 1308, while the Ilkhanid ruler Sultan Olcaytu Mehmed Han and his wife İlduz (Yıldız) Hatun were visiting Amasya, by his slave Anber bin Abdullah and the Emir of Anatolia, Ahmed Bey. Records of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism give the date as 1308-1309. Nothing is known of the architect. The deed of endowment, known to have been drawn up in 1312, has not survived. Because this document is lost, direct information about the hospital's revenues, staff and rules of operation is unavailable.

Since no other building from the years of Mongol rule survives in the town, the bimarhane is the only material witness of that brief period. Its plan descends from Seljuk madrasas; that is, the accumulated experience of Anatolian Seljuk architecture continued in building practice even after the ruling dynasty had changed.

A different view also circulates in the sources. An encyclopedia entry said to have been compiled from the Turkish Culture Portal reports that Ottoman archive documents refer to the building as the "Sultan Alâeddin Hospital" and that it may date to the reign of Alâeddin Keykubad I (1220-1237). The inscription, however, clearly ties the building to 1308. The fact that the entry itself states it was prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence also calls for caution toward this dating. This text takes the date 1308, based on the inscription, as its basis.

After its founding the building continued to be used for the treatment of patients under the Ilkhanids, the Anatolian Seljuks and the Ottomans. Many sources in Turkey call it the first hospital in Anatolia to practise music therapy. This statement is less a finding based on documents than the shared acceptance of official promotional texts, and it should be read that way. Over time natural disasters, political changes and the shift of health services to new institutions left the hospital without a function. Because the main architectural elements were largely preserved, it was possible to convert the building into a museum. Today part of the building is used as the municipal conservatory.

Conversion into a Museum

The Amasya Municipality had the building restored and opened it to visitors in 2011 as the "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin Museum of Medicine and Surgery". Some news reports give the conversion as 2010; the fact that restoration and opening belonged to the same process explains the difference. The museum is run by the municipality. According to museum director Metin Çelik, speaking to the Anadolu Agency in 2016, the museum received about 225,000 Turkish and foreign guests in its first five years. Medical students show keen interest in the museum, and the medical faculties of some universities conduct practical training here.

The exhibition design rests on Sabuncuoğlu's own works. The instruments were made anew from the drawings in the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, and the treatments it describes are brought to the stage with wax figures and re-enactments. The value of the museum therefore comes not only from the building but from the books a physician wrote in his own age.

Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin

Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin was born in Amasya around 1386. His year of birth is calculated from his own writings: he states that he was eighty-three when he wrote the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye in 1465 and eighty-five when he completed the Mücerrebnâme in 1468. The date of his death is unknown; since he wrote his last work in 1468, he must have died after that date. His name lives on today in a neighbourhood of Amasya. Medicine was a profession passed down in his family from generation to generation. His grandfather Hacı İlyas Çelebi was chief physician to Çelebi Sultan Mehmed; according to one source his father Ali Çelebi was also chief physician at the Amasya Bimarhane.

He received his training at the Amasya Hospital, most likely from Burhaneddin Ahmed en-Nahcuvânî. Sources report that he began practising at the age of 17. On the length of his service at the bimarhane the figures disagree: the encyclopedia record and the municipal presentation speak of fourteen years, while the museum director says seventeen. The difference may arise from different studies counting different periods. According to the encyclopedia entry, after practising for fourteen years at the hospital Sabuncuoğlu spent a time in Kastamonu in the days of İsfendiyar Bey of the Candaroğlu dynasty. When he completed the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye he went to Istanbul and presented his book to Mehmed II (Fatih Sultan Mehmed), and on the way back he stopped at Bolu, Gerede and Tosya.

Three works of his are known. The first is the Akrâbâzîn Tercümesi. Sabuncuoğlu translated into Turkish the final section, containing drug formulas, of Cürcânî's Persian Zakhīra-i Khwārazmshāhī, expanding thirty-one chapters to thirty-three by adding his own knowledge. The encyclopedia entry says the translation was made in 1444 at the request of Prince Bayezid; since Prince Bayezid's governorship of Amasya falls later than this date, the sources do not agree fully on the date and the person who requested it. The Turkish medical terms he added at the end of the translation are noteworthy, because the scientific language of the period was Arabic or Persian, and they hold an important place in the history of Anatolian medicine.

The second work is the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, written in 1465 and presented to Mehmed II. It is the first illustrated surgical book written in Turkish and contains miniatures showing how operations were performed. These pictures show the posture of patient and physician and how instruments are held; in this respect the book is regarded as one of the first examples of today's surgical atlases. The book has three parts. The first concerns cauterization and small incisions; it contains fifty-four treatments, seven instruments and four incision methods. The second part describes fifty-eight treatments, one hundred and thirty-one instrument drawings and ten incision methods, together with the opening and suturing of abscesses. The third part covers twenty-four treatments, eleven instruments and the treatment of fractures and dislocations. Some researchers regard the book as a translation of the surgical section of Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi's Kitāb al-Taṣrīf. Others hold that Sabuncuoğlu merely drew on this source and added his own observations and his experience with patients. Of the three known copies of the work, two are in Istanbul and one is in Paris. Sabuncuoğlu wrote the book in Turkish because most literate surgeons could read only Turkish texts.

The third work, the Mücerrebnâme, was written in 1468 at the request of the medical circle in Amasya. It is regarded as the first Turkish book of experimental medicine in which a physician describes remedies and treatment methods of his own devising. The drugs are gathered into seventeen chapters according to their form of preparation and arranged from the most commonly used to the least. Its manner of writing resembles today's case presentations. Sabuncuoğlu named the earlier physicians from whom he took information, such as Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna. It is also reported that when he could not cure an illness he did not hesitate to learn the method of those who had knowledge of it.

Sabuncuoğlu's name remained insufficiently known in the Ottoman scientific world for a long time. His name is first encountered in the Alâim-i Cerrâhîn of the surgeon İbrâhim b. Abdullah, dated 1505; his pupil Gıyâs b. Muhammed İsfahânî praises his teacher's achievements in a book he presented to Bayezid II. The encyclopedia entry gives his living in Amasya and his writing in Turkish rather than Arabic, the scientific language of the time, as the main reasons for this late recognition. Rusçuklu Hakkı introduced the Mücerrebnâme to the scholarly world in 1920 through a newspaper article, and in later years the publications of İlter Uzel and Kenan Süveren carried the works to wider audiences.

Architecture of the Building

The bimarhane is built around a rectangular courtyard. Two rows of porticoes run parallel to the long axis of the courtyard, with various spaces behind them. The entrance iwan and the main iwan opposite it give the building a plan with a courtyard and two iwans. The main iwan opens onto the courtyard with a pointed arch and is covered by a roof-and-vault system. In the east wall of the main iwan there is a tall rectangular window framed by brick-laid jambs. The corner rooms on either side of the iwan are entered through segmental-arched doors opening onto the porticoes; these transversely rectangular rooms are covered with barrel vaults.

The porticoes on both sides of the courtyard consist of pointed arches of regular cut stone carried by columns with varied capitals, plain, muqarnas and moulded. The long halls behind the porticoes open to them through three segmental-arched doors each and are closed by long barrel vaults supported by brick pointed arches. These arches rest on springer stones set into the body walls, and the halls look outward through loophole windows. It is worth noting that the sources speak of a barrel vault, not a dome. The entrance doors of the western corner rooms, unlike those in the east, are formed with wall masonry and are pointed-arched. The corner rooms on the portal side open onto the west facade with large windows.

The most famous part of the building is its front facade and portal. The portal space has the look of a monumental iwan, pointed-arched and barrel-vaulted; segmental-arched niches on both sides make this volume more effective. The door opening has a broken segmental arch and is joined to the facade by a moulded niche on both sides. Records of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism state that inverted column capitals formed of Turkish triangles were tried for the first time in Anatolian Seljuk architecture on the facade edges of this building. The building is of cut stone, with cylindrical buttresses at its two corners. A detail unique to this bimarhane is the relief of a kneeling human figure on the keystone of the door.

It is said that in the early period there was a fountain arrangement in the middle of the courtyard and that mentally ill patients gathered around it were calmed by the sound of water. This is an oral account passed on in travel writing, and documentary support for it is limited; it should therefore be cited as a tale, not as established fact.

What the Museum Holds

The museum consists of three main sections and a garden.

Sabuncuoğlu Hall

The hall displays medical and surgical instruments of ten different branches, made from the drawings in Sabuncuoğlu's Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, together with treatment methods. Scalpels, cauterizing tools and the fine instruments used in obstetric and eye surgery are the principal exhibits. The museum director has said that there are about 200 instruments that Sabuncuoğlu used. Wax figures showing how these instruments were used are among the parts of the exhibition that attract most attention.

The hall also has a corner devoted to Sabuncuoğlu's work on antidotes. Because snake bites were common in Amasya, the physician tested his antidote first on animals, on chickens and roosters, and then on himself. According to the museum director, he had a highly venomous snake brought, let it bite the thumb of his hand, then took the remedy he had prepared and saw that the venom lost its effect. The rooster experiment in the Mücerrebnâme was carried out in a similar way: the feathers on one thigh of the rooster were plucked, a highly venomous snake was made to bite the bare skin, and the theriac called Tiryak-ı Fâruk was then given to the animal. The next day a greenish wound appeared on the skin, the theriac was given again, and on the second day the symptom disappeared. According to the museum director, Sabuncuoğlu never gave a patient a drug that he had not tried on himself. The re-enactments in the museum bring this experiment to the stage.

The Mücerrebnâme describes other observations as well. When he and his assistant became infested with lice on the way back from Istanbul to Amasya, Sabuncuoğlu mixed mercury and pine resin, prepared a wick from linen thread and tied it around his neck, rubbed the remainder under his armpits, and saw that the method also relieved an old pain in his shoulder. Modern articles in the history of medicine, for their part, attribute to him a number of surgical and medical innovations: drainage techniques for hydrocephalus in children, axial traction in spinal operations, the use of wooden splints after hand surgery, early surgical removal of small tumours in breast cancer, and the use of wine and olive oil to make the surgical garment antiseptic. These attributions are later interpretations and should be read as such.

Sabuncuoğlu Clinic

In the clinic section, surgical operations and treatments are shown through re-enactments. Subjects such as the treatment of burns, the setting of fractures and dislocations, and eye and ear procedures, all described in the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye, are the source on which this section rests. The miniatures in the book reflect a forward-looking view for their time in that they also depict women surgeons treating female patients. The book also contains observations on childbirth; it is written, for example, that a woman in labour holding her breath and exerting strong force could speed delivery, and that sneeze-inducing herbal drugs could be used to increase that force.

Music Therapy Hall

The music therapy section introduces the basic instruments used in treatment and the modes chosen according to illness. According to the Amasya Municipality official, the exhibition includes the kemane, rebab, plucked tanbur, santur, kanun, ney and percussion instruments. According to the pairings reported by the same official, the buselik mode was applied for headache, ırak for feverish illnesses, uşşak for sleeplessness and gout pains, rast for paralysis, and hüseyni for inflammations of the heart and liver. Some news reports show small differences in these pairings; for example rehavi is mentioned for headache and hicaz for pain and colic. Vocal music is not used in treatment; only instrumental music is played. These pairings are part of the historical understanding of medicine that the museum presents and should not be read as contemporary medical knowledge.

The museum director says that music therapy lived one of its most brilliant periods among the Ottomans and that this place was among the centres of music therapy. According to the account, in the Ottoman period instrumentalists and reciters gave the patients a fasıl concert three days a week. The Amasya Municipality official, for his part, noted that music was used not only for the mentally ill but also for bodily complaints such as pains in the back, kidneys and bladder, and that paralysis is a nervous disease and is not counted as mental illness.

Garden

In the museum's garden the medicinal plants used in treatment in Sabuncuoğlu's age are grown; the name and use of each plant is introduced on labels. As examples of the herbal drugs used in drug compounds, the Mücerrebnâme gives onion seed, saffron and rose: onion is considered a carminative and fever-reducing, saffron a pain reliever, and rose a softening agent and useful in eye diseases. The garden makes visible the plant culture behind the drug compounds in the book.

Visitor Information

Admission fees and opening hours change from time to time. For 2025, one travel guide reports that admission was 25 TL, that children under 12 were free, that there was no student discount and that the Müzekart was not valid. It is said that in summer the museum stays open until evening and in winter closes earlier; the best course is to check the Amasya Municipality's current announcement or to telephone the museum before going.

The courtyard is quiet in the early morning. An hour is enough for the visit; for those who wish to spend more time in the garden and the music hall, a longer stay is natural. The relief of the kneeling human figure on the keystone of the portal is a detail to be sought by looking at the door before entering the museum. The museum is easy to combine with the Yalıboyu Houses, the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings and the Şehzadeler Museum in the same day's route.

Amasya's Medical Tradition

Amasya is known as the city of princes, sultans and governors. The town's medical tradition is at least as deeply rooted. It was here that a child whose grandfather was a chief physician grew up to write the medical knowledge of his age in Turkish. The museum presents this scientific heritage through instruments, drawings and re-enactments. The Ilkhanid portal and the pointed-arched porticoes are, apart from the exhibition, an architectural example worth studying in their own right.

Chronology

1308-1309: The hospital is built by Anber bin Abdullah in the name of the Ilkhanid ruler Olcaytu Mehmed Han and his wife İlduz Hatun.

1312: The deed of endowment, which has not survived, is known to have been drawn up.

c. 1386: Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin is born in Amasya.

1465: Sabuncuoğlu writes the Cerrâhiyyetü'l-Hâniyye and presents it to Mehmed II.

1468: The Mücerrebnâme is written.

2011: The building is restored by the Amasya Municipality and opened to visitors as a museum.

Bibliography

Official sources

  • T.C. Amasya Valiliği, "Darüşşifa (Bimarhane)", amasya.gov.tr. amasya.gov.tr
  • T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, Amasya İl Kültür ve Turizm Müdürlüğü, "Bimarhane (Darüşşifa)", amasya.ktb.gov.tr. amasya.ktb.gov.tr
  • T.C. Amasya Belediyesi, "Sabuncuoğlu Tıp ve Cerrahi Tarihi Müzesi", Kent Rehberi, kentrehberi.amasya.bel.tr, 2025. kentrehberi.amasya.bel.tr

Books

  • İlter Uzel and Kenan Süveren, Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu, Mücerrebnâme (İlk Türkçe Deneysel Tıp Eseri, 1468), Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayınları, 1999.

Other sources

  • Nuran Yıldırım, "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, Istanbul 2008, pp. 358-359. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Amasya Sabuncuoğlu Tıp Ve Cerrahi Tarihi Müzesi" and "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin", Vikipedi. tr.wikipedia.org
  • "6 asır önceki tıp teknikleri müzede sergileniyor", Anadolu Ajansı / TRT Haber, 27 October 2016. trthaber.com
  • "Amasya'da 710 Yıl Önce Hastalar Müzik ve Su Sesiyle Tedavi Edildi", Demirören Haber Ajansı / Haberler.com, 18 April 2018.
  • Osman Sabuncuoğlu and Salim Ayduz, article on the life and works of Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, Muslim Heritage.