On the south bank of the Yeşilırmak in Amasya, beside Ziya Paşa Boulevard on the route known as the Princes' Way, stands a mosque with two domes and a brick minaret: the Saraçhane Mosque. Its original name is the Şadgeldi Paşa Mosque, a name that comes from the emir who held the city when the mosque was built in 1372. Over the centuries saddlers, that is, craftsmen who made saddles and harness, settled around it, and the townspeople began to call the mosque after the market in which it stood, while the founder's name survived only in the old records. One of the few mosques in Amasya to have come down from the period after the Seljuks and before the Ottomans, the building keeps within the same walls the political career of a beylik emir, a life of learning and Sufism that grew up around him, and the craft history of a city quarter. Because its inscription has been removed and its endowment deed lost, both its date and its founder have largely to be inferred from indirect records.

Hacı Şadgeldi's Rule in Amasya

To understand the man who built the mosque, one has to look at the last decades of the Eretnid state. Under the Seljuks, Amasya was a city known by the title "Dâr al-ʿIzz". It had been the scene of the Babaʾi revolts, and Baba İlyas was executed on the ramparts of its castle; after the Battle of Kösedağ in 1243 it was taken by the Mongols and governed by Mongol officials. For a time it came under the rule of Tâceddin Altınbaş, son of the last Seljuk sultan, Gıyâseddin Mesud II, and then remained within the borders of Eretna, who ruled from Sivas, and of his successors, the Eretnid beylik. Hacı Şadgeldi was an emir who emerged from this milieu. His father, Hacı Kutlu Şah, had also been emir of Amasya. According to Mehterhan Furkani, drawing on Hüsameddin, Şadgeldi's paternal grandmother was Altınbaş's daughter, and his elder brother Şehabeddin Ahmed Şah had twice held the emirate of Amasya. While Kutlu Şah was occupied with the Karamanids, he appointed his second son Şadgeldi emir of Amasya in 760 (1359).

Şadgeldi's rule did not begin easily. When the Karamanids defeated and killed Kutlu Şah and his eldest son Ahmed Şah in 762 (1361), most of Amasya's troops had been sent to help his father, and the city was left undefended. Alâeddin Ali Bey, son of the former emir Halifetzâde Şücâeddin Süleyman, seized Amasya, and Şadgeldi withdrew to his uncle Doğan Şah in Turhal. Gathering his forces again within a short time, Şadgeldi defeated Ali Bey and recovered the city early in the year 763. As the Eretnid centre weakened, this second emirate gradually turned into an independent emirate of Amasya; Hüsameddin calls it an "emâret-i müstakille", and some records name it after the dynasty as the "Kutlu Şah imaret". The Eretnid Mehmed Bey was murdered in 1365 by his own emirs Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrahim and Kılıcarslan. His son Alâeddin Ali Bey, then only thirteen, was placed on the throne; because of the young ruler's weak character the authority of the state was soon shaken, and each emir began to act on his own in his province. According to the Amasya entry in the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, the city was taken by Emir Hacı Şadgeldi, who defeated the Eretnid Ali Bey. The years in which he built the mosque fall in the middle of this rule.

The sources do not remember Şadgeldi only as a soldier. Hüsameddin describes the emir, who appears in Amasya sources with the honorifics Şemseddin, Seyfeddin and Bahâeddin, as a learned and just ruler who knew how to govern his people, and writes that thanks to the scholars he gathered around him Amasya became "a high house of learning". In his youth Şadgeldi had studied with Mevlânâ Fahreddin İlyas, and in the same classes he became a friend of Cemâleddin Muhammed Aksarâyî, who would later be a great scholar. Once emir, he kept this friend at his side, making Aksarâyî first kadi of Amasya and a professor, then military judge. Aksarâyî's only known work in Turkish, the Teferrücü'l-ümerâ, is a free Turkish adaptation, made in Şadgeldi's name, of the Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ of Zandawistī of Bukhara; Aksarâyî also prepared for him the Asʾila wa ajwiba, in which he answered questions on Qurʾanic exegesis and hadith. An Arabic work on jurisprudence, al-Durar al-manthūra, is attributed directly to Şadgeldi in some bibliographies; Furkani, however, comparing the manuscripts, concludes that it was compiled in Şadgeldi's name by İzzeddin Muhammed al-Amâsî.

Şadgeldi's power in Amasya was spent in conflict with a second force rising in the Eretnid lands, Kadı Burhâneddin Ahmed. As Ali Bey's vizier, Kadı Burhâneddin had taken over the government, and after Ali Bey's death in 1380 and his own removal of Kılıcarslan he proclaimed himself ruler in Sivas in 1381. According to TDV, his principal rival was Hacı Şadgeldi, lord of Amasya, and he put him out of the way. In the account based on Hüsameddin, the two armies met near Tokat in Ramadan 783 (November-December 1381); none of the beyliks that had promised help sent troops, and Şadgeldi was defeated, taken prisoner and killed. Ahmet Şimşirgil's study of Turhal likewise records that Amasya was ruled first by Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa and, after he was killed, by his son Emir Ahmed. Ahmed moved to avenge his father with the support of Kötürüm Bayezid of the Candarids, but was defeated in 1383-84. In 1384 Kadı Burhâneddin routed the emir of Amasya repeatedly, and in 1392 he took the city and its surroundings.

At this stage Kadı Burhâneddin's Amasya question became a military struggle. Kadı Burhâneddin married his sister to the lord of Tokat Castle, found support through this tie and marched on Amasya. When he set out against Amasya again in 1394, he was joined by the Akkoyunlu lords Ahmed and Hüseyin, who had taken refuge with him after being defeated by Mutahharten. What follows is the beginning of Ottoman history here. Realising that he could not hold out against Kadı Burhâneddin, Emir Ahmed turned to Bayezid I (Yıldırım) and offered his allegiance. Şimşirgil writes that Ottoman forces came to the region in 1393 and took Amasya and the surrounding castles; the TDV entry on Amasya, by contrast, gives 1398 as the date of the city's incorporation into Ottoman territory and adds that its government was entrusted to Bayezid's son Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed). The difference between the two accounts may stem from the city changing hands several times in these years; the sources give no detail. According to Furkani, the Şadgeldi family's emirate of Amasya came to an end in 805 (1403); the family, however, stayed in the city and went on producing beys and sanjak governors in Ottoman service.

The Building of the Mosque and the Problem of Its Date

Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi introduces the mosque while describing the quarter from which it took its present name. South-east of the Alçak Bridge, in a place once called the "Şehinşah Garden", lived tanners and saddlers. At the head of the quarter stood a bath built by the Seljuk sultan Şehinşah, and around 773 (1371-72) the emir Şadgeldi Paşa built, east of this bath, a mosque with stone foundations and walls and dome of stone and brick, together with a minaret. Hüsameddin describes the interior as long on an east-west axis, with an arch in the middle and covered by two domes. He states plainly that because its date stone had been removed the founder had been forgotten, but that the building appears in old records as the "Câmi-i Şâdgeldi Paşa", and that since its endowment deed could not be found its date could only be given by estimate. In some publications the founder's name also appears as Şatgeldi. The date of 1372 accepted today rests on this estimate.

In the volume of the same work covering Şadgeldi's era, Hüsameddin returns to the subject in a footnote, writing that the inscriptions of the Saraçhane and Çeribaşı mosques, both built in Şadgeldi's time, had been removed, that Şadgeldi's name and emirate had been all but erased, and that he had worked for years to recover them. He also notes that the mosque in the Çeribaşı quarter resembled the Saraçhane Mosque in structure and manner of building, and that it was remarkable that the date stones of both had been taken out. Later researchers repeat that he relied on this resemblance to confirm the date 773. There is no document showing who removed the inscriptions, or when. Given the ruptures the Şadgeldi family went through with Kadı Burhâneddin and then with the Ottomans, one may suspect that this erasure had a political meaning; the sources, however, say nothing to that effect, and it remains only an interpretation.

The absence of an inscription has also led to other readings of the date. In her Beylikler Devri Sanatı, Gönül Öney states that the mosque was built around 1399. In the archive of Aptullah Kuran, too, the envelope containing photographs and a drawing of the mosque is labelled "Amasya Saraçhane Camii H. 802", which corresponds to 1399-1400. Since Şadgeldi died in 1381, this second date cannot be reconciled with his patronage, and the records do not show which document it rests on. The 2018 article by Emine Saka Akın, Aygün Kalınbayrak Ercan and Elif Başaran, who prepared the restoration project for the mosque, written together with Canan Hanoğlu, likewise accepts that because the inscription was removed and the endowment deed has not been found, no firm information can be given about the founder and the date of construction, and records 1372 as "approximate". The earliest direct document bearing the founder's name is the endowment deed of 847 (1443-44) of Sun'ullah Halvetî, sheikh of the dervish lodge beside the mosque, discussed below; Hüsameddin writes that he saw the mosque described in this deed as well known under the name "Hacı Şâdgeldi Câmii".

According to Hüsameddin, the mosque was not built on its own. In addition to the Gıyasiye, Halifetiye, Torumtay and Atabeyiye madrasas in Amasya, Şadgeldi had built a madrasa, a dervish lodge facing it, and a mosque between the two; Furkani likewise speaks of a complex of mosque, madrasa and lodge built in 773/1372. For an emir to build such a complex bearing his own name was customary practice in the period of the Anatolian beyliks. The mosque was as much the visible sign of power in the city as the centre gathering the quarter for Friday and daily prayers. Şadgeldi's building works were not confined to this complex: Hüsameddin records that around 774 he rebuilt the old mosque in the citadel in masonry, and that around 776 (1374-75) he had the Meydan Bridge, a Seljuk structure destroyed in an earthquake, built in masonry. The Hacı Şadgeldi Bath near Saraçhane later came to be known as the "Alaca Bath".

The traces of the Şadgeldi family in Amasya are not confined to the mosque. Among the surviving monuments of Amasya is also the Tomb of Şadgeldi Paşa. Hüsameddin describes it as an old and solid domed building inside the Halifet Gazi Cemetery, its west-facing front entirely open and its top built of stone in a fish-back shape; judging by its form he assigns it to the Danishmendid period, writes that it was not built by Şadgeldi but some two hundred years before him, and that the emir lies here in the central grave. In the sixteenth-century tax registers used by Şimşirgil, a tomb in Amasya called the "Tomb of Safa Paşa, daughter of el-hac Şadgeldi Hacı" is seen to be supported by revenues from villages of Turhal. Hüsameddin writes that old documents record Şadgeldi's daughter Safâ Paşa Hatun as buried in the Şamlılar quarter, in a small walled plot behind the large fountain. It is highly likely that the tomb in the register is this grave; no document explicitly linking the two records has, however, been seen.

The Dâr al-ʿIlm and the Dervish Lodge

The madrasa built east of the mosque appears in the sources as the "Dâr al-ʿIlm" or the "Medrese-i Şâdiye". In a footnote Hüsameddin writes that this house of learning was built on the east side of the mosque the emir founded at Saraçhane, that it was later called the "Medrese-i Şâdiyye", and that when it was ruined in Amasya's successive earthquakes, Yahya Bey, one of the emir's descendants, built a wooden madrasa in its place. In the chapter of the work on madrasas, the same site is described as the "Alaca Yahya Madrasa": this madrasa, east of the Saraçhane Mosque on the bank of the Yeşilırmak, was first built by Şadgeldi around 775 (1373-74); Alaca Yahya Bey, a descendant of the emir and tutor-guardian (lala) of Bayezid II during his governorship of Amasya, rebuilt it in 875 (1470-71) and regulated its endowment, and the madrasa came to bear his name. Read together, the two accounts evidently describe different phases of the same madrasa. Until 1100 (1688-89) the madrasa remained a place where many scholars taught; then, when its professorship passed down a family like an inheritance, it fell into neglect, and in 1281 (1864-65) the governor Ziya Paşa had it pulled down and built a rüşdiye (middle) school in its place.

On who the first professor of the madrasa was, three different names appear within Hüsameddin's own work. The chapter on madrasas states that Şadgeldi gave the professorship to Sadreddin Artuk et-Türkmânî. The volume on Şadgeldi's era states that the mosque, madrasa and imaret were completed around 773 and that Şeyhülislam Mevlânâ İzzeddin Muhammed Amâsî became the first professor of the Medrese-i Şâdgeldi Paşa. The biographical section, in turn, relates that after presenting the Teferrücü'l-ümerâ to the emir, Cemâleddin Aksarâyî became the first professor of "the Medrese-i Şâdiye, known as the Dâr al-ʿIlm, which he built near the Saraçhane Mosque". According to Hüsameddin, when the emir was killed in 783 and many scholars were forced to leave Amasya, Aksarâyî went to Aksaray and taught there at the Zincirli Madrasa. The professorship of the Dâr al-ʿIlm, vacated that same year, was given to Rükneddin Mahmud Çelebi of Bukhara by Şadgeldi's son Fahreddin Ahmed.

The madrasa's later professors are also well-known names in the learned life of Amasya. Mevlânâ Hüsâmeddin Hasan Çelebi, who came from Khoy, won Şadgeldi's favour and became professor of the Dâr al-ʿIlm, and later died as mufti of Amasya in 793 (1391). Mevlânâ Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, son of İğneci Musa Çelebi, died around 797 (1394-95) while professor of this madrasa. Abdülkerim Kadirî Çelebi taught Mehmed I while professor here and later became Ottoman şeyhülislam. Sa'deddin Ali Çelebi, who in the last years of Mehmed I's reign was appointed to the professorship of "the Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa Madrasa, that is, Saraçhane", later became kadi of Amasya and treasurer to the princes, and was known among the people as "Şeyh Paşa".

The dervish lodge facing the madrasa held an equally important place in the life of the mosque. According to Hüsameddin, Ebû İshâk Kâzerûnî, who came to Amasya in Şadgeldi's time, became through the emir's favour sheikh of "the lodge adjoining the Saraçhane Mosque" and was known among the people as the "Sheikh with the Earring" (Küpeli Şeyh); in 789 (1387) he went to Bursa in the retinue of Bayezid I and died there in 798 (1395-96). In the mid-fifteenth century the lodge was headed by Pir Sun'ullah Halvetî, a deputy of Pir İlyas Halvetî. Hüsameddin calls him in one place the "Sheikh of the Saddlers" and in another the "Sheikh of the Tanners"; the two epithets suggest the close tie the lodge formed with the leather workers of the quarter. Sun'ullah's endowment deed of 847 (1443-44) is the document showing that the mosque was still called the "Hacı Şâdgeldi Câmii" at that date. He himself preached for years as the kürsü sheikh of the Saraçhane Mosque; Hüsameddin's biographies name many dervishes who were trained in his service and became his deputies.

After Sun'ullah's death he was succeeded by his deputy and son-in-law, Şeyh Zekeriyya Halvetî. In Hüsameddin's account Zekeriyya, son of Şeyh Paşa, the kadi and treasurer of Amasya, became sheikh of the "Şadgeldi Paşa lodge" near the Saraçhane Mosque, died in 878 (1473-74) after a life spent in remembrance and preaching, and was likewise known as the "Sheikh of the Saddlers". Sun'ullah's daughter and Zekeriyya's wife, Ümmü Gülsüm Hatun, was a learned woman known among the people as "Mother Gülsün"; she died around 875 (1470-71) and was buried within the precinct of the Saraçhane Mosque. It is also recorded that Zekeriyya endowed farms inherited from his father for the recitation of the Qurʾan at his tomb; in one place Hüsameddin speaks of two farms in the Hakala district and the date 874, in another of the Kazganlı-i Alevî farm and the date 870. The graves of the two sheikhs are in the small garden east of the mosque. That the first generation of the Halvetî order in Amasya took root at this spot also explains the importance the building held in later centuries as a place of preaching and teaching.

The Change of Name: The Saddlers and the Reign of Mehmed I

Because of the saddlers' shops around it, the mosque's name changed to Saraçhane Mosque from the reign of Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed) onwards. Hüsameddin ties this change to a more concrete event: while Sultan Mehmed I ruled in Amasya, he had a saraçhane built in this quarter where the tanners and saddlers lived, and both the quarter and the mosque came to be called after this building. A saraç is a master who works leather into saddles, harness and similar riding gear; a saraçhane is the place where the workshops and shops of this trade were gathered. According to Hüsameddin the mosque was thereafter known both as the "Saraçhane Mosque" and as the "Saddlers' Mosque". Given that Mehmed I governed Amasya after 1398 and, after the Battle of Ankara in 1402, withdrew here and used the city as a base against his brothers, it is understandable that a saraçhane capable of supplying an army's riding gear should have been set up in these years; the sources do not draw this connection explicitly, and it is our own inference.

The mosque's second name did not erase the memory of its founder, but in daily life it took precedence over it. However well known a founder may be, people describe an address by the quarter and the market, and the name Saraçhane took hold in this way. The bond between the saddlers and the mosque continued in later centuries. Akın and her colleagues suggest that the traces of brick arches on the south front facing the road belonged to the saddlers' shops known to have stood here. In the mid-seventeenth century Hoca Ahmed Paşa endowed the row of shops on the qibla side of the mosque and assigned their income to it. In Osman Fevzi Olcay's memoirs of the early twentieth century, too, Saraçhane Market Street is remembered as a street of well-known shoemakers, and the row of shops is described as ending at the Saraçhane Mosque.

Amasya's productive life remained vigorous in these centuries. It is recorded that in the sixteenth century the city had a dyehouse, a candle works and a mint, that silk weaving was widespread, and that the silk cloth brought into the city over ten months in 1554-1555 weighed some fifteen tonnes. Evliya Çelebi wrote in the seventeenth century that there were about 1,060 shops in Amasya. That the saddlers and tanners formed a quarter of their own within this busy market shows that the name rested on a real community of craftsmen. Evliya Çelebi's reference to the building as a "mescit", a small mosque, has been read by later researchers as a sign that the mosque still consisted of a single space in the seventeenth century.

Endowments and Officials in the Ottoman Period

Although the original endowment deed was lost, the mosque was kept going over the centuries by new endowments. İğnecizâde Ahmed Paşa, known as Hoca Ahmed Paşa, was a statesman who served as beylerbey of Trabzon, Sivas and Anatolia and was several times governor of Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that he restored Şadgeldi Paşa's ruined "Dâr al-ʿIlm" adjoining the Saraçhane Mosque, that by endowing the row of shops on the qibla side of the mosque and shops in the İbadullah Market and inside the bedesten he gave the mosque a pulpit and a preacher's chair, and that he assigned stipends to the preacher and the sermon-giver. Ahmed Paşa died in 1069 (1659), shortly after falling under the suspicion of Köprülü Mehmed Paşa and having his property confiscated; Hüsameddin notes with regret that these endowments too were later lost. Ümmü Hânî Hanım, daughter of the vizier Ankebût Ahmed Paşa, also assigned stipends before her death in 1114 (1702-03) to the preacher of the Saraçhane Mosque and the professor of its madrasa.

In the eighteenth century the chain of endowments continued. In 1147 (1734-35) the kadi of Amasya, Çetenzâde Hacı Ahmed Efendi, built an ablution fountain in front of the mosque and brought water to it. Around 1171 (1757-58) the former kul kethüdası Zorluzâde Hacı Mehmed Ağa and Hacı Osman Ağa, one of the notables, endowed shops and founded a kürsü sheikhship at the mosque. In the course of the century a notable named Hacı Mustafa Ağa also built a madrasa right beside the mosque; Hüsameddin links him in one place to the Çorakçızâde family, in another to the Palancızâde, and in yet another calls him the mütesellim (deputy governor) of Amasya. The professors and trustees of this madrasa appear in the biographies until the middle of the nineteenth century. The posts of preacher, sermon-giver and kürsü sheikh at the mosque often stayed within the same families. The family known as the Hatîbzâdes held the office of preacher for most of the eighteenth century. The biographies name many professors who held study circles and granted diplomas in the mosque's courtyard.

The endowed shops at times also whetted the appetites of the powerful. According to Hüsameddin, in Rebiülevvel 1202 (December 1787-January 1788) Hasan Bey, mütesellim of Amasya, attempted to seize by force the endowed shops around the Saraçhane Mosque to secure an income for himself, collecting the rents in advance and turning out the tenants. His father, Mikdad Ahmed Paşa, had earlier taken over the endowed blacksmiths' shops around the Atabey Madrasa in the same way. Ürgüplü Hacı Ahmed Efendi openly opposed this seizure of shops that belonged to Hacı Şadgeldi Paşa's endowment and were assigned to the expenses of the Saraçhane Mosque; the Janissary standard-bearers who had interests in the shops supported him. Hüsameddin writes that the affair grew serious but was put down by force. The record is valuable also because it shows that at the end of the eighteenth century the mosque's endowment was still known by Şadgeldi's name.

In the nineteenth century the mosque's surroundings changed a great deal. In the 1860s, during Ziya Paşa's governorship, the roads opened along the Yeşilırmak reduced the mosque's garden and ran roads past it on both the north and the south. Ziya Paşa pulled down the old madrasa on the east side and built a rüşdiye school in its place; after about thirty years of use the school burned in the fire of 1311 (1893-94). On the west side, Kızıklızâde Hacı Mahmud Efendi of Hacıköy built a wooden madrasa; in one place Hüsameddin dates the building to 1300 (1882-83), in another gives its completion as 1302 (1884-85). The first professor of this building, called the "Saraçhane Madrasa", was Gürcü Hacı Eyüp Efendi. In his memoirs Olcay describes the madrasa as a charming building within the mosque precinct, directly facing the Yeşilırmak, its windows lined up along the road, with a modest ablution fountain in the middle.

Architecture

Today the mosque stands on a rectangular plan running east-west, parallel to the road on Ziya Paşa Boulevard, inside a small courtyard. The courtyard is entered on the north through an opening between the walls, and on the south through a gate of stone and brick with a depressed arch. The mosque was originally a square building with a single dome. At a later stage its west wall was opened and another section added; the plan thus became rectangular, and the added part was also covered by a dome. A large, thick arch separates the old building from the added space. The date of this change is not known. It has been suggested that a congregation enlarged by Mehmed I's saraçhane may have required a larger space; but Evliya Çelebi's reference to the building as a mescit, together with the eighteenth-century endowments of the ablution fountain and the kürsü, led Akın and her colleagues to think that the addition may have been made later, around the time of those endowments. In the earliest photographs, dating from 1860-1911, the mosque already appears with a rectangular plan.

The prayer hall, formed by the union of two square spaces, measures about 19.70 by 11.10 metres. There are no internal supports; the load is carried by walls about 110 centimetres thick. The walls rise in two stages, the first to a height of 6.71 metres and the second to 9.10 metres, and on them rest domes covered with pantiles. The domes sit on octagonal drums, and the drums on squinches. The walls end in saw-tooth (kirpi) cornices, in a single course on the main walls and in two courses at the dome transitions and drums. Beneath the domes, near the cornice moulding, bird houses are carved into the wall surface.

The use of materials is one of the chief clues to the mosque's period. Older sources state that the east and south fronts were built of cut stone and the other parts of rubble; what is seen today is an alternating masonry of cut stone and brick, with regular block stones at the corners. This wall technique is a familiar feature of the architecture of the beylik period. Whereas in Seljuk buildings the basic material was stone and brick was used for domes and minarets, in the beylik period walls of mixed stone and brick come to the fore in many buildings. The Saraçhane Mosque is one of the examples of this transition in Amasya.

The minaret, with a cylindrical shaft and a single balcony, rises at the north-west corner of the original building and, because of the section added to the west, now stands between the two domes. The minaret, about 22 metres high in all, is built of brick; its balcony is of stone and its conical cap is covered in lead. The difference in the masonry along the line where the minaret base ends is one of the traces suggesting a difference of period between the eastern and western parts of the building.

The portico running along the north front is a lean-to resting on wooden posts set on nine stone bases, covered in lead outside with a flat wooden ceiling inside. Some descriptions call it seven-bayed; according to the 2018 survey drawings it has six openings on the front and one on each side. Seen in old photographs with eight bays and a pantiled roof, this part is an addition altered many times; Gönül Öney states that the original building had no portico. The interior is entered through two separate doors with stone frames and depressed arches on the north front; above the western entrance there is a slot for an inscription. This slot brings to mind the records about the removed inscription, but whether the removed stone once stood here is not known.

The interior surfaces are plastered and decorated in places with painted ornament. In the original section, in the triangular spaces between the squinches, the names Allah, Muhammad, ʿUmar, ʿAli, ʿUthman, Abu Bakr, Husayn and Hasan are written in medallions, starting from the right of the mihrab; at the crown of the dome is a medallion with floral and geometric motifs, and the spandrels of the pointed arches on the drum carry geometric ornament in red, yellow and blue. In the added western section the dome and transitions are plain. The plaster mihrab, semicircular in section, has a hood of six tiers of muqarnas; it is flanked by engaged colonnettes with hourglass capitals and framed by a wide border decorated with flowering scrolls on a light grey ground. In a cartouche within the baroque pediment of "s" and "c" curves surrounding the mihrab is written part of verse 37 of the Sura Âl ʿImrân, beginning "Whenever Zechariah entered upon her in the sanctuary". On either side of the mihrab are bookcase niches with wooden doors, and on the wall beside the pulpit there is a phrase from verse 88 of the Sura Hud.

The authors of the article consider that this painted decoration does not date from the years when the mosque was built, but was added after the second half of the eighteenth century and bears the stylistic features of the westernising period. The plain wooden pulpit west of the mihrab was installed in the 1990s; photographs from the 1940s show a pulpit that was also wooden but more carefully crafted. At the ablution place on the north side of the courtyard, on the wall with the taps, there is a five-line inscription in taʿlīq script; according to it, this is the pious gift of Hafize Hanım, wife of the revenue director Hacı Hüsni Bey, dated 1265 (1848-49).

The Graveyard

The small graveyard adjoining the east wall of the mosque, enclosed by a rubble wall topped with iron railings, is the place Hüsameddin calls the "Tomb of Şeyh Zekeriyya". Hüsameddin describes it as a private burial enclosure inside the gate on the east side of the mosque and writes that the Sheikh of the Saddlers Pir Sun'ullah Halvetî and his deputy Pir Zekeriyya Halvetî lie here. Another biography states that the same sheikhs are buried in the garden in front of the mosque's east window. Olcay too, in his memoirs, counts "Pir Şeyh Zekeriya" among the great Sufis of Amasya and gives his resting place as "in the garden of the Saraçhane Mosque".

The 2018 study identified four graves of historic value in the graveyard. One is a tomb in the form of a built sarcophagus, cut in a single piece from beige tuff in two stages; its surface is badly worn, and only a prayer and the opening of the Throne Verse can be read on it. Akın and her colleagues find it very similar to Seljuk-period cenotaphs. The second grave belongs to Hafize Hanım; its eleven-line taʿlīq inscription states that she was the daughter of Sadık Bey of İznik, son of Ali Paşa, of the line of Şeyh Edebali and Hayreddin Paşa, and the wife of Hacı Hüsni Bey, revenue director of Amasya, and that she died on 26 Zilkade 1265 (13 October 1849). The third grave is that of Şerife Sıddıka Hanım, daughter of Seyyid Ali Remzi Efendi, former inspector of the Two Holy Sanctuaries; her verse inscription says she was born in 1254, mentions Jerusalem, and recalls that those who die far from home are counted as martyrs; her date of death is 9 Recep 1268 (29 April 1852). The head and foot stones of these two graves are of marble, and the foot stones bear reliefs of date palms in fruit.

The fourth gravestone carries a ten-line inscription asking for the Fatiha for the soul of Şeyh Zekeriyya Halvetî, deputy of Pir İlyas, and ends with "year 871". The authors of the article, noting that its turbaned top and marble material show the features of nineteenth-century gravestones, read it as dated 1871. It is also possible that the stone bears the Hijri date 871 (1466-67); in that case the date does not agree with 878, the year of death Hüsameddin gives for Zekeriyya. Considering its material and form, it seems more likely that the stone is a commemorative marker set up long after the sheikh's death in place of an older grave; no record of this has been found either. No stone belonging to the graves of Sun'ullah Halvetî or Mother Gülsün can be identified today.

Its Place in Amasya's Mosque Architecture

The oldest building of the Turkish period in Amasya is the mosque built by the Danishmendid Melik Gazi just east of the castle, on the site of today's Şamlar Mosque. Among the works that have survived to the present are the Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247), the Gökmedrese Mosque (1266-1267), the Gümüşlü Mosque (1326), the Hızır Paşa Mosque (fourteenth century) and the Saraçhane Mosque (1372). Saraçhane stands as a link representing the beylik period in the line running from the stone-dominated buildings of the Seljuk age to the beginnings of classical Ottoman architecture. Its original single-domed plan is the most common mosque and masjid type of the beylik period. The later westward enlargement of Saraçhane puts it in the same group as buildings enlarged as their congregations grew, such as the Üç Mihraplı Mescit or the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Mosque in Istanbul.

The Beyazıt Paşa Mosque (1414-1419) and the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque (1430), which came after it, are buildings of the reign of Mehmed I and the years that followed; some forty years separate them from Saraçhane. When Amasya came under Ottoman rule it became the centre of the sanjak of the same name and in the early period was the seat of the province of Rum. Until the middle of the sixteenth century the city was one of the main centres to which princes of the Ottoman dynasty were sent to gain administrative experience: from Mehmed I onwards, Murad II, Mehmed II (the Conqueror) and Bayezid II all served here as sanjak governors. The reign of Mehmed I, from which the Saraçhane Mosque took its name, coincides with the beginning of the period in which the city acquired this identity as a princes' sanjak. Hüsameddin also records that Şadgeldi's grandson Burak Bey built a school near "the Saraçhane Mosque, the mosque of his grandfather" in the reign of Mehmed I and endowed it in 816 (1413-14); the family had adapted to the new order while keeping its tie to its forebear's building.

The city surrounding the mosque, too, took shape largely after the age in which it was built. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Amasya had nine mosques, ten madrasas, four dervish lodges, six imarets and fifteen baths. In 1525 the city had fifty-five quarters, five of them non-Muslim, and a population of about eight thousand. Hans Dernschwam, who came to Amasya in 1555, counted eleven mosques in the city. Among the new buildings of the city that grew during the centuries when the princes resided in Amasya, the mosque of 1372 remained an elderly neighbour.

Repairs, Registration and Present Condition

The earthquakes, fires and floods of the Yeşilırmak that Amasya suffered made repeated repairs to the mosque necessary. Damaged in the great earthquake of 1939, the mosque reopened for worship after a repair completed in June 1948. In 1951 it was repaired once more by Tevhide Arpacıoğlu; in this repair the garden was enclosed by a wall and a fountain was built on the north wall. In the 1977 repair the portico was glazed in, some motifs on the mihrab, arches, windows and squinches were painted over, the pulpit was replaced, the mihrab in the western space was removed, and the collapsed upper shaft and cap of the minaret were rebuilt. A photograph from the 1940s shows the minaret in its ruined state and the portico as it was then.

With additions made in later years the mosque moved a good way from its original appearance. Inside, a women's gallery with a wooden floor, reached by a wooden staircase, had been installed; the pulpit, gallery, window lintels and the walls up to the level of the windows had been painted in oil paint, and the portico had been closed in with wood. Of the painted decoration damaged by damp rising through the walls, part had been covered with paint and part renewed in a manner not true to the original. The building, owned by the Directorate General of Foundations, was restored in 2008 by that institution's regional directorate. In this work the poor-quality additions and unsuitable paint were removed, and the original painted decoration beneath the paint was uncovered and renewed. The building was registered in 1992 by decision of the High Council for the Conservation of Cultural Property, and its graveyard by a separate decision the same year, and it was entered in the tangible cultural heritage inventory of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism.

The survey, restitution and restoration projects for the mosque were prepared in 2017 by Emine Saka Akın, Aygün Kalınbayrak Ercan and Elif Başaran and approved by the regional conservation council. The results of this work were published, with Canan Hanoğlu also taking part, in the article "Amasya Saraçhane Camii" (Tarih Okulu Dergisi, no. 33, 2018, pp. 269-316); restoration and cultural heritage are among the article's keywords. The authors state that despite the changes to elements such as the portico, windows, mihrab, pulpit and gallery, and despite painted decoration that has changed its character, the mosque has kept its plan scheme and reflects the features of its period in broad outline. The building, some six hundred and fifty years old, is today hemmed in among the new buildings around it. Visible as a distinct part of the city's identity on the map of Amasya prepared by Albert Gabriel in 1934 and in old photographs, the mosque now stands where, because of the new buildings rising on both sides, it is hard to make out from a distance.

Today the Saraçhane Mosque is open for worship and continues to serve as a much-used mosque in the city centre, by the river. The portico on the north, the tiled roofs over the two domes, the brick minaret, the saw-tooth cornices and the bird houses are the main features that distinguish the building from Amasya's other mosques. The small graveyard at the foot of the east wall recalls that the mosque, together with the lodge beside it, was once one of the centres of Amasya's Halvetî circle. Visited along the Princes' Way together with the city's other historic mosques, this beylik-period mosque can be read side by side with the buildings of the classical Ottoman period.

Chronology

1359: Hacı Kutlu Şah appoints his son Hacı Şadgeldi emir of Amasya (760).

1361-1362: After Kutlu Şah is defeated and killed by the Karamanids, Amasya passes for a time to Alâeddin Ali Bey; Şadgeldi recovers the city early in 763.

1365: The Eretnid Mehmed Bey is killed by his emirs Hacı Şadgeldi, Hacı İbrahim and Kılıcarslan.

1371-1372: According to Hüsameddin, Şadgeldi Paşa builds the mosque, madrasa and dervish lodge (around 773; there is no inscription or endowment deed, and the date is an estimate).

1373-1374: Construction of the madrasa (Dâr al-ʿIlm) east of the mosque (around 775).

1374-1375: Şadgeldi has the Meydan Bridge built in masonry (around 776).

1381: Kadı Burhâneddin proclaims himself ruler in Sivas; in Ramadan 783 Hacı Şadgeldi is defeated and killed in battle near Tokat.

1383-1384: Şadgeldi's son Ahmed moves to avenge his father and is defeated by Kadı Burhâneddin.

1392-1393: Kadı Burhâneddin takes Amasya; at Emir Ahmed's appeal, Ottoman forces come to the region (Şimşirgil).

1398: According to TDV, Amasya is incorporated into Ottoman territory; the city's government is entrusted to Mehmed I.

1399-1400: Alternative construction date given by Öney and in the record of the Aptullah Kuran archive (AH 802).

1402: After the Battle of Ankara, Mehmed I withdraws to Amasya and uses the city as a base against his brothers; he is recorded as having a saraçhane built in the quarter in these years.

1413-1414: Şadgeldi's grandson Burak Bey draws up an endowment for his school near the Saraçhane Mosque (816).

1443-1444: In the endowment deed of Pir Sun'ullah Halvetî the mosque is called the "Hacı Şâdgeldi Câmii" (847).

1470-1471: Alaca Yahya Bey rebuilds the madrasa east of the mosque (875).

1473-1474: Şeyh Zekeriyya Halvetî, the Sheikh of the Saddlers, dies and is buried in the garden east of the mosque (878).

1659: Death of Hoca Ahmed Paşa, who gave the mosque a pulpit and preacher's chair and endowed shops for it (1069).

1734-1735: Çetenzâde Hacı Ahmed Efendi, kadi of Amasya, builds an ablution fountain in front of the mosque (1147).

1757-1758: Zorluzâde Hacı Mehmed Ağa and Hacı Osman Ağa endow shops and found a kürsü sheikhship (1171).

1787-1788: The mütesellim Hasan Bey attempts to seize the mosque's endowed shops (1202).

1848-1849: The ablution place, the pious gift of Hafize Hanım, is built (1265).

1864-1865: Ziya Paşa pulls down the old madrasa on the east side and builds a rüşdiye school in its place; roads opened along the river narrow the mosque's garden.

1882-1885: The Saraçhane Madrasa, built by Hacı Mahmud Efendi of Hacıköy west of the mosque, is completed.

1934: The mosque appears on the map of Amasya prepared by Albert Gabriel.

1939: The great earthquake damages the mosque.

1948: After a repair completed in June, the mosque reopens for worship.

1951: Repaired by Tevhide Arpacıoğlu; the garden wall and the fountain on the north wall are built.

1977: The portico is glazed in, the pulpit replaced, and the minaret's upper shaft and cap rebuilt.

1992: The mosque and its graveyard are registered.

2008: Restored by the Directorate General of Foundations.

2017: The survey, restitution and restoration projects are approved by the regional conservation council.

2018: An academic article examining the mosque's restoration and architectural changes is published.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources