Standing on the right-hand side of the road that climbs to Pirler Park in Amasya, the Sofular Mosque is one of the few dârülhadis (schools of hadith) of Ottoman Anatolia, and among buildings of this kind it is a rare example that has come down to us with its original inscription, its plan and, although some of its annexes are lost, its main volume. Also known as the Abdullah Pasha Mosque and the Dârülhadis Mosque, it is a pious foundation built by a beylerbey (governor-general) of the reign of Bayezid II, gathering a place of worship and cells for the teaching of hadith under a single roof. With its terrace raised above the street to the north, its door reached by stairs and its dome lifted on a tall drum, it is easy to pick out in the Sofular quarter. The founder's family administered the endowment from generation to generation for more than four hundred years, well-known hadith scholars and poets of Amasya taught from its chair, and at the end of the nineteenth century the surroundings of the mosque became a quarter of madrasas once again.

Name and Location

The building appears in the sources under three names: the Sofular Mosque, after the quarter; the Abdullah Pasha Mosque, after its founder; and the Dârülhadis Mosque, after its function. A sofu is a person who lives in worship and self-discipline without becoming too attached to worldly affairs. Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar writes that the district, recorded in old registers as the Sofîler Quarter, was known in early times as "Behrâm Şâh Mülkü" (the property of Behram Shah), that in the days of Pîr İlyâs and his son Abdurrahman Çelebi some nine renowned Sufis lived here, and that the quarter took its name from them. According to the same work, the first place of worship in the quarter was the masjid and fountain built by Emir Mübârizeddin Behram Shah; later Gümüşlüzâde Hoca Celâl Çelebi built a zâviye (dervish lodge) for Pîr İlyâs on a high spot at the top of the district, and in the time of Abdurrahman Çelebi this building came to be called "Kasr-ı Sofiyân", the pavilion of the Sufis. Hüsâmeddîn cites no document in support of this account; it is the most detailed tradition about the name, and the density of dervish lodges, retreat cells and tombs in the area lends it support.

The mosque stands in the Sofular Quarter of central Amasya, on the right as one climbs toward Pirler Park. In Hüsâmeddîn's time the road passing in front of it was called Sofîler Avenue. In Osman Fevzi Olcay's memoirs the Sofular Quarter is described as the area that begins at the hill where the hospital stands and stretches down to the Sofular Mosque; Olcay adds that its slope was steep and tiring but its air was good. The gradient of the land directly shaped the building. Because it stands higher than the street to its north, it was set on two terraces at different levels; seen from the street, the part containing the door lies above, and the prayer hall lies higher still.

The Founder, Hacı Sinanbeyzâde Abdullah Pasha

The mosque and dârülhadis were built by Beylerbey Hacısinanbeyzâde Abdullah Pasha, one of the statesmen of the reign of Bayezid II, to serve both as a mosque and as a dârülhadis. Hüsâmeddîn's biographical volumes introduce the pasha's family in detail. His father, el-Hâc Sinan Bey, came from an Amasya family known as Bağdâdîzâde and had been trained in the finance bureau. After serving in the treasuries of the princes at Amasya, he became treasurer of the imperial treasury in the second reign of Mehmed II (the Conqueror), won praise for managing the provisioning and supplies of the army during the siege of Istanbul, and rose to the office of chief treasurer. He could not, however, get on with Mahmud Pasha, who became grand vizier after the execution of Çandarlı Halil Pasha, and in 860 AH (1455-56) he was executed at Mahmud Pasha's instigation. Hüsâmeddîn remembers him as a learned man, a scribe, a fine accountant and an upright statesman. Sinan Bey had three sons named Abdullah, Sa'dullah and Lütfullah; Sa'dullah Bey, like his father, rose in the finances, becoming treasury scribe and then superintendent of the public treasury while Bayezid II was governor of Amasya, was appointed treasurer to Şehzade Ahmed in 1481, and died around 894 (1488-89).

After studying in Amasya, Abdullah Pasha entered the service of Bayezid II during his years as a prince and joined the ranks of the emirs. For a time he was sanjak governor of Canik, and in 878 (1473) he distinguished himself in the war against Uzun Hasan. In 1481, as Bayezid II left Amasya to ascend the throne, he left the governorship of the city to his eldest son, Ahmed. According to Hüsâmeddîn's chronology, Abdullah Bey then became the prince's treasurer, and at the beginning of 887 (1482), when the lala İbrahim Pasha was summoned to Istanbul, he took his place as lala (tutor-guardian) of Şehzade Ahmed and his "müdebbir-i umûr", the man who ran his affairs. It is recorded that together with this post he received the rank of beylerbey and that in 889 (1484) he became a beylerbey; in one place in the work, however, he is called beylerbey of Anatolia, and in another beylerbey of Ankara. As the son of a financier who had grown up in Amasya and risen at the princely court, the pasha's career is directly bound up with the city's role in those years as a centre that supplied the empire's ruling cadre.

The date of the pasha's death differs in the sources. M. Baha Tanman, in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, gives it as 896 (1490-91). Hüsâmeddîn, by contrast, writes in his section on the quarters that the pasha died shortly after completing the building in 890; in his biographical volume he records that he was killed in 890 while fighting the forces sent by Cem in the affair of Cem Sultan. Given that Cem left Anatolia in the summer of 1482, there is a mismatch between the date of this last account and the event it describes, and which is correct cannot be determined from the available publications. Hüsâmeddîn characterizes the pasha as "sâdık, gayûr", that is, a loyal and zealous statesman.

Date of Foundation and the Inscription

The sources do not agree on the building's date. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam entry on the dârülhadis tradition states that the Abdullah Pasha Dârülhadis in Amasya is dated 890 (1485) and has survived with its inscription and original structure. The presentation of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism also gives the year 1485. The ministry's promotional portal and many compilations, however, write that the mosque was built in 1502. This second date most probably arises from taking 907 (1501-1502), the year in which the endowment deed was drawn up, for the date of construction. Hüsâmeddîn included the Arabic text of the inscription over the main door in his work, and in the translation of the book's editors it reads: "This Dârülhadis was built in the reign of Sultan Bayezid, may God help him, by Abdullah Pasha son of Hacı Sinan, may God forgive them both, in the year 890." The inscription states plainly both that the building was founded as a dârülhadis and the date 890. Hüsâmeddîn adds that this function is also explicitly written in the endowment deed of 907. The biographical volume of the same work, however, says that the door records the pasha's completion of the building in 888; this is the only account that contradicts the text of the inscription.

Taking the 890 of the inscription together with the death date of 896 given by Tanman, it appears that the building was raised while the pasha was alive and that the endowment procedures were completed by his sons after his death; even if Hüsâmeddîn's death date is accepted, the fact that the deed was drawn up by the sons remains unchanged. According to Tanman, the endowment deed was drawn up in 907 (1501-1502) by the pasha's son, Defterdar Abdülkerim Bey. In one place Hüsâmeddîn writes that after the death of the eldest brother, Abdüsselam Bey, Abdülkerim and İskender Beys endowed the properties and lands that had fallen to them from their father to the upkeep of the mosque and madrasa in 907; elsewhere it is written that Abdülkerim Bey arranged his father's endowments in 911 (1505-06). In 1505 Abdülkerim Bey also had a dârülkurrâ, a school for the recitation of the Qur'an, added to the east of his father's building; this part has not survived.

The year 890, in which Abdullah Pasha completed his building, was a year of construction for Amasya. According to Hüsâmeddîn's chronology, in the same year, besides the mosque and dârülhadis at Sofular, the madrasas of the Chief Gate Agha Hüseyin Agha and the Junior Gate Agha Ayas Agha in the Şamlılar Quarter, Ayas Agha's mosque, and the mosque and madrasa of Mehmed Pasha were completed, and in the author's words "Amasya flourished". A year later the mosque complex of Bayezid II in the city was finished. Before coming to the throne Bayezid II had been governor of the sanjak, and the scribes, scholars and statesmen raised in the city took on important posts at the centre in the following years. Hüsâmeddîn counts Abdullah Pasha, together with Yakub Pasha, Yörgüç Pasha, Hızır Pasha and Mehmed Pasha, among the benefactors who founded high madrasas in Amasya and assigned ample stipends to scholars and students.

Within the Dârülhadis Tradition

To understand the building, it helps to recall what a dârülhadis was. A dârülhadis is a madrasa founded for the study of hadith. Hadith sessions were at first held in mosques and in scholars' houses. As the number of students grew, independent institutions outside the mosques became necessary. The first institutions, known as dârüssünne, appear to have arisen in Nishapur. An independent teaching institution under the name dârülhadis was first founded in Damascus, with the Nûriyye Dârülhadis built by Atabeg Nûreddin Mahmud Zengî (1146-1174) for the great hadith scholar Ibn Asâkir. Examples such as al-Kâmiliyye in Cairo (1224) and the Eşrefiyye in Damascus followed; part of the famous Mustansiriyya Madrasa in Baghdad was also planned as a dârülhadis.

The oldest example in Anatolia is the building commissioned in Çankırı in 1242 by Cemâleddin Ferruh, one of the Seljuk atabegs, known today as Taşmescid. In Sivas the Sâhibiye (Gökmedrese) and in Konya the İnce Minare are remembered as dârülhadis built by the vizier Sâhib Ata Fahreddin Ali. The first Ottoman dârülhadis is known to have been built in İznik by Çandarlı Hayreddin Pasha in the reign of Murad I, but no trace of it remains. The building regarded as a turning point in the Ottoman madrasa system is the Dârülhadis Madrasa founded by Murad II in Edirne in 1425. Mehmed II (the Conqueror) did not include a dârülhadis in his mosque complex in Istanbul; the TDV entry attributes this to his unwillingness to overshadow his father's institution in Edirne. Among the dârülhadis built in the reign of Bayezid II, the one that has survived in its original form is the Abdullah Pasha Dârülhadis in Amasya. In the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent the number of dârülhadis grew; in Amasya the Osman Çelebi Dârülhadis opened in 1526.

Not every dârülhadis was an institution of specialized study. A few high-ranking foundations such as Edirne, and later the Süleymaniye, formed the top tier of the state's madrasa staff; in the provinces, however, professors of various ranks, from the lowest grade to the highest, taught in many buildings bearing the same name. In the words of the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, Abdullah Pasha's building is a four-celled dârülhadis of the middle level. In endowment deeds the purpose of the institution was usually stated in the same formula, as a building made for the transmission of the hadiths and reports of the Prophet, and the surviving documents show that the founder did not specify the books to be taught but left this to the professor. Especially after the Süleymaniye, dârülhadis were placed within mosque complexes together with buildings such as the dârülkurrâ and the zâviye. There were twelve grades of difference between professorial posts. The lowest, the ibtidâ-i hâric grade, paid twenty akçe a day, and many dârülhadis served at this level; the highest was the dârülhadis grade. The professor of the Edirne Dârülhadis received fifty akçe a day in the reign of Mehmed II, and Bayezid II raised this to a hundred. Hüsâmeddîn records that the Abdullah Pasha Dârülhadis was ranked among the "hamsîn", that is, the fifty-akçe madrasas, in the hierarchy of madrasas. The Amasya example is a small-scale and early manifestation of this arrangement; the mosque, the teaching cells and the dârülkurrâ later added on the east were parts of the same endowment.

The Teaching of Hadith in Amasya

According to Hüsâmeddîn, there were four dârülhadis in Amasya: those of Abdullah Pasha, Osman Çelebi, İbrahim Efendi and Osman Bey. The author explains that because the science of hadith is a broad discipline built on chains of transmission and on the examination of the lives and reliability of transmitters, it was separated from the other sciences and special madrasas were built for it. In these institutions scholars who had specialized in hadith served as professors, taught hadith collections such as the Sahîh of al-Bukhârî and the Sahîh of Muslim, and also taught works on the methodology of hadith, the generations of transmitters and their biographies, written to distinguish a sound hadith from a weak one. In the author's view such hadith scholars were not rare in Amasya until 1241 (1825-26). Later, because professorships of the dârülhadis passed by inheritance from father to son, sometimes to children and craftsmen, true hadith scholars grew steadily scarcer.

The same section also describes the course of advancement in the Amasya madrasas. A student who had received his licence served for at least two years as a professor's mu'îd, or assistant, and could become a ders-i âm (licensed public teacher) once at least three masters of the day had confirmed his ability to teach. A mu'îd received five akçe a day, a mülâzım ten and a ders-i âm twenty; this pay increased by five akçe each year, and when it reached forty akçe the teacher entered the professorial hierarchy. The cells of the Abdullah Pasha Dârülhadis were one provincial rung of this ladder. Its rooms were small, and as Hüsâmeddîn states plainly, its lecture hall was the mosque itself. Evliya Çelebi, who came to Amasya in the seventeenth century, likewise wrote that besides ten madrasas and two hundred primary schools, dârülkurrâs and dârülhadis were active in the city.

Exterior

With its walls of rubble stone the mosque resembles the provincial buildings of its period; the walls, however, are strengthened in places with bonding courses of three rows of brick, and its corners are reinforced with large blocks of dressed stone. This combination of rubble stone with dressed stone at the corners increases the building's strength and gives the facade a measured order. Some descriptions also note that the front facade was built of rubble stone and brick. Hüsâmeddîn describes the building as "kârgir ve gayet metin", built of stone and very solid, and notes that the facade opening onto the prayer hall was made of black stone.

On the axis of the north facade is a main door with a depressed arch, reached by a two-sided staircase leading to the terrace in front of it. Above the door are a three-line Arabic inscription in thuluth script, giving the founder's name and the date of construction, and a clerestory window. The door's elevated position relative to the street, and the particular height given to this section, make the facade look more imposing than it is. The wooden leaves of the door are original; the inscriptions on their upper panels and the carvings with peony and rûmî motifs on their middle panels reflect the style of the reign of Bayezid II.

At the northeast corner of the building the minaret rises on a projecting, square-based pedestal of alternating masonry. Hüsâmeddîn also notes that the minaret stands on the east side. Above the pedestal comes a lozenge-patterned transition. The cylindrical shaft is decorated with hexagonal brick coffers besides the brick bonding courses, and ends in a twisted moulding of alternating masonry. Above the single balcony, worked with vertical flutes and fitted with a plain parapet, are a short upper shaft and a lead-covered conical wooden cap.

The Forecourt and the Cells

Passing through the main door, one enters a hall of nearly square rectangular plan that serves as a covered courtyard. According to Tanman's description it is covered by a simple star vault with a lantern in the form of an octagonal prism at its centre; Hüsâmeddîn, however, writes that this forecourt was covered by "a large dome". The hall is lit from the north by two windows. To its east and west are two square dârülhadis cells each, covered with depressed cross vaults, and to its south is the prayer hall, which also served as the lecture room. Hüsâmeddîn likewise says that on either side of the space before the inner door there were two rooms each, and that the madrasa consisted of these rooms. Some descriptions count one room on each side of the entrance; the detailed architectural accounts and Hüsâmeddîn give the number of cells as four.

The cells are connected to the hall by doors with depressed arches. Each has two windows, one opening onto this space and the other to the outside. The rooms are fitted with hearths with brick chimneys and with cupboard niches; this equipment suggests that besides teaching the cells may also have been used for lodging and for storing books. A diagonal passage was set between the eastern cell and the prayer hall. The passage opens onto Abdullah Pasha's grave and onto the courtyard where the dârülkurrâ once stood.

The Prayer Hall and the Dome

Because the prayer hall stands higher than the courtyard, it is reached by steps. The entrance to this square space has a depressed arch. In the west and east walls two pairs of windows have been opened, the lower rectangular and the upper pointed-arched. Since the qibla wall lies below the level of the plot behind it, and the north wall adjoins the covered courtyard, these two walls have only two clerestory windows each. The dome on pendentives that covers the space is raised on a twelve-sided drum with four windows. The weight of the dome is carried through four pointed arches to corner piers of dressed stone. The tall drum also defines the building's silhouette from outside.

No notable decoration is to be seen in the prayer hall today. The only element that draws attention is the vertically fluted hood of the mihrab. The wooden door leaves of the prayer hall are original, like those of the main door. Keeping the main space higher than the forecourt and the cells expresses architecturally the distinction between the area of teaching and the area of worship.

Its Place in Architecture

According to M. Baha Tanman's assessment, the Dârülhadis Mosque stands out for a design without parallel in Ottoman architecture. On the one hand the building connects to the covered-courtyard madrasas seen in pre-Ottoman Anatolian Turkish architecture and represented by only two examples in early Ottoman architecture; on the other, to mosques with tabhâne, that is, zâviye mosques; and it gives concrete form to the link between these two building types. Almost all Ottoman dârülhadis are variations of the open-courtyard, porticoed madrasa scheme that appeared with the Süleyman Pasha Madrasa built in İznik in the reign of Orhan Gazi. The Amasya example falls outside this rule because it fuses the domed madrasa scheme, little favoured in the Ottoman period, with the zâviye mosque scheme, an innovation of early Ottoman architecture.

This originality makes it hard to read the mosque as an ordinary house of worship. The cells on either side of the entrance cannot be counted a mere passage; they form an educational unit in their own right, while the prayer hall proper is the focus of this unit, lying at the upper level. On one side there is the entrance-and-side-room arrangement of the tabhâne mosques, on the other the lecture-hall-and-cell system of the madrasa. Official presentations likewise count the building among single-domed, single-minaret zâviye mosques. The closest comparison in the city is the Torumtay building of the Seljuk period: Hüsâmeddîn writes that its madrasa, too, consisted of small stone cells ranged along the edges of the space inside the mosque's great door. Abdullah Pasha's building reconstructs this idea of a madrasa within a mosque, already tried in Amasya, with the Ottoman understanding of the dome of the late fifteenth century.

The Dârülkurrâ and the Surrounding Buildings

Listing the eight dârülkurrâs of Amasya, Hüsâmeddîn places the Abdullah Pasha Dârülkurrâ to the east of the mosque. This school, added and endowed by Abdülkerim Bey in 911, had a garden in front of it, a fountain to the north and other annexes. Renowned Qur'an reciters such as the Cretan chief reciter el-Hâc Hâfız Mehmed Efendi and the chief reciter Yûsuf Efendi served as its sheikhs. The author writes that thanks to the hâfız trained in the city's dârülkurrâs and primary schools, nearly a third of the notable men of Amasya were known as hâfız, those who knew the Qur'an by heart. The dârülkurrâ disappeared over time, and its site is now marked only by the courtyard reached through the passage.

In the following centuries the surroundings of the mosque also filled with educational buildings. The harem steward el-Hâc Süleyman Agha built a primary school and a lecture room on the road in front of the mosque and endowed part of his property to them; Süleyman Agha died in the Hejaz in 1169 (1756), and his children were called "the Sons of the Harem Steward". By the end of the nineteenth century this school was ruined and out of use. At this time, for the students of Köprülü Hacı Hâfız Mustafa Tevfik Efendi, one of the well-known scholars of Amasya, Cünûnzâde el-Hâc Mustafa Agha, one of the city's notables, built a wooden madrasa on the empty plot to the west of the mosque in 1310 (1892-93). Tevfik Efendi moved to Sofular, repaired the ruined school to the north of the mosque as a lecture room and his own residence, and began teaching the second group of his students there. Hüsâmeddîn describes the scene thus: in front of the mosque is the dârülhadis, on its right the madrasa, on its left what was once the dârülkurrâ, and opposite it the lecture room of the learned, and for this reason the place is "gayet feyznâk", a most blessed spot.

Osman Fevzi Olcay remembers this Sofular Madrasa from his own youth in his Amasya Hâtıraları. In his account the madrasa consisted of five or six rooms built in the modest area inside the Sofular Mosque; on the right side of the street there was also a separate building with a few rooms and a lecture room. In this lecture room Köprülü Hacı Hâfız Tevfik Efendi taught and, in his free time, received his guests. The room of Abdülaziz Efendi, the provincial stamp-duty registrar, was at the corner overlooking the street; the other rooms were occupied by Şeyh Ağazâde Hâfız Ahmed and his brothers Hâfız Emin and Hâfız Muhyiddin. Olcay remembers Abdülaziz Efendi as a genial man who understood music, would take the bağlama in his lap and play, and preferred to live in the madrasa. The testimony of Olcay, who was born in the Sofular Quarter in 1887, shows that at the beginning of the twentieth century the building was still the centre of a circle of learning. A recent archival study likewise lists the Abdullah Pasha and Sofular madrasas separately among the madrasas teaching in Amasya in the twentieth century.

Professors, Imams and Preachers

Among those who served as hadith scholars in the Abdullah Pasha Dârülhadis, Hüsâmeddîn names Şermîzâde Takiyyeddin Osman Efendi and the professor Abdî Efendi. Abdî Efendi was one of the best-known men of letters of seventeenth-century Amasya. He wrote the Tezkire-i Abdî, which collects the poems and brief biographies of the poets who flourished in Amasya between 1000 and 1081 (1591-1671), and in its margins he also noted the earthquakes and unusual events that occurred in the city. Hüsâmeddîn introduces him as "şâir-i meşhûr Amasya müverrihi ve Abdullah Paşa müderrisi", the famous poet, historian of Amasya and professor of Abdullah Pasha, and records his death among the events of 1089 (1678-79). His family's bond with the mosque continued after him. His grandson Rüşdî Ahmed Efendi became the Qur'an reciter (cüzhan) of the Abdullah Pasha Mosque in 1112 (1700-01) and wrote a supplement to his grandfather's tezkire adding the poets and events of his own day; his son Hâfız Seyyid Abdurrahman Efendi in turn became imam of the mosque.

The professorship changed hands often in the eighteenth century. According to the succession given by Hüsâmeddîn, Mahmud Efendi became professor in 1098 (1686-87), Hâfız Ömer Efendi in 1101 (1689-90), and on his death in 1124 (1712) his son Hâfız Abdullah Efendi. This Abdullah Efendi, also known as Karazâde, had inherited both the imamate and the professorship from his father; in 1136 (1723-24), however, through the influence of Diyarbakırlı Kara İsmail Efendi, one of the powerful scholars of the day, the professorship was given to the latter, and in exchange Abdullah Efendi was left the sheikhship of another dârülkurrâ. Then came Ortaköylü Seyyid Abdülvehhâb Efendi in 1142 (1729-30) and his son Osman Efendi in 1145 (1732-33). Hüsâmeddîn writes plainly that this Osman Efendi, whose learning was not equal to teaching, gave up the post in 1147 and joined the notables. Thereafter Ahmed Efendi in 1147, Şeyh Mustafa Efendi in 1169, the chief reciter Hâfız Osman Efendi in 1177, Osman Efendi in 1179 (1765-66), Seyyid Hâfız Osman Efendi in 1204 (1789-90), Seyyid Mehmed Efendi in 1228 (1813), Seyyid Ebûbekir Efendi after 1246 and Maraşlı İbrahim Efendi in 1290 (1873-74) held the professorship. Seküköylüzâde Hâfız el-Hâc Osman Efendi, who took up the post in 1179 on the death of Gevüklü Hacı Osman Efendi, also carried on the lessons in Bukhârî and Muslim that his father-in-law had given in the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, and died in 1189 (1775). Hüsâmeddîn remembers him as a famous hadith scholar; it is said that among those who listened to the lessons on Bukhârî that he recited and explained after the afternoon prayer in the three holy months, there were some who wept.

The posts of imam and preacher at the mosque also stayed within certain families. In 1033 (1624), during the repercussions in Amasya of the rebellion of Abaza Mehmed Pasha, the preacher of the Abdullah Pasha Mosque, Şeyh Yâkub Efendizâde Sinan Efendi, was forced to hand the preachership to his son Nasuh Çelebi because he was regarded as a partisan of Abaza. Hâfız Seyyid Abdurrahman Efendi, the great-grandson of Abdî Efendi, was imam of the mosque, and when he died in 1197 (1782-83) his son Hâfız Seyyid Ahmed Efendi succeeded him; when he in turn died in 1234 (1818-19), the imamate passed to his son Hâfız Seyyid Mehmed Efendi. The chief reciter Hâfız Yûsuf Efendi also served as imam for a time, and Yenicelizâde Abdullah Efendi, later an imam and preacher of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, learned the variant readings of the Qur'an from him. The mosque's pulpit preachers and Qur'an reciters are also named one by one in Hüsâmeddîn's biographies.

Abdullah Pasha's Grave and His Descendants

Abdullah Pasha's grave lies in the courtyard reached through the passage between the eastern cell and the prayer hall. Some compilations mention a hexagonal Abdullah Pasha Tomb of rubble stone in the courtyard. Since this information appears only in sources of a compilatory nature and does not match the description in the TDV entry exactly, it should be treated with caution; what is certain is that the pasha's grave lies in this part of the building. Hüsâmeddîn also writes that the pasha's eldest son, Abdüsselam Bey, was buried in the prayer hall of the mosque. The same source records that a son of the pasha named Abdülganî also died in 890.

The best known of the pasha's sons is Abdülkerim Bey. According to Hüsâmeddîn, Abdülkerim Bey entered the finance bureau in the time of Bayezid II, came to the fore with his fine siyakat script and his skill in financial affairs, became third treasurer in 910 AH (1504-05), rose under Selim I (Selim the Grim) to the post of chief treasurer, served as registrar and treasurer of Arabia and Aleppo at the conquest of Aleppo, and then for a time served as nişancı (chancellor) in the Imperial Council. The same source reports that he arranged his father's endowments, endowed his own properties as well and appointed staff to some mosques, and that he died at the beginning of 930 AH, that is, around 1523-24. Abdülkerim Bey, treasurer and chancellor, remained in Istanbul, and the management of the endowment in Amasya passed to his brother İskender Bey. İskender Bey administered the endowment as trustee as one of the notables of Amasya and died in 931 (1524-25). Of his sons, Abdülkerim Bey became trustee, Ali Bey fell as a martyr in the Rhodes campaign in 927 (1521) while a sanjak governor, and another son was Veli Bey. İskender Bey's son Abdülkerim, known as Kerim Çelebi, is also introduced separately as a native of Amasya.

The endowment was administered thereafter for several centuries by the pasha's descendants. At the beginning of the seventeenth century one of the trustees was Mehmed Bey son of Abdülkerim Bey son of İskender Bey son of Abdullah Pasha. His son Abdülkerim Pasha, known as "Hacı Key Pasha", distinguished himself in the fighting against the brigands and became alaybey (commander of the provincial cavalry) of Amasya, and in the service of Kuyucu Murad Pasha he rose to the governorship of Çankırı and then to the beylerbeyships of Ankara, of Kars in 1025 (1616), of Salonica in 1029 (1620) and of Silistra in 1032 (1623). According to Hüsâmeddîn's chronicle, when the trustee Abdullah Paşazâde Veli Bey died in 1031 (1622), the trusteeship was given to his son Abdî Bey and his cousin Hacı Mustafa Bey. Hüseyin Bey, who became trustee on Hacı Mustafa Bey's death in 1052 (1642), was the ancestor of the branch known as Hacı Paşazâde. Hüsâmeddîn writes that Evliya Çelebi, who came to Amasya in 1058 (1648), stayed as a guest in his mansion, that Hüseyin Bey administered the endowment well for some nine years and enlarged it by adding cash and income-producing buildings, and that he died in 1061 (1651). His son Hacı Abdülkerim Pasha rose from the cavalry, distinguished himself on the Baghdad campaign and became beylerbey of Batum, and after returning on dismissal he became trustee of his grandfather's endowment in 1080 (1669-70) and died in 1083 (1672-73). In the eighteenth century Hâfız el-Hâc Ahmed Bey became trustee of the endowment together with his brothers when his father el-Hâc Abdullah Bey died in 1158 (1745), distinguished himself in the wars of Nadir Shah, became alaybey of Amasya and died in 1172 (1759). Seyyid el-Hâc Hasan Bey, who died in 1229 (1814), was also a trustee of the endowment. Hüsâmeddîn gives the family's genealogy without a break from the fifteenth-century founder down to the nineteenth century.

Contributions to the endowment also came from outside. Rûznâmeci Ahmed Efendi, son of Abdullah Çelebi of Amasya, before his death in 978 (1570) endowed four thousand two hundred akçe, setting aside two thousand of it for the furnishings of the Abdullah Pasha Mosque at Sofular and one thousand for the upkeep of the primary school at Sofular. His daughter Fâtıma Hatun had these conditions entered in the registers of the chief judge of Rumelia, and Hüsâmeddîn states that he saw these lines in the register. The detailed items of the endowment's income and expenditure, however, do not appear in the publications consulted.

Later Periods and Today

The TDV entry states that renowned hadith scholars taught in this foundation throughout the Ottoman period; Hüsâmeddîn's list of professors, reaching into the nineteenth century, confirms this. The dârülkurrâ disappeared over time, and the school and wooden madrasa around the mosque have not survived either. Today the building is used only as a mosque and is in good repair. The mosque is open to visitors during the day outside prayer times. Seen from the street to the north, the door rising up its stairs, the dome on its tall drum and the minaret form a single whole; considered together with the nearby Çilehane Mosque and the tombs around Pirler Park, the building is a tangible trace of the intellectual life of Amasya in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Chronology

1242: The Çankırı Dârülhadis, regarded as the oldest dârülhadis in Anatolia, is built.

1425: Murad II founds the Dârülhadis Madrasa in Edirne.

1455-56 (860 AH): Abdullah Pasha's father, the imperial treasurer el-Hâc Sinan Bey, is executed.

1473 (878 AH): Abdullah Bey distinguishes himself in the war against Uzun Hasan.

1481 (886 AH): Bayezid II ascends the throne; Abdullah Bey becomes treasurer to Şehzade Ahmed, governor of Amasya.

1482 (887 AH): Abdullah Pasha becomes lala of Şehzade Ahmed.

1484 (889 AH): Abdullah Pasha is recorded as having become a beylerbey.

1485 (890 AH): According to the inscription the dârülhadis is completed; the TDV entry and the presentation of the provincial directorate of culture and tourism also give this year.

1490-91 (896 AH): Tanman gives this year as the date of death of the founder, Hacısinanbeyzâde Abdullah Pasha; Hüsâmeddîn places his death in 890.

1501-1502 (907 AH): The endowment deed is drawn up by Abdullah Pasha's sons. Some sources give 1502 as the year of construction.

1505 (911 AH): Abdülkerim Bey has a dârülkurrâ added to the east of the building; this part has not survived.

1524-25 (931 AH): İskender Bey, trustee of the endowment, dies.

1526: The Osman Çelebi Dârülhadis opens in Amasya.

1570 (978 AH): Rûznâmeci Ahmed Efendi leaves an endowment for the furnishings of the mosque.

1648 (1058 AH): Evliya Çelebi stays as a guest in the mansion of Hüseyin Bey, trustee of the endowment.

1678-79 (1089 AH): Abdî Efendi, professor of Abdullah Pasha and author of the Tezkire-i Abdî, dies.

1892-93 (1310 AH): Cünûnzâde el-Hâc Mustafa Agha builds the wooden Sofular Madrasa to the west of the mosque.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources