Amasya is known in Ottoman history as the sanjak of the princes, but the staffs that came to the city with those princes, and were trained there, supplied a considerable share of the men who reached the empire's highest offices. Among those who held posts such as grand vizier, vizier, military judge (kazasker) and mufti, some were born in Amasya, some rose to prominence while serving in the city, and some were simply formed within the administrative order of this sanjak. Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha is the best known of them. His detailed biography is told in a separate article, so he is treated only briefly here and the emphasis falls on the statesmen who came before and after him.

The Sanjak System and the Training of Statesmen

When an Ottoman prince reached a certain age he was sent to a provincial sanjak, accompanied by a lala (tutor-guardian), a treasurer, a chancellor and a staff of scribes. The sanjak was a small-scale model of state administration: the prince convened his own council, dealt with taxes and troops, and dispensed justice. Amasya counted among the busiest of these princely sanjaks; Çelebi Mehmed, then Murad, Bayezid and Ahmed, among others, resided there. The lalas and bureaucrats who served beside a prince usually moved to the centre when he took the throne and rose to posts such as vizier and beylerbey (governor-general).

This system joined two separate sources of talent in the city. On one side were staffs who arrived with the prince, either of devshirme origin or appointed from elsewhere. On the other, Amasya's long-established families, its madrasas and its pious endowments (waqfs) drew the young men who grew up in the city into the same circle. Family names such as Tâcîzâde, Müeyyedzâde and Atabeyzâde are examples of this second group. The figures discussed here come from both groups; the birthplace, origin and nature of each one's tie to Amasya are noted separately, because the sources often disagree on these points.

An Example from Before the Ottomans: Hacı Şadgeldi

Among the emirs who governed Amasya before Ottoman rule, Hacı Şadgeldi holds a distinct place as a statesman who conducted learning and administration together. His father, Hacı Kutluşah, was an emir installed at the head of Amasya in 1347 under the Eretna state. The sources do not agree on Kutluşah's origin; some accounts call him the slave and adopted son of the Seljuk emir Taceddin Altunbaş, while other studies describe Şadgeldi's paternal grandmother as Altunbaş's daughter. Şadgeldi was appointed emir of Amasya by his father in late summer 1359, lost the city briefly after Kutluşah was defeated and killed by the Karamanids, and took it back in 1361 or 1362, governing for a second time.

Something is known of the staff of the second period: Sirâceddin Muhammed Bey, emir of Niksar, was made vizier; Gümüşlüoğlu Hacı Sinâneddin Yusuf was appointed treasurer; and Cemâleddin el-Aksarâyî was made judge of Amasya and teacher at the Dârü'l-İlim. Aksarâyî was a scholar who had studied with the same teacher as the emir, and he later also took on the office of military judge. He states that he wrote his Persian work el-Es'ile ve'l-Ecvibe at the suggestion of Şemseddin Ahmed el-Hac Şadgeldi Pasha, son of Kutlu Şah, emir of Amasya, with the local population's familiarity with that language in mind. In this period the Amasya citadel was repaired, the old mint was renewed and a paper workshop was established; the Saraçhane Mosque, which stands today on Ziya Paşa Boulevard, is also attached to the emir by its date of 1372.

Şadgeldi's end came in his struggle with Kadı Burhaneddin. Before proclaiming his sovereignty at Sivas in 1381, Kadı Burhaneddin, who had risen from being the Eretna regent to founding a state of his own, removed the emir of Amasya, his principal rival. According to Yasar, before the battle Burhaneddin kept Şadgeldi occupied with envoys and letters while having propaganda spread in his army that Şadgeldi was "a slave's son"; the military judge Aksarâyî and the mufti İzzeddin Muhammed Amâsî were of the view that war should not be entered into hastily. The emir was killed in battle in the autumn of 1381; the sources differ on the place of his death, and one study gives Tokat. He lies in the tomb in the Halifet Gazi Cemetery, and the inscription on his sarcophagus calls him "fortunate, martyr, slain." His son Fahreddin Ahmed Bey kept the emirate going for a time; the entry of Amasya under Ottoman rule appears as 1393 in some studies and 1403 in others.

Bayezid Pasha: The Lala Who Carried a Prince

Bayezid Pasha, the lala of Çelebi Mehmed, is among the first great Ottoman statesmen to emerge from Amasya and reach the grand vizierate. His date of birth is unknown. Academic studies accept that he was born in Amasya; in the endowment deed drawn up for the soup kitchen (imaret) he built there, his father's name is recorded as Yahşi Bey. Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar writes that Yahşi Bey was a native of Amasya descended from an emir, but this line of descent has not been confirmed by documents. The Byzantine historian Doukas, a contemporary, calls him an Albanian-born slave; in the nineteenth century Mustafa Vazih Efendi of Amasya links him to a Bosnian dynasty, while the Sicill-i Osmanî says he was trained in the Enderun. Since these records do not fit together, the question of origin must be left open; in any case Amasya opened to him the door of state service.

According to Doukas, after the rout at Ankara in 1402 Bayezid Pasha carried the young Prince Mehmed on his back away from the battlefield and brought him to Amasya by collecting bread village by village. The details rest on a contemporary witness and have a legendary flavour; that the prince reached Amasya safely is certain. Throughout the Interregnum the pasha did not leave Mehmed Çelebi's side. According to Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, he helped re-establish Ottoman authority against local forces around Amasya, went as envoy to the Serbian Despot during the struggle with Musa Çelebi (relying on Hoca Sadeddin), and commanded the army at the Battle of Çamurlu near Sofia on 5 July 1413. He was made grand vizier in the same year; the rank of beylerbey of Rumeli, in Keskin's account, was granted as a reward for the success of the 1415 Karaman campaign, whereas TDV places it in 1413.

On the 1415 campaign, when the sultan fell ill, he is recorded as taking over command of the army and capturing Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey. He also took part in suppressing the movement of Sheikh Bedreddin; because the sources vary on the date of that event between 1416 and 1420, no year is given here, and the claim of Bedreddin's grandson Hafız Halil that the pasha was responsible for the execution rests on a single account. When Çelebi Mehmed died in Edirne in 1421, the pasha concealed the news for about forty days; besides preventing disorder before Prince Murad reached the city, the fact that the pretender Mustafa, held hostage in Byzantium, would be freed on the sultan's death has also been counted as a reason for concealment. When Murad II took the throne he was sent against the Pseudo-Mustafa who had appeared in Rumeli. At Sazlıdere near Edirne, when most of his soldiers went over to the other side, he was forced to surrender and was killed at the instigation of Cüneyd Bey of İzmir; the date of death is given as July 1421 or, by Keskin's reckoning, 29 August 1421. Ottoman historians do not impute treachery to him; they write that the other viziers, who envied him, had a hand in his being sent on this campaign.

His trace in Amasya is the Bayezid Pasha Mosque, in the Beyazıtpaşa quarter on the east bank of the Yeşilırmak. Called an "imaret" in the endowment deed, the building is the first example around Amasya of the zaviye-type (inverted-T plan) mosque of early Ottoman architecture. Its entrance inscription records that it was built in Muharram 817 (March-April 1414); the five-domed last-congregation porch dates from 1419. The text of the endowment deed is carved on the outer facade of the porch in an inscription band 25.5 metres long. According to the deed a staff of seventeen served there: a sheikh, an imam, a muezzin, a naqib, five Qur'an reciters, and kitchen and bakery workers. The inscriptions name the architect Ebu Bekr and also two craftsmen who describe themselves as "freedman" and "among the slaves" of Bayezid Pasha; Keskin reads these craftsmen as captured non-Muslims and thinks the pasha gathered his own building team around him. The pasha also had a madrasa, a mosque and a han built in Bursa, took on the repair of the Orhan Imaret, and wished to have the poet Ahmedî render the Persian romance Veys ü Râmîn into Turkish.

Yörgüç Pasha: Murad's Lala, Beylerbey of Rum

Yörgüç Pasha's birthplace and date of birth are unknown. In Amasya literature he is called the son of Atabek Abdullah; TDV notes that this name cannot be counted as reliable genealogical information, while another source takes his father to be of South Slavic origin and ties his name to the form "Jorgič." In inscriptions and on gravestones the name is written "Yörgüç," and his epithet is Celâleddin. Because there is no definite document, it is possible to say neither that he came from a family of Amasya nor that he was of Slavic origin.

When Çelebi Mehmed sent his twelve-year-old son Prince Murad to the province of Rum, in 1414 according to most sources, he assigned Yörgüç Pasha to him as lala. The lala was the person who actually governed the sanjak in the name of the child prince and prepared him for affairs of state. According to Yasar, the disobedience of Hüseyin Bey, Bey of Canik, was put down by sending the pasha's slave Polad Bey, and on this success he received the rank of vizier; the date of the event still needs to be verified. After Murad took the throne in 1421 and crushed the revolt of the Pseudo-Mustafa, he appointed Yörgüç Pasha beylerbey of Rum in 1423. The beylerbeylik meant the administration of a province centred on Amasya; in the years Yörgüç Pasha was beylerbey (given in the sources as 1422 to 1435) this province, made up of the sanjaks of Sivas, Tokat, Çorum and Samsun, was called Rumiyye, the Province of Rum. The pasha cleared the Amasya and Tokat region of brigands and dealt with disobedient groups such as the Kızılkocaoğulları, and the incorporation of the Ordu and Çarşamba area into Ottoman administration around 1427 also belongs to this period. The sources further relate that Sultan Murad's trust was so great that the pasha was allowed to strike coins in his own name; of the character of this "Yörgüç Pasha akçe" there are no details.

The inscription of his complex in Amasya bears the date 834 (1430); some local sources give 1428. The complex consisted of a mosque, madrasa, imaret, han, hamam and tomb; today only the mosque and the tomb survive. The mosque has an inverted-T plan, and the alternation of red and white marble in its cut-stone walls draws the eye. The tomb holds four marble sarcophagi: the pasha's, his son Yunus Bey's, and those of his daughters Hundi Hatun and Sitti Hatun. From waqf and survey records it is known that he also had hamams, hans, mosques and imarets built in Tokat, Gümüşhacıköy, Havza, Kavak, Köprü and İskilip. According to TDV he died in Amasya in April-May 1442 and was buried in the tomb of his own mosque; his sons Hızır and Mustafa fell as martyrs at the Battle of Varna in 1444. A local article says he was removed from office in 1434 on account of age; this information does not appear in TDV.

Hızır Pasha and His Son Mehmed Pasha

Yörgüç Pasha's brother Hayreddin Hızır Pasha is called "the great emir Hacı Hızır Pasha" in his endowment deeds. The family is tied to two lines of sources: according to one view they are the Atabeyzâdes, descended from the Seljuk atabeg Nasıreddin Ahmed, with the Yörgüç line known as "Yörgüç Pashazâde" and Hızır's children as "Hızır Pashazâde"; according to the other they descend from Gazi Ali Bey, son of Köse Mihal, that is, the Amasya branch of the Mihaloğulları. TDV's Mihaloğulları entry bases the second view on endowment-deed records, while Muhammet Okudan notes that the matter is disputed. The brotherhood is the same in more than one document; the question of descent remains open.

According to Okudan, who follows the account of Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin, Hızır Pasha rose to the position of third vizier under Murad II, was dismissed when Mehmed the Conqueror took the throne, and was appointed surre emini for 1453, that is, administrator of the gifts sent to Mecca and Medina and of the pilgrim caravan; on returning from the pilgrimage he settled in Amasya. Keskin and some compilations present him as lala of Prince Alaeddin and of Prince Bayezid, and one compilation adds that he was appointed governor of Amasya in 1456 and became the first sanjak governor of Trabzon after its conquest. This last claim conflicts with other sources; Kasım Bey is also named as the Trabzon sanjak governor, and there is no document showing that the name "Hızır Bey" is the same person as Hızır Pasha of Amasya. For this reason the information on his lalaship, governorship and Trabzon should not be treated as established fact but read as what the sources report.

The documents that show Hızır Pasha's life most solidly are three endowment deeds, all in Arabic and dated Hijri 870 (1465), in the archive of the General Directorate of Foundations. The first endows landholding shares in Meykereymos, İmir, Yağıbasan and neighbouring villages; with the income five Qur'an reciters are to read at the grave of his grandson, Şehit Oruç Bey, two days a week. The second endows villages and plots near the Maden district attached to Gümüşpazar and assigns part of the income to the teacher of the madrasa his brother Yörgüç Pasha had built in Amasya. The third arranges the madrasa he founded in the north-west of the city, and the staff is listed one by one: fifteen silver dirhams a day to the teacher, with twenty measures of wheat and twenty of barley a year; eight dirhams a day to students lodged in the eight cells; and separate payments to the imam, the muezzin, the baker and the cook. The madrasa's revenues came from villages around Suluova, Havza and Doğantepe, from a hamam and from two hans. The Hızır Pasha Mosque was built in 1466; it has an inverted-T plan, and because of the slope of the land its entrance is from the east. The waqf lasted until the Republic; the 1520 survey register puts its income at 23,300 akçe, and in 1576 it is 40,605 akçe.

The sources do not agree on Hızır Pasha's date of death: Okudan, following Abdizade, gives February 1484, while Keskin gives 871/1466. The place of the grave likewise varies by source, inside the tomb or in front of its door. His son Mehmed Pasha was, according to TDV, vizier of Bayezid II and lala of Prince Ahmed. Keskin, relying on the Sicill-i Osmanî and Hoca Sadeddin, outlines a career of sanjak governor of Semendire, beylerbey of Rumeli and vizier in 1483; his death is 900/1495 in TDV and 904/1498 in Keskin. His complex on the bank of the Yeşilırmak was completed in January 1486; of the complex, made up of a mosque, madrasa, imaret, tomb, zaviye and fountain, only the mosque and the tomb remain today. The marble minbar of the mosque is adorned with rûmî and arabesque motifs in low relief, and its wooden door leaves are in the Amasya Museum. In 1493 Mehmed Pasha added thirteen villages, seven mills and a shop to his father's waqf; TDV records that of the graves around the tomb the first belongs to Hızır Pasha, the second to himself and the third to the Halveti sheikh Habib Karamânî.

Divan Men Raised in Prince Bayezid's Amasya

Prince Bayezid's long tenure as sanjak governor in Amasya meant that young men born in the city grew up in the immediate vicinity of the court. The two most important names of this circle are Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi and Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi; their paths are joined by the office of military judge and by a Janissary uprising.

Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi was born in Amasya in Safar 860 (January 1456), grandson of Şemseddin Müeyyed Çelebi, a Kâzerûnî sheikh of the Divriklizâde family, and son of Alâeddin Ali Çelebi. When his father, sheikh of the Yâkut Pasha Zaviye, became chancellor of Prince Bayezid in 1461, the young Abdurrahman entered the prince's close circle. It is reported on the authority of Müstakimzâde that he learned calligraphy from Sheikh Hamdullah. Those who envied him complained to Mehmed the Conqueror that he had been influential in accustoming the prince to wine and entertainment, and the sultan ordered his execution together with the prince's chamberlain Hızırpaşazâde Hacı Mahmud; before the order reached Amasya, with Prince Bayezid's help, Müeyyedzâde fled in 1479 to Aleppo, then in Mamluk hands. From there he went to Shiraz and received a licence from Celâleddin ed-Devvânî. When Bayezid took the throne he returned to Istanbul; in 1486 he was appointed teacher at the Sahn-ı Semân Madrasa, in 1494 he became judge of Edirne, in September 1501 kazasker of Anatolia and four years later kazasker of Rumeli. When the Janissaries attacked the supporters of Prince Ahmed in 1511, his mansion was plundered together with that of Câfer Çelebi, and he was dismissed from the post of kazasker. After Selim the Grim took the throne he was made judge of Karaferye and, in 1513, kazasker of Rumeli again; he was dismissed a second time on the return from Çaldıran and died on 13 September 1516. The tezkires say he wrote poetry in Arabic, Persian and Turkish under the pen name Hâtemî, though no divan of his has been found; his chronogram verses on the deaths of notable figures are considered valuable. He took scholars and poets such as Kemalpaşazâde, Ebüssuûd Efendi, Zâtî and Necâtî Bey under his patronage: Kemalpaşazâde wrote his history under his influence and at Bayezid II's command, and Necâtî compiled his divan in his name. After his death Selim is said to have recalled his virtue and learning and remarked, "What a pity that we reached his last days"; according to TDV he was buried in the cemetery of the Eyüp Sultan Tomb. In the count Selim ordered after the dispersal of his books, 2,112 volumes were recorded; the 7,000 volumes mentioned in the sources appear exaggerated, according to TDV.

Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi's father, Tâcî Bey, was Prince Bayezid's treasurer in Amasya; he was known as a poet, secretary and calligrapher and died in 890 (1485). Câfer Çelebi was born in Amasya in August 1452 (TDV); other sources also give 1459 and 1463-64. After his first schooling in Amasya he went to Bursa and received his mülâzemet from Hacıhasanzâde; he served as madrasa teacher and judge in Simav and took on the administration of the waqf of the Bayezid II Imaret in Edirne. The Hevesnâme, which he wrote around 1494, is a mesnevi that describes the buildings of Istanbul and tells a love affair; according to TDV it is considered original in composition, style and verse technique. In 1497 he became nişancı of the imperial divan, with a rank above the treasurer's; he took part in the Modon and Koron campaign (1500), wrote the victory letter, and wrote the letters sent to the Mamluk sultan of Egypt. In this office, which drew the sultan's tughra and conducted the divan's correspondence, he developed divan chancery writing and is regarded as the initiator of ornate prose.

In Bayezid's last years he supported Prince Ahmed; on 21 September 1511 Janissaries loyal to Selim attacked the houses of officials loyal to Ahmed, and Bayezid dismissed the nişancı Câfer Çelebi, Grand Vizier Hersekzâde Ahmed Pasha, Rumeli Beylerbey Hasan Pasha and Kazasker Müeyyedzâde. After Selim took the throne his return to an official post came only in December 1513. On the Çaldıran campaign he wrote the letters sent to Shah Ismail and the victory letters after the battle, and in September-October 1514 he became kazasker of Anatolia. When the sultan wintered in Amasya on 4 December 1514, the Janissaries rebelled in February 1515 and attacked the houses of Pîrî Mehmed Pasha, Halîmî Çelebi and Câfer Çelebi. After Selim returned to Istanbul he investigated those responsible; Vizier İskender Pasha and the sekbanbaşı Balyemez Osman Ağa were killed at once, and Câfer Çelebi was executed on 18 August 1515. According to the account Gökbilgin relates, Selim asked him, "What is the penalty for a man who incites the soldiers of Islam to rebellion?" and received the answer, "If it is proved, he is a murderer"; other accounts speak of a satire, or of the claim that he caused the killing of Pîrî Pasha. There is no single definite verdict on the reason for the execution, and the biographical dictionaries write that Selim felt remorse. His body was buried by his brother Sâdî Çelebi in the graveyard of his mosque in Balat. No monument or grave bearing his name is known in present-day Amasya.

Zenbilli Ali Efendi and the Office of Mufti

Zenbilli Ali Cemâlî Efendi is a figure under whom, while he served as mufti of Istanbul, an important step was taken in the institutionalisation of the office that would become the shaykh al-Islam. His birthplace is not certain. Hüseyin Hüsameddin writes that he was born in Amasya in the Eslem Hatun quarter; TDV treats this claim with suspicion because of the author's tendency to present many people as natives of Amasya. Some sources count him a Karamanian, and it is also claimed that he was born in Aksaray. That he bears the nisba Cemâlî is known to be because he descended from Cemâleddin Aksarâyî.

His tie to Amasya is documented through his posts as mufti and madrasa teacher. After serving as mufti of Amasya he taught in Bursa; when the Amasya Bayezid Madrasa was completed in 1486 he returned to Amasya as teacher and mufti once more. When, at the circumcision feast of his sons in 1491, Prince Ahmed put his own teacher Birgivîzâde Mustafa Efendi ahead of the city's scholars, he left his post and returned to Istanbul; TDV connects this with the reserved attitude of Amasya's Sunni scholars and mystics towards Prince Ahmed. When the Istanbul mufti Efdalzâde Hamîdüddin Efendi died in 1503 the office was given to him; he took the seat of fatwa in mid-1504 and remained in office under Selim the Grim and Süleyman the Magnificent as well. At the conquest of Rhodes he led the first Friday prayer in the Cathedral of Saint John. When he fell ill in 1523 he was asked to appoint a deputy, and so his tenure as mufti reached twenty-four years; he died around May-June 1526 and was buried in the graveyard of the mosque and school he had built in Zeyrek. According to tradition he told Selim the Grim that officials could not be killed by the sultan's order, and that execution was possible only by a court decision and the mufti's fatwa; TDV notes that such accounts may serve to stress the importance of the shaykh al-Islam's office, then taking shape as a new official institution.

Köprü and Merzifon: The Köprülüs and Kara Mustafa Pasha

Köprülü Mehmed Pasha was not a native of Amasya. According to TDV he was born in the village of Rudnik in the sanjak of Berat in Albania, was recruited through the devshirme and trained in the Enderun. For a time he lived in Köprü (Vezirköprü), a town then attached to Amasya, where he married Ayşe Hanım, and the name "Köprülü" took hold from there. He served as treasurer of Hüsrev Pasha, served briefly as sanjak governor of Amasya after Hüsrev's killing, and was appointed to this post once more later. Under the grand viziership of Sultanzâde Mehmed Pasha he became governor of Trabzon with the rank of vizier. On 15 September 1656 he accepted the grand vizierate after setting four conditions; among them were that his petitions be carried out and that appointments not be interfered with. In a grand vizierate of more than five years he suppressed the revolt of Abaza Hasan Pasha, recovered Bozcaada and Limni, and conducted the Transylvanian campaign; the Celâlî and firearms inspection in Anatolia, however, was sharply criticised by contemporary historians because of the thousands of people killed. He died in Edirne on 31 October 1661 and was buried in his complex at Çemberlitaş; his son Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha succeeded him.

Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha was born in 1634-35 in the village of Marınca (today Karamustafapaşa) in Merzifon. According to TDV his father was a timar-holding sipahi named Oruç Bey, who fell as a martyr in Murad IV's siege of Baghdad; when Mustafa was orphaned at four, he received a good madrasa education under the protection of Köprülü Mehmed Bey, then sanjak governor of Amasya and a friend of his father, together with Köprülü's sons. In another account he was the son of a sipahi named Derviş and was born in 1626-27. He became Köprülü's son-in-law, served as silahdar and telhisçi, and when he brought the news of the conquest of Yanova he was made second master of the horse (mîrâhûr-ı sânî) and beylerbey of Silistre. Under the grand vizierate of Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha he was kapudan pasha from 1661 to 1666 and served as deputy grand vizier. After Fâzıl Ahmed's death in 1676 he became grand vizier on 5 November 1676, at the age of forty-one.

His grand vizierate of about seven years began with the capture of Çehrin Fortress in 1678 in connection with the Ukrainian Cossack question; a peace with Russia was concluded at Bahçesaray in 1681. The Siege of Vienna in 1683 ended in the failure of the grand vizier who had persuaded the sultan to go on campaign, and Kara Mustafa Pasha was executed in Belgrade on 25 December 1683. TDV finds Cantemir's claims that he wished to become German emperor or to replace Sultan Mehmed baseless; contemporary sources describe him as intelligent and brave, but proud and stubborn. In Merzifon he had a mosque, library, children's school, han, hamam and bedesten built, a complex at Çarşıkapı, and endowments at Kamaniçe, Çorum, Tokat, İzmir and Aleppo. His son Ali Pasha, known by the epithet "Maktulzâde," served in various state offices.

Ziya Pasha and the Amasya Governorship

The Tanzimat-era poet and statesman Ziya Pasha was not a native of Amasya; he was born in the Kandilli quarter of Istanbul. His tie to the city is his post as mutasarrıf: in line with Âlî Pasha's decision to keep him away from the capital, he served as mutasarrıf of Amasya in 1863-1865. The city was then in an economic crisis. According to TDV, Ziya Pasha had six government offices, six schools, a secondary school (idadî), six clock towers, a prison, a bedesten and many workplaces built in the centre of Amasya and its five districts, and had new roads opened in the centre; these activities, known as the "Amasya reform," appear in the narrower tally given by Halil İnalcık from the work of Kenan Akyüz as a bridge, a market, a bedesten, a government office, six primary schools, a secondary school and roads.

Origin and Record Problems in the Sources

For many of the people discussed, birthplace, descent or date of death varies with the source. For Bayezid Pasha there are separate descriptions: from Amasya, of Albanian origin, a member of a Bosnian dynasty, an Enderun graduate; for Yörgüç Pasha the views that he was the son of Atabek Abdullah and that he was of South Slavic origin live side by side; Hızır Pasha's death is tied to two different dates between 1466 and 1484; for his son Mehmed Pasha's death 1495 and 1498 are given; and Zenbilli Ali Efendi's Amasya origin is a claim TDV receives with doubt.

Chronology

1347: Hacı Kutluşah is appointed emir of Amasya under the Eretna state.

1359: Hacı Şadgeldi is appointed emir of Amasya by his father.

1372: Date given for the construction of the Saraçhane (Şadgeldi Pasha) Mosque.

1381: Şadgeldi is killed in battle with Kadı Burhaneddin.

1402: Battle of Ankara; Bayezid Pasha brings Prince Mehmed to Amasya (according to Doukas).

5 July 1413: Battle of Çamurlu; Musa Çelebi is defeated and Bayezid Pasha becomes grand vizier.

1414: Construction inscription of the Bayezid Pasha Mosque in Amasya (March-April). Prince Murad is sent to the province of Rum and Yörgüç Pasha becomes lala.

1421: Çelebi Mehmed dies; Bayezid Pasha surrenders to the Pseudo-Mustafa at Sazlıdere and is killed.

1423: Yörgüç Pasha is appointed beylerbey of Rum.

1430: Date of the inscription of the Yörgüç Pasha Mosque (1428 in some sources).

April-May 1442: Yörgüç Pasha dies in Amasya.

1453: Hızır Pasha is appointed surre emini, according to Abdizade's account.

January 1456: Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman is born in Amasya.

1465: Hızır Pasha's three endowment deeds are drawn up.

1466: The Hızır Pasha Mosque is built.

January 1486: The Mehmed Pasha Complex is completed; the year the Amasya Bayezid Madrasa is completed.

1497: Câfer Çelebi becomes nişancı of the divan.

September 1501: Müeyyedzâde becomes kazasker of Anatolia.

21 September 1511: Janissaries attack the houses of officials loyal to Prince Ahmed; Câfer Çelebi and Müeyyedzâde are dismissed.

18 August 1515: Câfer Çelebi is executed.

1526: Zenbilli Ali Efendi dies around this date.

15 September 1656: Köprülü Mehmed Pasha becomes grand vizier.

5 November 1676: Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha becomes grand vizier.

25 December 1683: Kara Mustafa Pasha is executed in Belgrade.

1863-1865: Ziya Pasha serves as mutasarrıf of Amasya.

Sources

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, Amasya Tarihi (Amasya Belediyesi neşri). amasya.gov.tr

Academic studies

  • Abdülkadir Özcan, "Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Köprülü Mehmed Paşa", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Müeyyedzâde Abdurrahman Efendi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Zenbilli Ali Efendi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Ebru Karakaya, "Mehmed Paşa Külliyesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr). islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Mustafa Çağhan Keskin, "Bayezid Paşa: Vezir, Entelektüel, Sanat Hamisi", Osmanlı Araştırmaları, XLVIII, 2016.
  • Muhammet Okudan, "Hızır Paşa Vakıfları ve Amasya Hızır Paşa Medresesi", İtkan Akademik Araştırmalar Dergisi 2/2 (2025).
  • Çiğdem Belgin Dikmen - Ferruh Toruk, "Amasya Yörgüç Paşa Cami ve Türbesi", Social Sciences Studies Journal, 2019.

Official sources

  • "Osmanlı Dönemi" (Ottoman Period), Amasya Governorship (amasya.gov.tr).

Other sources

  • İsmail E. Erünsal, "Tâcîzâde Câfer Çelebi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, c. 39, 2010.