The Köprülü Mehmed Pasha Mosque, the largest mosque in Gümüşhacıköy, was built in 1660 at the order of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha. Its plan is a rectangle close to a square, and the building stands as one of the most visible proofs of a grand vizier's attachment to his home region and its surrounding settlements. The mosque bears the name of the founder of the long run of power that Ottoman history calls the Köprülü Era, and it has carried that name for centuries at the centre of a district known for its mining, its position on the trade routes and its bedesten. Yet the building seen today cannot be taken as the 1660 structure preserved unchanged: according to the records of Hüseyin Hüsameddin, the mosque was renewed once in the eighteenth century and, at the end of the nineteenth, was pulled down entirely because it had fallen into ruin and was rebuilt on a larger scale. The story of the building therefore reaches back to the past of the place where it stands, to the man who commissioned it, and to the local efforts that kept it standing for two hundred and fifty years.

The Past of Gümüşhacıköy

The name of the present district preserves the traces of two settlements, Gümüş and Hacıköy. In Hüsameddin's description, the town of Gümüş is a small place on the eastern slope of the İnegöl Mountain, some two kilometres south of Hacıköy; it is thought to have taken its name from the abundant silver ore in the hills behind it, and he writes that the name has appeared in the records since 575 (1179-80). Gümüş ("silver") is an area where ore has been extracted since antiquity. The slag heaps around Gümüş and the old gallery entrances, widened again and again, show that mining here reaches back into prehistory. The Danishmendname relates that Danishmend Gazi drew silver ore from the caves of this area and that, according to the tale, two batmans of silver went to the treasury every day. The account has the character of a legend, but it shows that the area was already known for its silver in the age of the Danishmendids.

The name Hacıköy, according to Hüsameddin, took shape in several stages. The settlement was first called "Kimârî" after the Kimri Turks who had been settled there; when Sadreddin Artuk et-Türkmânî of that tribe developed the town until about 780 (1378), building a mosque and a school, it took the name "Artukâbâd". Because Hacı Ahmed Çelebi, one of Artuk's descendants, lived here for a long time from 896 (1490-91) as superintendent (nâzır) of the Gümüş Mine, the town came to be called "Hacı Nâzır Köyü", a name that became "Hacı Nadır Köyü" in popular speech and was eventually shortened to "Hacıköyü". The older names survived as the names of quarters: Kimârî as "Cimâre", and Artukâbâd as a quarter name as well. To distinguish it from Avkat Hacıköyü, the town was also called "Gümüş Hacıköyü".

The area kept its importance in the Anatolian Seljuk period as well. Some researchers hold that the "Gümüş" and "Gümüşpazar" mints, where the Seljuk sultans struck coins, may have been Gümüşhacıköy in Amasya; the similarity of the lettering on coins dated 657-660 AH, and the identical spelling mistakes on them, strengthen this view. According to local records, the mint building, opened in 1248, was converted into a mosque in 1866 and opened for worship as the Darphane Mosque. Hüsameddin likewise states that coins were struck at Gümüş in the Seljuk and early Ottoman periods, that the name "Darbhâne" was for this reason given to one of its quarters, and that the mine superintendents can be traced in the records from 648 (1250). When Bayezid I (Yıldırım) took the lands held by Kadı Burhaneddin, he annexed this area to the Ottoman realm together with Kastamonu, Osmancık, Merzifon and Amasya (1398). Kutlubeyzâde Halil Bey is recorded as having been appointed superintendent of the Gümüş mine in 1403. The square-planned Halîliye (Hacı Halil Pasha) Madrasa in Gümüş, with its enclosed courtyard, was begun in 1413 and completed in 1415. This madrasa, whose courtyard is covered by a dome, has only one parallel in Turkey: the Lala Şahin Pasha Madrasa in Bursa. The madrasa was repaired by the General Directorate of Foundations in 2009.

In the Ottoman period, the mine was a resource in which the state took a direct interest. Gümüşhacıköy is named, together with Keban-Ergani and Bulgardağı, among the large mines run under the emanet system. Under this arrangement a mine superintendent appointed by the state ran the operation for a set fee, and all expenses were met from money handed to him as working capital. The large workings were grouped under the name "Ma'adin-i Hümayun" (the Imperial Mines), and the establishment of this administration is dated to 1775. In the late nineteenth century, the silver-bearing lead of Gümüşhacıköy was one of only five mines still operated directly by the state. For a time the area was also known as Gümüş Pazarı. Hüsameddin writes that the civil administration of Gümüş had formerly been in the hands of the fief-holders and mine superintendents, that in 1299 (1881-82) this authority passed to the district governors of Hacıköy, and that the mine, after yielding revenue until 1294 (1877), had its operations halted. In 1299 Hacıköy became the seat of the district, while Gümüş, formerly the district seat, became the seat of a subdistrict. Mining and trade, the two pillars of the area's wealth, sustained one another.

A Town on the Roads

Gümüşhacıköy lay on the routes linking Anatolia to the Black Sea coast and to the east, and travellers mention it again and again for that reason. The French traveller and merchant Tavernier described Hacıköy in 1632 as a fairly large town with two caravanserais. Boullaye le Gouz, who passed through in 1647, inferred from the appearance of the ruins that the town had once been a larger centre, and wrote that it had two mosques. Evliya Çelebi, too, stayed three days in the district of Gümüş in the same years and described Hacıköy as "a place most fit to be made prosperous, without equal". The sentence points to a place well suited to development but still waiting for it.

The importance of the road showed itself in military events as well. Hüsameddin relates that in 1648 (1058) the dismissed governor of Sivas, Varvar Ali Pasha, marching towards Üsküdar to press his grievances, set out from Amasya and reached Çerkeş by way of Gelgiras, Gümüş and Osmancık. One of the pashas charged with stopping him was Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, who a few years later would take on the development of this very town. Local records give 1656 as the year he became grand vizier and as the beginning of the district's development through pious endowments. The mosque and its complex stand at the centre of that building effort.

Köprülü Mehmed Pasha

According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Köprülü Mehmed Pasha was born in the village of Rudnik in the sanjak of Berat in Albania; some local sources, however, write that he was born in the town of Köprü. Hüsameddin combines the two accounts: in his view Köprülü was the son of a kul recruited through the devşirme from the village of "Ruznik" in the district of Arnavut Belgradı, but was born in the town of Köprü in Amasya. Taken to Istanbul through the devşirme, he was trained in the Enderun and assigned to the imperial kitchen. Under Murad IV he joined the Great Chamber, and later served in the Imperial Treasury. Some time afterwards he was assigned to one of the cavalry regiments and sent out to the provinces. He went to the town of Köprü (today's Vezirköprü), then part of Amasya, married Ayşe Hanım, the daughter of Yusuf Ağa, and became known as Köprülü because he lived there.

Köprülü's tie to Amasya did not end with this marriage. According to Hüsameddin, when the sanjak of Amasya was granted to Tayyar Mehmed Pasha of Lâdik in late 1622 (Dhu al-Hijjah 1031), the pasha, who had been ordered to reside in Sivas, sent Köprülü Mehmed Ağa, one of the most distinguished of his aides, to Amasya as his deputy governor (mütesellim). Elsewhere Hüsameddin also writes that it was Tayyar Mehmed Pasha of Lâdik who raised Köprülü. During the revolt of Abaza Mehmed Pasha, the deputy governor Köprülü was charged with sending troops, provisions and supplies to Bâkî Bey, the alaybey of Amasya who was defending Karahisar-ı Şarkî, and later went to Karahisar himself with the forces he had gathered; when word came that Abaza was marching on Amasya, the deputy governor left the city together with the janissaries. In 1628 (Sha'ban 1037) the sanjak governor Osman Pasha appointed him deputy governor of Amasya once more, and in the same year Grand Vizier Hüsrev Pasha, marching against Abaza, took Köprülü into his retinue and later made him his treasurer. After Hüsrev Pasha was put to death, he served briefly as sanjak governor of Amasya. Köprülü's life thus crossed the region where he would later build the mosque in the capacities of deputy governor and sanjak governor as well.

In the following years he held various posts as voivode, market inspector, superintendent of the arsenal, and agha of the sipahis and of the silahdars. As sanjak governor of Çorum he took part in the Baghdad campaign of 1638, was appointed once more sanjak governor of Amasya, and then became governor of Trabzon. In 1647 he was deputy governor of Damascus. When, as beylerbey of Karaman, he was charged with suppressing the revolt of Varvar Ali Pasha, he was defeated near Çankırı and taken prisoner, and was freed by the forces of İpşir Mustafa Pasha. Hüsameddin adds a harsh note to this episode: in his account, Köprülü, to clear himself of the charge of defeat and captivity, accused Çolak Hüseyin Pasha, who had been captured with him, of deliberately failing to fight Ali Pasha, convinced Istanbul of this by writing to his patron Mimar Kasım Ağa, and Hüseyin Pasha and his men were executed as a result. This interpretation is Hüsameddin's own and does not appear in the TDV entry. During İpşir's grand vizierate the province of Tripoli in Syria was given to him, but he was dismissed before he could take up the post and returned once again to Köprü. Mimar Kasım Ağa, steward to the Valide Sultan Turhan, was promoting him for the grand vizierate; the way was opened by his appointment as a vizier of the dome, and on 15 September 1656 (26 Dhu al-Qadah 1066) he became grand vizier in place of Boynueğri Mehmed Pasha.

On accepting the seal, Köprülü set four conditions before the sultan and the valide sultan: that every memorandum he submitted be carried out; that there be no interference in appointments from the lowest rank to the highest; that his authority not be curtailed at the urging of other statesmen; and that no weight be given to the words of those who disliked him. Mehmed IV and Turhan Sultan accepted these conditions under oath. In the eight years before Köprülü, thirteen grand viziers had come and gone, and no capable figure had been found. Among his first acts in Istanbul, he exiled to Cyprus the ringleaders of the feud between the followers of Kadızâde Mehmed Efendi and those of the Sufi-minded Şeyh Abdülmecid Sivâsî, punished Abaza Ahmed Pasha, who had surrendered Bozcaada to the Venetians, and broke up the sipahi bullies who were stirring up trouble in Istanbul. He then recovered Bozcaada and Limnos from the Venetians and secured the Dardanelles. In 1658 he campaigned against György II Rákóczi, Prince of Transylvania, and took Yanova. After the Celali rebel Abaza Hasan Pasha was captured and killed in Aleppo (February 1659), he launched an inspection of Celalis and firearms across Anatolia.

This inspection is the most criticised side of Köprülü. Some 80,000 muskets were collected from the population, and many people were punished, from members of the learned class such as professors and judges as well as from the military class. The TDV entry notes that the large figures given in the sources for those killed are exaggerated. His contemporaries judged him in two quite different ways. Silâhdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa calls him "bloodthirsty" and portrays him as a vizier who funded pious works by seizing the property of those he had executed. Naîmâ, on the other hand, regards him as a great statesman who rescued the state from the difficult position it was in and brought prosperity and peace. Hüsameddin stands close to the second view and praises him as a grand vizier who "raised the Turks from their deathbed". Bringing the Janissary Corps under discipline, preventing corruption in the distribution of pay, and building a network of informers loyal to himself also belong to the same period.

At the end of a grand vizierate lasting more than five years, Köprülü, on account of his age and illness, named his son Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha as his successor, and the sultan accepted. He died on 31 October 1661 in Edirne, where he was staying with the sultan. Some Ottoman sources state that he was eighty-six at his death. His body was brought to Istanbul and buried in the complex he had built at Çemberlitaş. The Köprülü Era, associated with him, his son Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha and his son-in-law Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha, is regarded as the period of the Ottomans' last great territorial gains, the final phase of the age of stagnation and the first of decline.

Köprülü's charitable works were many. According to the TDV entry, he rebuilt the ruined Mıhçı Mosque and its school on Bozcaada, added a masjid and a school on the island, and endowed a bathhouse, shops, a windmill and an inn for their upkeep. He built inns, mosques, masjids, schools and fountains at Yanova, Rudnik, Turhal, Vezirköprü, Lefke, Cisrişugūr in the province of Damascus, Gümüşhacıköy, Taraklı in the sanjak of Bolu, and Arad in Transylvania, and to provide them with income he endowed the revenues of his freehold villages in many places, above all Limnos, Yanova, Köprü, Osmancık, Merzifon, Akhisar and Bilecik. A water channel in Vezirköprü and a fountain in the name of his wife Ayşe Hanım, a long bridge between Hendek and Sapanca, the Hakim Han and his endowments in Antalya appear on the same list. The mosque and bedesten in Gümüşhacıköy are one link in this wide network.

The Gümüş Mine Arpalık and the Founding of the Complex

Hüsameddin explains with a clear record why Köprülü developed Hacıköy in particular. According to him, the Gümüş Mine was for a time granted to Köprülü Mehmed Pasha as a personal arpalık, and he was ordered to reside there. An arpalık was a source of revenue granted to a statesman in place of salary, or for his livelihood while he was out of office. Hüsameddin does not date this grant. Since Köprülü is known to have been dismissed several times before his grand vizierate and to have withdrawn to Köprü, it may be supposed that the mine revenue was assigned to him during such a period; this, however, is an inference and has not been confirmed by any document.

According to Hüsameddin, after this connection Köprülü built at Hacıköy a very solid masonry caravanserai, a bedesten beside it, a large mosque to the north of these and a bathhouse next to the mosque, and endowed them all in the year 1071. Since the Hijri year 1071 falls between September 1660 and August 1661, this record agrees with the official descriptions that date the mosque to 1660. The complex was therefore more than a single building: the caravanserai sheltering travellers, the bedesten guarding merchants' goods, the mosque for prayer and the bathhouse for cleansing together met every need of a trading halt. The sources disagree on the date of the caravanserai and the bedesten; some recent sources date these two buildings to 1669. That date falls after Köprülü's death, which raises the possibility that the buildings were completed under his son Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha or that the date arose from some confusion; this is an inference, and no document has been found to show which is correct.

The Architecture of the Mosque

The mosque rests on a large plan close to a square. The main prayer hall is covered by a great dome on an octagonal drum. At the four corners of this dome rise four small octagonal weight towers, each with its own dome. The weight towers counter the lateral thrust of the great dome, giving the building both visual balance and structural stability. All the domes are sheathed in lead, which is why the building is known as the "lead-domed mosque".

Restraint marks the decoration. Balanced proportions and a symmetrical mass make the mosque a measured provincial interpretation of the classical Ottoman style. The scheme, in which small domes and towers are ranged around the central dome, brings the architecture itself to the fore; the building impresses through its proportions rather than through showy interior fittings.

This description belongs to the present building, and official accounts present it directly as the structure of 1660. Yet in light of the rebuilding of 1898-99 described below, it may be supposed that the present mass, with its dome and towers, belongs largely to the end of the nineteenth century, while the plan scheme may preserve traces of the earlier building. This is an inference; no survey drawing or architectural-historical study has been found showing which parts of the building survive from 1660.

Renewals and the Rebuilding of 1898-99

The mosque's first major repair was carried out by a member of the founder's own family. According to Hüsameddin, in 1170 (1756-57) Köprülüzâde Abdülbâkî Bey, son of Hâfız Ahmed Pasha and a descendant of Köprülü, while living at Hacıköy as superintendent of the Gümüş mine and holder of a zeamet, renewed the mosque, added a second bathhouse to the town and put its endowments in order. That a member of the same family was placed at the head of the mine a century later shows that the bond between the Köprülü endowment and the Gümüş mine lasted across generations.

The mosque had also settled at the centre of the town's religious and scholarly life. Hüsameddin records that el-Hâc İsmâil Efendi, one of the scholars of Hacıköy, built in 1118 (1706-07) a madrasa of seven cells and a lecture hall beside the Köprülü Mosque, as well as a mosque, a school, and a tomb for himself beside the mosque. In later generations the muftis of the town taught in this madrasa. With the masjids and schools built by the notables of Hacıköy in the first half of the nineteenth century, the town had become a new town of eight quarters, which Hüsameddin lists as Cimâre, Artukâbâd, Saray, Hacı Yahya, Adatepe, Beylik Çayır, Ermeni Kilise and Çay.

The event that determined the mosque's present form came a few years after Hacıköy became the district seat. According to Hüsameddin, in 1316 (1898-99) the district governor, Yanyalı Mustafa Paşazâde Ali Rıza Bey, with the help of the townspeople and notables, built a government house, a rüşdiye school, a telegraph office and a clock tower. As part of this work the mosque of Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, "having come close to ruin", was entirely demolished, rebuilt in masonry on a larger scale, and given a graceful minaret. Hüsameddin counts this among Ali Rıza Bey's achievements and notes that the district mufti, Hâfız Mustafa Tevfik Efendi, did a great deal to raise the contributions. This record requires a distinction between the founding date of the mosque and the date of its present building: the name, the endowment and the site come from 1660, while a substantial part of the walls and the minaret belong to the last years of the nineteenth century.

The Bedesten and the Complex as a Whole

The mosque was built not on its own but as the prayer component of a complex. The Gümüşhacıköy Bedesten was likewise built by Köprülü Mehmed Pasha in 1660 as part of the mosque's complex. The building consists of barrel-vaulted shops lined up on both sides of a long rectangular court. The façades facing the court are adorned with tall pointed arches marking each bay and with buttresses between them; in the upper part, deep mouldings running along the façade and around the buttresses lend movement to the interior. Repairs over time have partly changed the appearance of the bedesten, but the red-and-white voussoirs of the entrance arches have survived.

It is said that around 1900 a clock tower was added to the bedesten by Ali Rıza Bey, son of Yanyalı Mustafa Pasha. A record stating that a clock tower already stood in the town when Ahmet Şâkir Pasha stopped at Gümüşhacıköy on 4 September 1899 during his inspection of Anatolia, however, contradicted this date. Hüsameddin's record largely resolves the contradiction: he dates Ali Rıza Bey's building works, including the clock tower, to 1316, that is, between May 1898 and May 1899. On this reading the tower was either finished or nearly finished when Şâkir Pasha arrived, and the commonly given date of 1900 is very probably a round figure. According to the records of the district governorship, this first tower was destroyed in the earthquake of 1943; in 1948 a wooden tower was built on the same spot, in 1971 this tower was removed during road works, the tower built to replace it was also pulled down, and the present tower was erected in 2009.

The function of the bedesten is explained by the founding logic of the Ottoman town. Halil İnalcık says that, as a rule, a town with a bedesten was an international trading centre. Gümüşhacıköy, too, was for centuries a place where merchants from India, Iran and Europe met, lodged and traded. The purpose of the bedesten was to secure safe, high-volume trade for a town on the Anatolia-Rumelia trade route. Caravan travel was not mere freight transport in today's sense either; caravan members bought new goods along the way and sold what they carried. This is why bedestens on the routes were among the places where cultural exchange was most intense. The idea voiced by Governor Salih Işık at the opening of the restored mosque rests on the same logic: in the Ottoman world a mosque was built first, a bedesten, business inns, bathhouses and schools were added around it, and the town took shape around that core. Köprülü's complex is the application of this scheme in Gümüşhacıköy.

The Banner of 1906 Dedicated to the Mosque

The mosque is also named on a banner kept in the Amasya Museum. Taken from the Halîliye Madrasa in Gümüş and moved to the museum together with the belongings of Garip Hafız, who had lived in the madrasa and was buried there at his death, the banner measures 175x135 cm and is made of claret and green satin; its edges carry a yellow band and silver-thread tassels. Embroidered on one face only, it bears at its centre the Ottoman coat of arms in yellow thread on the claret ground, the word "Maşallah" in drop-shaped panels on either side of the arms, and above them the words "Padişahım çok yaşa" ("Long live my sultan"). On one side is the basmala dated 1324, and opposite it the first verse of the Sura al-Fath. The inscription band running round the green outer frame states that the banner was made in the town of Üsküp (Skopje) in the province of Kosovo by the soldiers of the eighty-ninth regiment of the Third Army, and that it was prepared for "the great mosque of Köprülüoğlu Zade Muhammed Paşa in the district of Gümüş köyü". The names of the four caliphs appear in roundels at the corners, and the words "Ya Allah, Muhammed, Ali" on the metal finial.

The Hijri year 1324 falls between 1906 and 1907. That the banner was prepared only seven or eight years after the rebuilding of the mosque gives the impression that it was sent as a gift to the renewed mosque by soldiers from Gümüşhacıköy serving in Rumelia; this, however, is an inference, and no document describing how the banner came to be made has been found. What is certain is that the inscription band shows how firmly the mosque was known locally as "Köprülü Mehmed Pasha's great mosque".

Later Centuries and the Restoration

In the centuries after the mosque and the bedesten were founded, Gümüşhacıköy was one of the districts of the province of Sivas. The Sivas Ahkâm Registers, kept from 1742 to 1908, mention Gümüşhacıköy alongside Amasya, Köprü, Ladik, Merzifon and other districts; the rulings in the registers cover a broad range of matters, from banditry to endowment lawsuits, guild complaints and land disputes. In the late nineteenth century the cultivation of basma tobacco developed in the area, and this tobacco won a reputation comparable to the basma of Xanthi. In Hüsameddin's time the town of Hacıköy had close to eight hundred households, and the district some sixty villages and a population of about thirty-two thousand. Amid the changing economic and administrative order, the mosque and the bedesten remained the core of the district centre.

Because the area lies on the North Anatolian Fault Zone, its buildings were tested by earthquakes. Among the districts directly affected by the Tosya-Lâdik earthquake on the night of 26-27 November 1943, according to studies based on the parliamentary minutes, was Gümüşhacıköy. Gümüşhacıköy is also among the places for which the Council of Ministers approved the free supply of timber from state forests to villagers whose houses had collapsed, so that they could rebuild their homes and barns. The bedesten's clock tower collapsed in this earthquake. No record has been found of the extent to which the mosque was affected.

The mosque was later restored by the Directorate of Foundations and reopened for worship. The opening ceremony was attended by the Governor of Amasya, Salih Işık, members of parliament, the Mayor of Amasya, the provincial mufti and district officials. At the ceremony, at which Yılmaz Kılınç, Acting Regional Director of Foundations in Tokat, and the district mufti Hamdi Uzunharman also spoke, the mosque was returned to service with a prayer. Governor Işık stressed that mosques are not only places of worship but also places where social and cultural activities are carried on together and where people come together.

Chronology

1248: The Seljuk mint in Gümüş is recorded as having opened; the building was converted into a mosque in 1866.

1398: Bayezid I annexes the area to the Ottoman realm.

1413-1415: The Halîliye Madrasa is built in Gümüş.

1490-91 (896): Hacı Ahmed Çelebi becomes superintendent of the Gümüş Mine; the town takes the name "Hacı Nâzır Köyü".

1622 (1031): Köprülü Mehmed Ağa is sent to Amasya as deputy governor by Tayyar Mehmed Pasha.

1647: Boullaye le Gouz and Evliya Çelebi pass through Gümüşhacıköy.

1648 (1058): Varvar Ali Pasha passes through Gümüş; Köprülü Mehmed Pasha is defeated and taken prisoner by him.

15 September 1656: Köprülü Mehmed Pasha is appointed grand vizier.

1660: The Köprülü Mehmed Pasha Mosque and Bedesten are built; the caravanserai, bedesten, mosque and bathhouse are endowed in 1071 (1660-61).

31 October 1661: Köprülü Mehmed Pasha dies in Edirne.

1706-07 (1118): Hacı İsmâil Efendi builds a seven-cell madrasa beside the mosque.

1756-57 (1170): Köprülüzâde Abdülbâkî Bey renews the mosque and builds a second bathhouse.

1881-82 (1299): Hacıköy becomes the district seat and Gümüş a subdistrict seat.

1898-99 (1316): Under District Governor Ali Rıza Bey the mosque is demolished and rebuilt on a larger scale, with a minaret added; the clock tower is built.

1906-07 (1324): The mosque appears as the "great mosque" in the inscription of a banner made in Üsküp.

1943: The Tosya-Lâdik earthquake affects Gümüşhacıköy; the first clock tower collapses.

2009: The present clock tower is erected.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Official sources

  • Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Köprülü Mehmet Paşa Camii", amasya.ktb.gov.tr. amasya.bel.tr
  • Amasya Governorship, "Köprülü Mehmet Paşa Camii Hizmete Açıldı", amasya.gov.tr.
  • Out-of-School Learning Environments (Ministry of National Education), "Köprülü Mehmet Paşa Camii", okuldisiogrenme.eba.gov.tr.
  • Gümüşhacıköy District Governorship, "Tarihçe" and "Gümüşhacıköy Tarihsel ve Kültürel Değerleri", gumushacikoy.gov.tr. gumushacikoy.gov.tr
  • Gümüşhacıköy District Governorship, "Gümüşhacıköy Saat Kulesi", gumushacikoy.gov.tr. gumushacikoy.gov.tr

Other sources

  • TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "Köprülü Mehmed Paşa", vol. 26, Ankara 2002, pp. 258-260. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Ercan Çelebi, "Büyük Hareket: 26 Kasım 1943 Tarihli Tosya-Lâdik Depremi'nin Kastamonu Merkez ve Tosya İlçesindeki Etkileri Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme", KAREFAD 9/1 (2021), pp. 42-64. dergipark.org.tr

Online sources