In Ottoman cities a charitable building seldom rose alone. A mosque would be joined by a madrasa to teach, an imaret to feed the poor, a tabhane to lodge travellers, a fountain for the thirsty and a bathhouse for cleanliness, and together these buildings formed a complex (külliye). That the doors stayed open after the founder's death, that cooks and professors were paid, that the lamps were lit on holy nights and the roof repaired was not the work of the treasury but of a legal arrangement called the pious endowment (waqf, vakıf). The mosques, madrasas and imaret buildings that line the Yeşilırmak in Amasya still show how this arrangement worked over the centuries.

What Is a Vakıf

Literally "to stop, to hold back", vakıf is in legal terms the perpetual dedication of a property by its owner to a religious, social and charitable purpose. The Qur'an contains no phrase that names the institution directly, but many verses urging believers to spend in God's way, to help the poor and the needy and to compete in good works formed the basis of the idea. Its direct precedents are the examples of the Prophet and his Companions. When a person dies his record of deeds closes, except for a continuing charity (sadaqa jariya) left behind. Following the Prophet's advice to "hold back the principal and give away its yield", Umar set aside a valuable piece of land he had received at Khaybar for the needy, on condition that it be neither sold, nor given away, nor inherited, and Uthman bought the Well of Rumah in Medina and opened it to all Muslims. In later centuries these two examples became models cited in nearly every endowment deed.

The legal nature of the vakıf varies somewhat between the schools. Abu Hanifa holds that ownership of the endowed property stays with the founder while its yield is assigned to a charitable purpose. Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad hold that the property leaves the founder's ownership and becomes God's property, that is, public property. In Hanafi doctrine and in Ottoman practice the second view prevailed in its consequences. In practice this meant that an endowed property could not be sold, given away, divided as inheritance or turned into anyone's private possession.

The founding of a vakıf rests on a declaration of intent (sîga). The founder had to be of sound mind, of age, free and entitled to dispose of the property, the property had to be private and clearly defined, and the destination of its income had to lie at least outside what religion forbids. All of the founder's conditions were set down in a written document that served as the charter of the endowment, the vakfiye. The legal maxim "the founder's condition is like the text of the Lawgiver" ensured that the conditions of the deed were read with an almost sacred force. To whom the income would be paid, in what proportion and in what order, the number and qualifications of the staff, even which dish would be cooked on which day in an imaret were all written into these documents.

Kinds of Endowment and Sources of Income

In Ottoman practice endowments were classed by several criteria. Endowments made up of freehold land and freehold goods were called sahih, while those in which the revenue of state land was assigned by the public authority to a charitable purpose were called ghayr sahih or irsadi. The latter were so named because they did not involve a real transfer of ownership, but they were not held legally invalid and were subject to the rules of state (miri) land. By beneficiary, charitable (hayri) endowments were founded for the benefit of a general group such as the poor, travellers and students, whereas family (zürri or ehli) endowments provided income for the founder's children and grandchildren and passed to the poor when the line died out. Most jurists permitted family endowments, and in Ottoman society they were regarded as legitimate and widely practised.

The manner of benefiting from an endowment was also of two kinds. Works used directly, such as mosques, libraries, fountains and bridges, were called hayrat or müessesât-ı hayriyye. Their expenses were met from properties endowed only for their income. Fields, vineyards, gardens and quarries belonged to this group, and roofed commercial buildings, markets and houses were counted as rental properties. In the Ottoman Empire these sources of income were divided according to the method of management into four groups: icâre-i vâhideli, icâreteynli, mukātaalı and icâre-i vâhide-i kadîmeli. In time real rights of use such as gedik, hulüv and kirdâr also developed within this system.

The endowment of cash is among the most debated subjects in Ottoman endowment history. In classical Hanafi doctrine it was not allowed because there was neither scriptural text nor custom for it, but from the fifteenth century it began to spread in Ottoman society, caused heated debates among scholars and shaykhs al-Islam in the first half of the sixteenth century, and prompted many treatises. The crux of the dispute was how close the muamele-i şer'iyye method used to put the money to work stood to usury. When Shaykh al-Islam Ebussuud Efendi issued a fatwa and decree in 1548 declaring cash endowments lawful, the practice became official and binding, while his contemporary Birgivi continued to oppose it.

The Layout of the Complex

Imaret and charity complexes consisted of three main parts. The first contained the place of worship, schools of every level, health institutions, guesthouses, fountains, public drinking fountains and ablution fountains, gardens, tombs, cemeteries and the soup kitchen. These made up the charitable part of the endowment. The second part comprised workplaces such as shops, inns, bathhouses, markets and bedestens, which supplied income to the service institutions of the first. The third part was the dwellings around them. Before building began, channels were laid to bring water to the site, and fountains and the bathhouse were completed before the other units. Once the main buildings were finished, the founder's tomb, the cemetery and gardens set aside for others were made and the surroundings landscaped. The prayer-readers (duagu) assigned to tombs looked after the tomb and prayed for the founder.

The cost of this arrangement was large. It has been established that the fourteen imaret complexes built by Mimar Sinan in the sixteenth century employed a total of 2529 people. As income for the Fatih Complex, 4250 shops, three commercial inns, four bathhouses, seven pavilions, nine gardens, a bedesten and 1130 houses were endowed in Istanbul and Galata. Complexes also gave rise to neighbourhoods and quarters around them, and where one complex ended the units of another began, so that the urban fabric formed of its own accord.

The Imaret

The word imaret appears in the sources in two senses. Since it literally means "developed, built", it was used for the whole complex that includes mosque, madrasa, tabhane, caravanserai and tomb, and also for the kitchen. Osman Nuri Ergin insisted that the word did not mean a soup kitchen but only "something built up", yet writers such as Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi describe the imaret directly as a kitchen where food was cooked day and night. Both usages also appear side by side in the registers of imperial orders (mühimme).

Imarets worked according to the regulations in the endowment deed, either as parts of complexes that were each a separate endowment or as independent institutions. Staff wages and the quantity and kind of food to be distributed were written in the deed. As a rule two meals a day were served, and in Ramadan the two were combined and only the iftar meal was given. Many deeds stipulate richer dishes and sweets on Fridays and on the holy nights. An imaret that was part of a complex had to feed not only its own staff but all the complex's employees and the madrasa students. Passing guests and the poor of the town could also sit at the table. Among those who ate were everyone employed in the complex, from professors to doorkeepers, physicians to launderers, janissary sentries to patients.

The large imarets of Istanbul employed many officials such as the imaret shaykh, steward (vekilharç), clerk, nakib, pantry-keeper, cook, baker, dish-washer (kâseşûy), cleaner (ferrâş) and lamp-keeper (çerağdâr). The imaret shaykh supervised all the work and received guests. The steward oversaw the purchase of provisions and the clerk kept the accounts. According to the deed of the Fatih Complex, food was served in the imaret twice daily, morning and evening, usually rice soup in the morning and wheat pottage in the evening. The 350 okka of meat bought each day shows that meat was served as well. Each guest received 50 dirhams of honey and a flat loaf (fodla) besides the meal, and forty tables were laid. In the large imarets food for between one and two thousand people a day is estimated to have been cooked. In the eighteenth century more than thirty thousand people ate daily in the imarets of Istanbul. In Anatolia the deed of the Sinan Pasha Imaret at Sincanlı provides for each person a loaf morning and evening, 30 dirhams of honey, 50 dirhams of rice pilaf with black pepper and 25 dirhams of meat.

The most striking aspect of imarets was that the table made no distinction between rich and poor. At the imaret that Hürrem Sultan had built in Jerusalem in 1551, the rich ate as well as the poor. To be seen at the table of this imaret was a sign of political standing. Foreign travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries expressed admiration for these institutions that fed guests free of charge as well as the city's poor. Most imarets were closed in the Second Constitutional period and only two survived.

Endowment Complexes in Amasya

Amasya stands among the first rank of Anatolian cities for the density of its endowed buildings. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the city had nine mosques, ten madrasas, four zawiyas, six imarets and fifteen bathhouses. There were older layers too. Seljuk works lie mostly south of the river, and the Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb (1209-1210) and the Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247) count among the main examples of that period. The endowments of the Seljuk Halifet Gazi Madrasa have themselves been the subject of study. In the Ottoman period the city was, until the mid-sixteenth century, the foremost of the sanjaks to which princes were sent to gain administrative experience, and this made it easier for members of the dynasty and the statesmen around them to found endowments in Amasya.

The Endowments of Bayezid Pasha and Hızır Pasha

An important example from the early Ottoman period is the mosque built on the bank of the Yeşilırmak by Bayezid Pasha, vizier of Çelebi Mehmed. According to the inscription over its door, the mosque was built in Muharram 817 (April 1414). With the domed rooms on either side furnished with hearths and shelves, it is counted among the finest examples of the tabhane or zawiya mosque, a common type of early Ottoman architecture. Bayezid Pasha's Arabic deed, dated 11 Dhu al-Hijja 820 (19 January 1418), is incomplete at the beginning, survives in the archive and has supplements dated 821 (1418) and 823 (1420). A summary of the deed is worked into the band inscriptions on the arches of the portico and is also carved in eight lines on a rock near Kuşköprüsü. Writing the conditions of the endowment on the mosque walls and on a rock shows an outlook that wanted the document to stand not only in the archive but in a place where everyone could read it. The soup kitchen and the courtyard wall built with the mosque have not survived.

The endowments of Hızır Pasha, dated 870 (1465), are another example that shows the details of endowment administration in Amasya. Hızır Pasha founded three endowments in Amasya, built a madrasa and a mosque, and created posts such as professor and assistant instructor (muid) for their needs. The deed also stipulates additional payments to the professor, assistant instructors and students serving in the madrasa built by his brother Yörgüç Pasha, and the reading of the Qur'an at the grave of his grandson, who was buried inside the same madrasa. The endowment consisted of farmland, vineyards and gardens at Suluova, Doğantepe, Ladik and in Amasya itself, together with two inns and a bathhouse. Soon after the founding, in 1493, Hızır Pasha's son Mehmed Pasha donated thirteen villages, two hamlets, seven mills, one piece of farmland and one shop to supply additional income. Income was mostly reckoned from the wheat and barley harvested in the endowed villages, and the inns and shops continued to yield some income, though limited. Almost all expenditure went on staff wages and the repair and upkeep of the buildings. The accounts of the Hızır Pasha endowments continue in the records until the Republican period. The Yörgüç Pasha Mosque (1430) and the works of the Hızır Pasha family show that in the fifteenth century local statesmen in Amasya also took part in founding complexes.

The Bayezid II Complex

The greatest endowed building in Amasya is the Bayezid II Complex on the bank of the Yeşilırmak. It was built in 1485-1486 on the instructions of Sultan Bayezid II by Şehzade Ahmed, the governor of Amasya. According to its inscriptions the mosque was completed in Rajab 891 (July 1486). Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Bey reports that construction began in 1481, right after Bayezid's accession, and that the work was entrusted to Şehzade Ahmed as an act of thanksgiving. The complex's deed is dated January 1496 (901 Jumada al-Ula) and lists the complex as mosque, imaret, madrasa, boys' school and a bridge over the Kızılırmak at Osmancık. Within a wide courtyard the mosque stands in the middle, the madrasa to its right, the kitchen and tabhane to its left. The madrasa was also known as the Sultaniye, its professorship was assigned to the muftis of Amasya, and its first teacher is reported to have been Shaykh al-Islam Zenbilli Ali Efendi. With its lecture hall and eighteen cells with hearths it is used today as a library.

The imaret of the complex is an L-shaped building. A document in the archive of the Topkapı Palace Museum states that this building consisted of five units: a dining hall (mut'imehane), kitchen (matbah), pantry, bakery and stable. The large section with hearths is interpreted as the kitchen and the vaulted hall beside it as the provision store. Because it was long used as a military depot and was later altered, the function of some sections cannot be known with certainty. The side chambers of the mosque are also thought to have been tabhane rooms originally. The three domed sections on either side open to the outside and resemble guest rooms with hearths and shelves.

The history of the complex also shows how an endowment was kept alive. An earthquake in Muharram 999 (November 1590) damaged the domes, including those of the imaret, and they were repaired at once. In the earthquake of 1079 (1668-1669) the domes collapsed, both minarets tilted and the domes of the imaret and tabhane fell, but the trustee Merzifonlu İbrâhim Ağa repaired all the damage within a year. In later centuries other benefactors made additions. In 1782-1783 Hacı Ali Ağa had taps and a water-heating place made so that ablutions could be taken with warm water in winter, in 1813 Ayşe Hatun had a shadirvan built, in 1820-1821 Hacı Osman Ağa a sebil, and in 1840 Kapancızâde Hacı Hüseyin Zeki Efendi a timekeeper's house with a library and another shadirvan. In 1909-1911 the Yamuk Osmanzâde family built a library and a new shadirvan in accordance with a will. That new endowments were added around the work even after the founder's death shows that the arrangement had become a living tradition.

The earthquake of 1939 brought down some of the arches and domes of the portico, and the repairs of the 1960s were not considered successful. The ruined imaret and tabhane were repaired and used as a dormitory, while the boys' school has not survived. The tomb southeast of the mosque is held to have been built for Şehzade Osman, son of Şehzade Ahmed, who was put to death by Selim I in 1513. There is no sarcophagus in this tomb today, although one researcher earlier mentioned a marble sarcophagus here.

Endowments of the Women of the Dynasty

The women of the dynasty hold no small place in the endowment history of Amasya. Bülbül Hatun, who entered Bayezid II's harem while he was a prince and governor of Amasya, was the mother of Şehzade Ahmed. She also had two daughters, Hatice Sultan and Hundi Sultan. Some studies describe her as Bayezid's concubine, since the consorts of Ottoman sultans were by custom drawn from the concubines who came through the harem, and her origin is unknown. When Ahmed was sent to Çorum in 1480 and then to Amasya, Bülbül Hatun went with her son.

With her own endowments she built a multi-sided charitable network around Amasya. In Ladik she had a mosque and an imaret built and furnished them with endowments, and in Amasya she also had a mosque, a school and a fountain built. She also built and endowed a madrasa in Bursa. In 1505 she endowed part of her properties to the Enderun mosque, and in 1512 she tied a significant amount of property to the endowment of a new complex. Her leaving the administration of this last endowment first to her son Ahmed and after his death to Ahmed's eldest daughter and her daughters is a system of trusteeship that continues the family line through women. This arrangement has been interpreted as a precaution against the possibility that Ahmed would lose his struggle for the throne. When Ahmed died in 1513 Bülbül Hatun came to Bursa and had a tomb built for her son, and when she died in 1515 she was buried in it.

Administration and Oversight of Endowments

Each endowment was run as a separate unit by one or more trustees (mütevelli), and the trustee's transactions were supervised by an overseer (nazır). A trustee could not hire workers for repairs at more than the going rate or buy materials above the market price. If such an expense was incurred he paid the difference himself. Endowment properties were let in accordance with the conditions of the deed and at the going rate. The head of state and the judges had a power of supervision grounded in public guardianship over endowments even when the deed did not provide for it.

In practice problems also arose. A study of the Hızır Pasha endowments found irregularities such as appointments to posts the deed did not provide for, the appointment of persons who did not meet the conditions for trusteeship, and staff forced by pressure to resign and replaced by new ones. In the last centuries the administration of endowments became a profession, and the number of endowments attached to offices such as the grand vizierate, the office of shaykh al-Islam, the inspectorate of the Haramayn endowments and the chief eunuch's post increased. Posts such as madrasa professorship and lodge shaykhship are also seen to have become hereditary professions passing from father to son. From the fifteenth century the Ottoman central administration exercised a kind of supervision over endowments, and after the reforms of Selim III and Mahmud II's abolition of the Janissary corps in 1826 it took over the administration of the important ones. The Imperial Ministry of Endowments (Evkāf-ı Hümâyun Nezâreti), founded in October 1826, took over the management of wealthy endowments one by one in the following years. The Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowments (Şer'iyye ve Evkaf Vekâleti), founded in 1921, was abolished on 3 March 1924, and the administration of endowments was tied to the state organisation of the Republic.

The Economic and Social Weight of Endowments

The share of endowments in the Ottoman economy was considerable. Of the revenue of the province of Anatolia between 1530 and 1540, 17 percent belonged to endowments, a proportion that was 14 percent in the province of Karaman, 15.7 percent in the province of Rum and 5 percent in Dulkadriye. These figures cover only agricultural income, and the income of urban endowments is left out. By one calculation, in an empire with about a thousand endowments in each of three hundred sanjaks, the total budget of endowments reached one third of the state budget. About 1540 the province of Anatolia is recorded as having 342 mosques, 1055 small mosques, 110 madrasas, 626 zawiyas and khanqahs, forty-five imarets, 154 schools for children and seventy-five large inns and caravanserais.

The function of endowed works was not confined to religious services. Many of the tasks done by modern municipalities were then carried out by endowments. Dams and water channels, fountains and the public drinking fountains that gave free cold water in summer, bathhouses, the lighting and cleaning of streets, caravanserais, roads and bridges were kept up with endowment revenue. A Seljuk caravanserai deed stipulates that travellers of every class and religion arriving at the caravanserai be given food, shoes and fodder for their animals. Endowments also appear as the mutual-aid funds of guilds, as cash funds founded by neighbourhoods to pay their emergency levies (avârız), and as endowments that paid for the dowries of poor girls. Some endowments even had small pavilions built for birds. Some of these structures, called birdhouses, resemble mosques with their minarets and domes. The Austrian envoy Busbecq wrote in the 1550s that in Turkey everything had been humanised, everything hard softened, even the animals shared in this gentleness.

The endowment also had a political side. Endowments that supported the Sufis and settlers who founded zawiyas in newly conquered places served the Islamisation of the region and the settling of Ottoman rule, and by bringing charitable institutions to the region they legitimised the administration. For members of the dynasty, founding an endowment was a humane duty that counted as a guarantee of justice before the community. Seen this way, Amasya's status as a princes' sanjak and the tradition of founding endowments are tied together, since the prince who came to the city, his tutor and his mother each founded, as benefactors, complexes that bore their own names.

Chronology

1209-1210: Building of the Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb, surviving from the Seljuk period.

April 1414: Building date on the inscription of the Bayezid Pasha Mosque.

January 1418: Date of Bayezid Pasha's endowment deed, its supplements dated 1418 and 1420.

1430: Yörgüç Pasha Mosque.

1465: Hızır Pasha founds three endowments in Amasya.

1485-1486: Building of the Bayezid II Complex by Şehzade Ahmed, the mosque completed in July 1486.

1488: Kapı Ağası Hüseyin Ağa Madrasa.

1493: Mehmed Pasha donates thirteen villages, two hamlets, seven mills and a shop to his father's endowment.

January 1496: Writing of the endowment deed of the Bayezid II Complex.

1505-1512: Endowments of Bülbül Hatun.

1513: Death of Şehzade Ahmed and date of the Şehzade Osman Tomb.

1548: Ebussuud Efendi's fatwa permitting cash endowments.

1590 and 1668-1669: Earthquakes damaging the Bayezid II Complex, and repairs.

October 1826: Founding of the Imperial Ministry of Endowments.

3 March 1924: Abolition of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowments.

Sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources