The Seljuk and Ilkhanid buildings of Amasya allow the politics, the charitable culture and the calligraphy of those two eras to be read from texts set into stone. An inscription (kitabe) is a text, usually in Arabic, placed on the crown portal or another prominent facade of a building. It carries down to the present the name of the founder, the year of construction, sometimes the ruler and the architect, and at times a verse, a hadith or a prayer. Endowment deeds and chronicles were often written centuries after the building itself. An inscription is cut at the same moment as the building, stays where it is, and is hard to alter. In the Seljuk heritage of the city, which is concentrated south of the river, it is these texts that fix dates and founders most securely. Yet the permanence of stone does not mean ease of reading. Almost every one of Amasya's early Turkish inscriptions has yielded different dates and different names in the hands of different readers for more than a century.

The Documentary Value of Inscriptions

To learn who built a structure, under which ruler and for what purpose, researchers first look at the original inscription. When none survives or it cannot be read, they turn to the endowment deed, the written sources and architectural comparison. In such cases a date ceases to be certain and becomes a range of estimates. The Seljuk and Ilkhanid buildings of Amasya offer two kinds of examples in this respect. At the Halifet Gazi Madrasa, the Burmalı Minare Mosque, the Torumtay Tomb and the Dârüşşifâ, the inscription is either in place or its content is known. At the Gökmedrese Mosque, by contrast, the original inscription was removed from its position and has not been found. In the case of the Dârüşşifâ the inscription is the only contemporary historical source on the building to survive, since its endowment deed has been lost.

Amasya's place under Turkish rule also sets the frame for these inscriptions. From the early eleventh century the city was in the hands of the Danishmendids. It joined the Anatolian Seljuk state in the time of Kılıçarslan II and in the Seljuk period was known by the title "Dârü'l-izz". Most of the buildings rose in the second half of that era and in the years when Mongol rule settled over Anatolia. The names in the inscriptions therefore set a Danishmendid emir, Seljuk sultans, Seljuk viziers, a governor of Amasya and the wife of an Ilkhanid ruler side by side. The political changes of hand a city went through can be followed in the names on its stones.

The works surviving from the Seljuk period are generally gathered south of the river. The oldest Turkish building in the city is the mosque that Danishmendid Melik Gazi had built just east of the citadel, on the site of today's Şamlar Mosque. Among those that have come down to us are the Burmalı Minare Mosque, the Gökmedrese Mosque, the Fethiye Mosque, the Gümüşlü Mosque of 1326, the Hızır Paşa Mosque, the Saraçhane Mosque of 1372, the Dârüşşifâ, the Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb, and the Torumtay Tomb. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the city is recorded as having nine mosques, ten madrasas, four zawiyas, six imarets and fifteen bathhouses. Only part of this crowded group of buildings can be dated by an inscription.

The first local researcher to go round these inscriptions as a whole and put them on record was Abdîzâde Hüseyin Hüsameddin, the author of Amasya Tarihi. He himself recounts how in his youth he went through the libraries, visited graves and read their headstones, and wandered in wonder among the old tombs of the Şâmîce and Gökmedrese quarters. In his book he gave the Arabic texts of the Seljuk inscriptions one by one, and stated plainly where he could not read them. The editors of the modern edition of the work added notes comparing his readings with those of later scholars. In this way nearly a century of debate over the reading of Amasya's inscriptions can be followed within the pages of a single book.

The Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb

The earliest Seljuk-period madrasa in Amasya whose date is known is the Halifet Gazi Madrasa, popularly called Hilfet Gazi. According to its inscription it was built in the year 606, that is, in 1209-1210. Its founder, Halifet Gazi, was one of the Danishmendid emirs. When the principality came to an end he entered Seljuk service, was appointed commander for the defence of the Black Sea coast by Izzeddin Keykâvus I, who conquered Sinop in 1215, and became governor of Amasya in 1222 under Alâeddin Keykubad I. He later moved to the governorship of Erzurum and fell as a martyr during the Georgian campaign of 1232. His body was buried in his tomb in Amasya. A medical book translated from Persian into Turkish bears his name, and a work on the sports practised in Anatolia in the early thirteenth century is also said to have been written for him. Because the madrasa's endowment deed of 1225 has survived, there is detailed, documented information about the founder.

Hüsameddin introduces this emir under the name Mübârizeddin Halîfe Alp and presents him as a descendant of Güdül Bey, son-in-law of Kılıçarslan I, and as the son of Şücâeddin Tuli Bey. In the inscription above the madrasa door his name appears as "Mübârizeddin Halîfe bin Tuli". On the date of the inscription, however, Hüsameddin departs from the accepted view of today. According to him this text, read with difficulty and carved in an intricate, ordinary hand, gives the year as 632 (1234-1235). The endowment deed records that the madrasa was built in 622, while the emir was governor of Amasya. Hüsameddin points out that in 632 the governor of Amasya was Nûreddin Tugrak, while Halîfe Alp was then commander on the Georgian front, and concludes that the inscription stone was set in place about ten years after the madrasa was built. For the same inscription there is thus a reading of 606 on the one hand and of 632 on the other. If the report that the founder died in 1232 is correct, an inscription dated 632 can only have been put up after his death. Which of the two readings is right cannot be said with certainty without a fresh examination of the stone.

The endowment deed itself is a notable document. According to Hüsameddin it was certified with the signature of Takiyyeddin Osman bin Ali, chief judge of Amasya in 622. The same deed uses the name "Vengiyüs" for a locality in the east of the city. Hüsameddin also notes that he saw Greek inscriptions on some of the stones of the Torumtay Mosque and of the Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb. These stones point to material reused in the Turkish buildings from earlier periods. As the first teacher of the madrasa he names Bedreddin İbrahim el-Kımârî, whom he calls "the martyred judge", and he gives a long list of teachers running over the centuries. Halifet Gazi's line also lasted for centuries in the city; according to Hüsameddin, branches such as the Kutlu Paşazâde and the Ebu'l-Kâsımzâde issued from the family known as the "Halifet Oğulları".

What remains standing of the building today is its south wall and part of its eastern section. According to Hüsameddin the madrasa was badly damaged in the fire of 1602-1603 and then in the earthquake of 1647, and the teacher Hasan Efendi had the ruined parts repaired in timber. In 1888 the mufti of Amasya, Hacı Osman Hilmi Efendi, restored the building thoroughly. The tomb to the east has a square base, an octagonal body and a pyramidal roof, and is on two storeys. Hüsameddin writes that above the tomb door, within a broad arch, the Throne Verse (Âyetü'l-Kürsî) is written in Kufic script, that its letters look like yet another flower among the floral motifs, and that it is extremely hard to read. Above the same door there is a second text stating that the governor of Amasya, Mübârizeddin Halîfe Alp, lies in the tomb.

The marble sarcophagus inside the tomb is a Roman work decorated with winged Medusas and Eros and bearing the figure of a sleeping woman. Hüsameddin, however, interpreted the heads of girls and sheep on the front of the sarcophagus as old Turkish tribal emblems and argued that the emir belonged to the Kınık tribe on his father's side and to the Koyunlu on his mother's. This interpretation cannot be reconciled with later research showing the sarcophagus to be Roman work. Hüsameddin's effort to protect the tomb in his own day, on the other hand, is a documented contribution. He writes that when the municipality had decided to demolish the tomb, on the grounds that it belonged to Christians and that its pointed roof threatened to collapse onto the quarter, he stopped the demolition by explaining the matter to Kemal Bey, the district governor (mutasarrıf) of Amasya. The views put forward about the building also diverge. The narrative of the Danişmendname and Albert Gabriel accept that it was converted from a church into a madrasa. Metin Sözen thinks that the arched section may be the facade of an older Byzantine building. Doğan Kuban places the tomb in the mid-twelfth century, while Gabriel and Oktay Aslanapa take it back to 1145-1146. Hüsameddin gives the date 622 (1225) for the tomb. In this debate the madrasa inscription, however it is read, remains a concrete basis showing that the complex was in use at least in the first half of the thirteenth century.

The Burmalı Minare Mosque

The inscription over the door of the Burmalı Minare Mosque, which stands behind the Coppersmiths' Bazaar, is written in a highly intricate hand. According to the inscription the mosque was built in the reign of the Seljuk sultan Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev II (1237-1246) by one of his emirs, Ferruh. In İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı's reading, the name of his brother Yusuf, the treasurer, also appears in the text. The year of construction is given as 1242 in some sources and 1243 in others, while the reign spans 1237-1246. The word "amere" in the inscription was taken by some writers to mean repair, and it was supposed that Ferruh Bey merely had the mosque restored. In fact the word is used for any work newly built or brought into being.

The story of this inscription's readings is the best documented among the inscriptions of Amasya. Hüsameddin states that although the letters are carved into the stone, they look as though they had been written with a finger on wet lime and then filled in, and that for this reason he could read the text only with great difficulty. In his reading the first line, running in the form of an arch, records that the building was raised in the days of Keyhusrev son of Keykubad son of Keyhusrev, that is, Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev II. In the straight line below it appear the name of the man who built it, "Ferruh bin Selçuk bin Yusuf el-Hâzin", and the year 690. Uzunçarşılı found this reading of Hüsameddin's faulty and incomplete. Ali Yardım, who devoted a separate book to the mosque, in turn corrected both Hüsameddin and Uzunçarşılı. In his reading the sultan is named with the title of partner of the "emîrü'l-mü'minîn", and in the second line the master of the hunt Ferruh and his brother Yusuf the treasurer are named together as the "builder and endower" of the building. The date, too, is read as 640. The year 1242-1243 corresponds to this reading. Hüsameddin's genealogical chain "Ferruh bin Selçuk bin Yusuf" and Ali Yardım's reading "Ferruh and his brother Yusuf" are two different solutions to the same line.

Hüsameddin also discusses the founder's name separately. Whereas in some old chronicles this emir's name appears as "Ferrûc" or "Ferrûh", "Ferruh" is clearly written above the door. According to Hüsameddin, the mosque's endowment deed was drawn up in 699 (1299-1300) by Pervâne Bey, Ferruh's son-in-law; the trusteeship first stayed with the Pervâne Beyzâde family and, when that line died out, passed to the Müeyyedzâde. He rejects the claim of the French geographer Vital Cuinet that the mosque was a church built by the Komnenos dynasty in the Byzantine period, saying that the form and construction of the building do not allow it. At most he accepts that the mosque may have been founded on the site of a church. The sultan's name and the name of the Seljuk emir in the inscription were the decisive evidence in this debate as well.

The mosque's present name comes from the form of its minaret and does not appear in the inscription. According to the sources, the mosque was damaged by an earthquake in 1590-1591 and by fire in 1602-1603, and at that time the trustee Müeyyedzâde Pîrî Çelebi had a wooden minaret built. After the fire of 1730-1731 a stone minaret with a spirally fluted shaft is accepted to have been built through the repairs of Hacı Ahmed Efendi. Hüsameddin likewise attributes this repair to the trustee Vâsi' Çelebizâde es-Seyyid el-Hâc Ahmed Efendi. This dating is disputed. It is hard to believe that the twisted shaft, a continuation of the Central Asian minaret tradition, could have been made in the eighteenth century, and some argue that the minaret is a work of the mosque's own period or of the early Ottoman era. The tomb adjoining the mosque was said to belong to Cümûdâr, a grandson of Hülegü, but since no basis is given for this information it has been thought that the tomb must properly belong to the mosque's founders. On the dark blue tile frame of the mihrab a second phrase has been read: "amel-i Muhammed b. Mahmûd el-Errânî". Gabriel could not determine whether this man was the architect of the mosque, only the maker of the mihrab, or the tile master.

The Gökmedrese Mosque and the Torumtay Tomb

The Gökmedrese Mosque owes its name to the use of its entrance section as a madrasa and to the decoration of the adjoining tomb with purple and turquoise glazed bricks. After its founder it is also called the Torumtay Mosque. Its founder, Seyfeddin Torumtay, was appointed governor of Amasya under Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev II. He lies in the tomb he had built himself. Here the inscriptions fall short. Because the original inscription, removed from its place, has not been found, the date of the mosque's construction cannot be established with certainty. The building has only a repair inscription dated 1316 (1898-1899) and, above the door, a phrase that must belong to a craftsman's name. Hüsameddin records that the repair inscription was put up by the trustee Gürcüzâde Mehmed Necib Bey and that the original text above the door had been removed before then. The endowment deed drawn up by Torumtay himself is dated 665 (1266-1267). On this basis it is accepted that construction was completed within that year at the latest. In the deed the building is called "Gökmedrese", and it is clear that it served as both mosque and madrasa.

Hüsameddin passes on further details from the deed. According to him the madrasa consisted of small stone cells to the north and west of the space inside the mosque's great door. The madrasa was also known as the "Medrese-i Seyfiyye", and its first teacher was Gıyâseddin Mahmud Garmînî. The trusteeship of the endowment was settled, while the founder was still alive, on his grandson Celâleddin Mehmed Pervâne Bey and his descendants. That Torumtay's line went on administering the endowment for centuries can also be traced in Hüsameddin's biographies. Osman Çelebi, of the line of Kaya Paşa, died after 941 (1534-1535) as trustee of the endowment of his "most distant ancestor" Emir Seyfeddin Torumtay. In later centuries the trusteeship passed to the Gürcüzâde family, linked to Torumtay's line through the female side. The trustee Gürcüzâde Mehmed Necib Bey, who put up the repair inscription of 1898-1899, is one of the last links in this chain.

Cylindrical corner towers rise on either side of the facade. The entrance, reached by a flight of seven steps, is set within a pointed-vaulted iwan whose surround is framed with geometric borders in low relief. The leaves of the door opening into the mosque are today in the Amasya Museum. This double-leaved door of ebony is worked in the kündekâri technique of interlocking panels. In its tympanum, within a border decorated with rumi and scrolling branch motifs, is a hadith written in Arabic thuluth script. The text states that when a person dies their deeds come to an end, except for three things: continuing charity, knowledge that benefits others, and a righteous child who prays for them. This hadith is a fitting choice for the work of someone founding an endowment. For the endowment, made up of mosque, madrasa and tomb, was established in the service of continuing charity and of knowledge.

The door itself carries a signature. Hüsameddin writes that the phrase "amile Ebu's-Silm en-Neccâr" is carved on the central post of the door and that the door is the work of this craftsman. "Neccâr" means joiner or carpenter. It therefore appears that this signature belongs to the craftsman who made the wooden door rather than to the architect of the mosque. In the printed edition of the work the word was mistakenly set as "ke'n-neccâr". The records differ on whether the craftsman's name should be read "Ebû Müslim" or "Ebu's-Silm". The editors of the modern edition recalled that Uzunçarşılı recorded the name as "Ebu's-Silm" and, after examining the door in the museum closely, established the Arabic spelling of the phrase anew. The removal of the door from its original place to the museum has made it possible to see this small signature at close range today.

The tomb adjoins the mosque wall on the northeast. A cubic body of dressed stone rises on a square stone base, and on top sits a brick drum that gives the impression of a second storey. Just below the conical roof runs a Kufic inscription frieze built of turquoise glazed brick. The faces of the drum are filled with geometric interlace, rosettes and stars in purple and turquoise glazed brick. Inside are seven cenotaphs, two of them small, covered with hexagonal and triangular tiles. In a marble niche on the south facade, left undecorated contrary to custom, is the four-line foundation inscription, and above the arch of the niche are Quranic verses. Above the window on the south facade is a repair inscription in verse, recording that the tomb was restored in 1891-1892. In the burial chamber on the lower floor, Quranic verses written in large celî script can be read on the cenotaph belonging to Torumtay.

The foundation inscription quoted by Hüsameddin is the clearest document for the date of the tomb. According to the text, the tomb was built in the year 677 (1278-1279), in the days of Sultan Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev son of Kılıçarslan, that is, Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev III, by "the weak servant in need of God's mercy, Torumtay bin Abdullah". Some descriptive texts say that the tomb was built in 1278, after the death of Seyfeddin Torumtay. The inscription, however, names it as a building that Torumtay himself "raised". Hüsameddin also writes that Torumtay died in Rebîülâhir 679 (1280), grieving over the death of his son Sinâneddin Musa, who had returned ill after captivity in Egypt. Read together, these two pieces of evidence suggest that the tomb may have been built while the governor was still alive. According to some interpretations, the foundation inscription shows that Torumtay was not of Turkish origin but a ghulam recruited at a young age. The formula "bin Abdullah" in the inscription, used in place of the father's real name, is the same one seen in the name "Anber bin Abdullah" in the Dârüşşifâ inscription. It may be thought that the ghulam interpretation rests on this formula.

The identity of those who lie in the tomb is also learned largely from inscriptions. According to Hüsameddin, the Throne Verse is written around Torumtay's large cenotaph of black marble, and his name and date of death are carved on it. On his left lie four generations of descendants, beginning with his son Yakub Çelebi, and on his right Kılıçarslan, ruler of Sivas, son of Tâceddin Gazi Çelebi and of Seljuk descent. At his feet are buried Tâceddin and Gıyâseddin Çelebi, sons of Prince Sultan Alâeddin Bey, who was strangled while governor of Amasya. These names were read from inscriptions carved, in Hüsameddin's words, on "dondurma kireç", that is, on stucco. The tomb's popular name, the "Kılıçarslan Tomb", comes from this Seljuk noble buried here later. In the underground room inside the mosque, the burial chamber called the "Tomb of the Martyrs", there is no inscription at all. Hüsameddin puts forward as a strong likelihood that the dried bodies there belong to Torumtay's son Sinâneddin Musa, his grandson Celâleddin Mehmed Pervâne Bey and later generations of the family, but he does not present this as certain.

The Inscription of the Ilkhanid Era: The Dârüşşifâ

The Amasya Dârüşşifâ, standing in the Yâkutiye quarter beside the street that runs parallel to the Yeşilırmak, is the city's most important building of the Ilkhanid period. The single-line Arabic inscription that runs round three sides of the portal niche states that the building was erected in the year 708 (1308-1309). Those who had it built were Anber b. Abdullah, a slave of İlduş (Yıldız) Hatun, wife of the Ilkhanid ruler Olcaytu Khan, and the Emir of Anatolia, Ahmed Bey. Older accounts say that the building was raised solely in the name of the ruler and his wife. The reading of the inscription, however, brings forward the patrons it names. Nothing at all is known of its architect. The endowment deed of the Dârüşşifâ, which has not survived, is known to have been drawn up in 712 (1312).

The text of the inscription, in the form given by Hüsameddin and translated into Turkish in the modern edition, runs as follows: God granted success in the building of this blessed dârüşşifâ to the weak servant Anber bin Abdullah, in the days of the reign of the exalted sultan, the great khan, the helper of faith and the world, Olcaytu Mehmed Khan, and in the days of glory of the exalted lady, queen of the great, İlduş Hatun. Most of these sources read the date of the inscription as 708. In a publication relying on Patricia Blessing's translation, however, the year is given as 709. The naming of a woman, the ruler's wife, in the inscription is regarded as a rare case in Ilkhanid Anatolia, seen also in the Tomb of Nureddin bin Sentimur in Tokat. The inclusion of Olcaytu's name in the text likewise shows the link between the building and the centre in Iran.

The phrase "Ahmed, emir of Anatolia" is the most disputed point of the inscription. Hüsameddin read the words "and the emir of Anatolia, Ahmed" written in large letters beside the main text, and concluded that the building had been raised jointly by Anber Ağa and Ahmed Bey, emir of Anatolia. Uzunçarşılı, however, reported from his examination on site that reading the cramped words in this way was mistaken, and that he had found no trace in the foundation inscription of some other names Hüsameddin gave. Today some reference works continue to name Ahmed Bey as one of the patrons, while there are also publications that present Anber bin Abdullah alone as the founder. Hüsameddin further records that on the rectangular stones on either side of the door there was another unreadable inscription each, in which words resembling "Alâ'üddevle ve'd-dîn Ali" on the southern stone and "ibnü'l-merhûm ... Mehmed" on the northern one could be made out. The full text of these two side inscriptions has not been published to this day.

Old registers give the building names different from those in the inscription. In the registers Hüsameddin saw, the names "Dârüşşifâ-i el-merhûm Alâeddin", "Dârüşşifâ-i el-merhûm Alâeddin Ali" and "Dârüşşifâ-i Pervâne Bey" appear. Hüsameddin explains this with the supposition that Anber Ağa and Ahmed Bey died before drawing up the endowment deed, and that Alâeddin Ali of the Pervâne family drew it up later. This, in his own words, is an interpretation he drew from the records. From the same standpoint he criticises two earlier writers. Mehmed Rifat Efendi had written that the building was once an idol temple later turned into an asylum, and Mustafa Vâzıh Efendi that it had been built by Muînüddin Süleyman Pervâne. According to Hüsameddin, neither had read the Arabic text above the door. Counting the building an idol temple, when its style and inscriptions plainly show it to be a work of the Islamic period, shows how misleading datings made without looking at the inscription can be.

The building is laid out on an east-west axis over an area of 33.60 x 25.60 metres and has a two-iwan plan with a courtyard: two rows of arcades around a rectangular courtyard, with the entrance iwan and the main iwan facing it. The west facade facing the street is built of regular dressed stone. The portal, a third higher than the facade, is balanced by the large windows on either side and by cylindrical corner towers. This arrangement shows that the traditional Anatolian Seljuk approach to building continued into the Ilkhanid era. The other facades are built of irregular stones and supported by buttresses, and have therefore lost their original state. The columns and capitals of the courtyard arcades are also noted as reused material.

The details of the plan show the measured and orderly design of the building. The main iwan measures 7.10 x 5.70 metres inside, opens onto the courtyard with a pointed arch and is covered by a roof-and-vault system. The arcades on the two sides of the courtyard are formed of pointed arches resting on columns with cubic, muqarnas and moulded capitals. The long halls behind the arcades measure 4.65 x 14.10 metres and are roofed with barrel vaults supported by pointed brick arches. The portal space has a pointed arch and a barrel vault, with a niche under a segmental arch on either side. In the two rectangular panels above these small muqarnas niches, Quranic verses are written. The decoration is concentrated largely on the portal and on the two rectangular windows beside it. Regular dressed stone was used on the portal and courtyard facades, irregular stone masonry on the outer walls and vaults, and brick was preferred for the arches supporting the vaults.

The portal, as the bearer of the inscription, has drawn particular attention from art historians. Projecting about 1.30 metres from the main walls in plan, it is 7.68 metres wide. Semra Ögel describes it as "the last monumental Seljuk portal", saying that it gathers in itself all the stages of Anatolian Seljuk stone ornament and that with this building the era dominated by stone carving came to an end. In Ögel's description, the portal begins with an outer moulding of star cartouches set one above another, followed by a band of interlacing diagonal strips with panels of palmette and rumi design between them. The upper part of the portal, however, is missing. In the restoration carried out in 1948-1951 by the architect Ali Saim Ülgen on behalf of the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, the missing part was not fully completed; it was raised in steps from one corner only, and no ornament was carved on the new stones. This half-completion, applied to no other building in Turkey, has often been cited as an example in later conservation literature.

Since the inscription explicitly calls it a dârüşşifâ, it is clear that the building served as a general hospital. The spread of the name bîmarhâne arose from the idea that only the mentally ill were kept here. It has been suggested that the long halls behind the arcades, lit only by slit windows, were arranged for the mentally ill. It has also been thought that this arrangement may be a later intervention in the original plan. The building long functioned as a medical institution. Hüsameddin lists Reşîdeddin Lokman Harezmî, Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi and Nefîseddin Mehmed Çelebi as physicians who won renown here. He also writes that the names of Mount Lokman and the Lokman Plateau south of the city come from the dârüşşifâ physician Reşîdeddin Lokman bin Hasan el-Harezmî, who owned the land there. That Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, author of the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye, practised as a physician and surgeon here is learned from his own work, the Mücerrebnâme. It is known that Şerefeddin was born around 1386, practised medicine in Amasya for fourteen years, presented the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye, written in 1465, to Mehmed II (the Conqueror), and wrote the Mücerrebnâme of 1468 at the request of the physicians' circle in Amasya. Thus a building with an inscription, raised by a slave attached to the wife of the Ilkhanid ruler, became a century and a half later the setting in which important works of Turkish medical history were written.

In the centuries that followed, the building had an uneven life. According to endowment records it was repaired in 1693, 1708, 1747, 1800, 1804 and 1815, and after 1815 the names of physicians cease to appear in the records. This suggests that the building stood empty for a time. In 1858 the traveller Heinrich Barth mentions it as a fine building that had once served as a hospital and reports that it was being used as a workshop. It is known that after 1873 it again served the mentally ill, and that permission was sought for its repair in 1902. Hüsameddin writes with regret that its endowment, trustee, clerks, chain-keepers, physician, pharmacist, laundryman and cook were once all known, whereas in his own day the building had become a store for timber merchants. Inside it there is also the tomb of the Halveti sheikh Şeyh Sâlih, known as the "Sheikh of the Dârüşşifâ", who was believed to heal the insane with his breath and was buried around 1665.

In the early twentieth century the building was used as a prison for those sentenced by the Independence Tribunal set up in 1920, and was then rented by a man from Amasya and turned into a timber workshop. In 1933-1935, among the limited conservation works of the Ministry of Education, it appeared on the repair list together with another monument, under the heading "Expropriation of the Bimarhane in Amasya and the Halifet Gazi Tomb". This record shows that two early buildings with inscriptions were named side by side in the Republic's first conservation programme. After Ülgen's work, the building went through another comprehensive restoration in 1991-1997, and since 2011 it has served as the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery and is open to visitors.

Reading and Collecting the Inscriptions

The systematic collection of Amasya's inscriptions begins with İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı's Kitâbeler, published in 1927. The readings concerning the Burmalı Minare and the Gökmedrese rest on this work. Before Uzunçarşılı, Hüsameddin had already published a large part of these inscriptions with their Arabic originals in his history. Uzunçarşılı corrected his readings of the Burmalı Minare and the Dârüşşifâ, while Ali Yardım, in his 2004 book devoted to the door, mihrab and minbar inscriptions of the Burmalı Minare Mosque, took up both readings afresh. The differences in reading are real. The mistaken sense of repair given to the word "amere", the difference between 1242 and 1243 in the year of construction, the gap between 690 and 640 in the Burmalı Minare inscription, the divergence between 606 and 632 in the Halifet Gazi inscription, the phrase "Ahmed, emir of Anatolia" at the Dârüşşifâ, and the lack of any basis for the information about the Cümûdâr Tomb all came to light through careful rereading of the texts.

Information not based on an inscription, on the other hand, has easily led to wrong dates. The childhood memoirs of Osman Fevzi Olcay offer a curious example. Describing how the square in front of the Dârüşşifâ was the main playground of the neighbourhood children, Olcay writes that according to its inscription the building was erected in 606 (1209). This date does not match the 708 of the Dârüşşifâ inscription and is identical to the 606 given for the Halifet Gazi Madrasa. It is very likely that the dates of the two buildings became confused in memory, but this is an inference. In a similar way Hüsameddin reports that on the two side columns of the facade of the Sultan Mesud Tomb, west of the Upper Bazaar, there are intricate Kufic inscriptions that many people took for flowers, that the lower part of the inscriptions is buried in the ground, and that the name of Sultan Mesud I is carved on the column. This reading has not been confirmed by later publications.

The Amasya Museum also preserves the documents of buildings that have been lost or altered. In the section where the sarcophagi are displayed, the original marble inscriptions of mosques, madrasas and similar buildings erected in Amasya in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods are exhibited. In the museum garden, foundation inscriptions of the Ilkhanid, Seljuk and Ottoman periods are shown, together with sarcophagus-type gravestones and the column capitals of the late-comers' portico of the Bayezid II Mosque, which collapsed in the earthquake of 1939. An inscription removed from its place goes on carrying the name of its founder and the date of its building. The transfer of the Gökmedrese door to the museum is likewise a result of this approach to conservation. The door leaves, the hadith text and the joiner's signature have been preserved in their original state even though the mosque has undergone repairs.

Chronology

1209-1210: Construction date in the inscription of the Halifet Gazi Madrasa (606; Hüsameddin reads the same inscription as 632).

1225: Halifet Gazi's endowment deed for the madrasa, certified by the judge Takiyyeddin Osman bin Ali.

1234-1235: Date in the Halifet Gazi Madrasa inscription according to Hüsameddin's reading (632).

1237-1246: Reign of Gıyâseddin Keyhusrev II; the period named in the inscription of the Burmalı Minare Mosque (year 640 in Ali Yardım's reading, 1242-1243 in the sources).

1266-1267: Endowment deed of Seyfeddin Torumtay; the Gökmedrese is accepted as completed by this year at the latest.

1278-1279: Date in the foundation inscription of the Torumtay Tomb (677).

1280: Death of Seyfeddin Torumtay according to Hüsameddin (Rebîülâhir 679).

1299-1300: Drawing up of the endowment deed of the Burmalı Minare Mosque by Pervâne Bey, according to Hüsameddin.

1308-1309: Construction date in the inscription of the Amasya Dârüşşifâ (708; 709 in one translation).

1312: Drawing up of the Dârüşşifâ endowment deed.

1647: Heavy earthquake damage to the Halifet Gazi Madrasa; repair in timber by the teacher Hasan Efendi.

1730-1731: Date at which the stone minaret of the Burmalı Minare Mosque is accepted to have been built after the fire.

1858: Heinrich Barth sees the Dârüşşifâ in use as a workshop.

1888: Repair of the Halifet Gazi Madrasa by the mufti Hacı Osman Hilmi Efendi.

1891-1892: Repair of the Torumtay Tomb.

1898-1899: Repair inscription at the Gökmedrese; trustee Gürcüzâde Mehmed Necib Bey.

1927: Publication of İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı's Kitâbeler.

1933-1935: Expropriation around the Dârüşşifâ and inclusion of the Halifet Gazi Tomb in the Ministry of Education's repair list.

1948-1951: Repair of the Dârüşşifâ portal carried out by Ali Saim Ülgen.

1991-1997: Comprehensive restoration of the Dârüşşifâ.

2004: Publication of Ali Yardım's book on the inscriptions of the Burmalı Minare Mosque.

2011: Opening of the Dârüşşifâ as the Sabuncuoğlu Museum of the History of Medicine and Surgery.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Zeynep İnan Ocak, Gülsün Tanyeli, "Amasya Bimarhanesi'nin Tamamlanamayan Taçkapısı", METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 36/2 (2019), pp. 221-246.

Official sources

  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism, records on the Amasya Torumtay Tomb and the Burmalı Minare Mosque.

Other sources

  • Meral Koçak, "Amasya'da Bir Dârüşşifâ ve Kırşehir'de Cacabey Medresesi", Cengiz Han ve Mirası, Turkish Academy of Sciences Publications.
  • Gönül Cantay, "Amasya Dârüşşifâsı", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 3, Istanbul 1991. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Selda Kalfazade, "Gökmedrese Camii", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 14, Istanbul 1996. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Burmalı Minare Camii ve Türbesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Hilfet Gazi Medresesi ve Türbesi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
  • "Amasya", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
  • "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35, Istanbul 2008.
  • İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Kitâbeler, Istanbul 1927.
  • Amasya Museum information texts.

Online sources