At the head of İstiklal Street in Amasya, directly opposite the Gökmedrese Mosque, stands the Torumtay Tomb (Torumtay Türbesi), a building that departs from the familiar patterns of Anatolian Seljuk funerary architecture. Its rectangular plan, the towers rising at the corners of its south front and a scheme of decoration shifted away from the doors and windows toward the upper parts of the walls set it apart from other tombs of the same age. The building was commissioned in 1278-1279 by Seyfeddin Torumtay, governor of Amasya. The governor's own life and political career are the subject of a separate article; this one concerns the building itself: its inscription, its endowment, its plan, stone and ornament, those buried in it and the repairs it has undergone.

Foundation and Setting

The tomb is part of the complex Torumtay founded on the western side of the city. This quarter had long been settled; according to Hüsameddin it was formerly known as "Güdül Mülkü", and the neighbourhood itself was called the "Güdül Quarter". When Torumtay built a mosque and madrasa here in 665 (1266-1267), the name of the madrasa, the "Gök Medrese", passed to the neighbourhood, which has been known ever since as the Gökmedrese Quarter. In describing the boundaries of the quarter, Hüsameddin uses the tomb as a kind of landmark: the quarter begins east of "the Torumtay Tomb, famous as the Tomb of Kılıç Arslan", reaches the Yeşilırmak to the north, the mountain and the Şeyh Kırık Quarter to the south and Şamice to the east, and ends on the west with a road and a cemetery. The tomb thus stood at the western edge of the quarter, beside the road leading out of old Amasya to the west.

The first and largest building of the complex is the Gökmedrese Mosque. Because its inscription was removed from its place, the date of the mosque is not known for certain; but since the endowment deed drawn up by Torumtay bears the date 665 (1266-1267), the building is accepted as having been finished by that year at the latest. The mosque forms a closed complex with a madrasa and an adjoining burial chamber, and it is generally held to take its name from the blue and purple-turquoise tiles and glazed bricks of the domed tomb (kümbet) at its northeastern corner. The tomb, built some eleven or twelve years after the mosque, stands on the other side of the street, to the north of the mosque in Hüsameddin's words, "on the paved road". Torumtay thus left two funerary structures: a small tiled kümbet beside the mosque and the cut-stone tomb across the way. The two are often confused, and some compiled texts attribute the features of the tomb to the Gökmedrese and the tiles of the Gökmedrese to the tomb.

Inscription and Date of Construction

The date of the tomb is given by the four-line Arabic inscription above the window of the facade that faces south, toward the qibla. Hüsameddin read and recorded the text; in the translation printed in the new edition of his book it reads: "This tomb was built in the year 677, in the time of the exalted sultan, helper of the affairs of faith and the world, the father of victories, Kaykhusraw son of Kılıç Arslan, may God make his state everlasting, by the weak servant in need of God's mercy, Torumtay son of Abdullah, may God forgive him." The ruler named in the inscription is Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw III, son of Kılıç Arslan IV, who was raised to the throne as a child. The tomb was therefore built at a time when Mongol pressure had grown heavy and the affairs of state lay largely in the hands of powerful emirs such as Mu'in al-Din Pervane.

The year 677 of the inscription corresponds to a span running from the spring of 1278 to the spring of 1279. This is the source of the small disagreement between the sources: official institutional records give 1278, one local guide gives 1279, and international architectural databases correctly write "1278-1279". Both dates are two faces of the same Hijri year and do not contradict each other.

The sources also differ on for whom and when the building was made. One encyclopaedia entry, and some texts that follow it, state that the tomb was built after Torumtay's death. The wording of the inscription and the date of death given by Hüsameddin weaken this view. The inscription says that Torumtay himself built the structure; Hüsameddin writes that the governor's son returned from Egypt ill in 678 and died soon afterwards, and that Torumtay, deeply shaken by this grief, died in the month of Rebiülahir 679, that is, in the summer of 1280, and was buried in his tomb. Hüsameddin adds that he had been governor of Amasya for thirty-two years and was known among the people as "Torumtay Pasha". On this reading the tomb is a family burial place finished in its founder's lifetime, a year or two before his death. The encyclopaedia entry on the Gökmedrese Mosque reaches the same conclusion, stating that Torumtay lies "in the tomb dated 677 that he himself had built".

Names

The building is known today by the name of its founder, but over the centuries it has borne other names as well. In Hüsameddin's time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the most common name among the people was the "Tomb of Kılıç Arslan". Hüsameddin explains its origin: a member of the Seljuk line, Kılıç Arslan, son of Tâceddin Gazi Çelebi and lord of Sivas, was later buried in the tomb, and the building came to be called by this famous name. Elsewhere the same author refers to the building as "Kılıçarslan, that is, the Torumtay Tomb", making clear that the two names point to the same structure. That the family tomb of a Seljuk governor should be known by the name of a Seljuk prince shows that in popular memory the dynastic name weighed more than the governor's.

The building is also referred to as the "Tomb of Seyfeddin Torumtay" and the "Gökmedrese Tomb". The name Gökmedrese properly belongs to the tiled kümbet opposite; its use for the tomb is a shorthand born of giving directions. The Gökmedrese Mosque itself is also called the "Torumtay Mosque" after its founder. In Hüsameddin's texts the "Torumtay Mosque", the "Torumtay Madrasa" and the "Torumtay Tomb" appear separately, and the reader must take care to see which building is meant.

Endowment and Function

Torumtay did not leave only a funerary building; he also set up an endowment to sustain it. According to Hüsameddin, the governor endowed his farm and his other income-producing properties to his descendants and to the reciters (cüzhan) who were to read the Qur'an in his tomb. The administration of the endowment was assigned, while Torumtay was still alive, to his grandson Emir Celâleddin Mehmed Pervâne Bey and his line. Torumtay's descendants served as trustees of this endowment for centuries, and in Hüsameddin's biographies family members who became "trustee of his ancestor's endowment on his father's death" appear one after another. That the family still stood at the head of the endowment at the end of the nineteenth century can be seen from the name of the trustee Gürcüzâde Mehmed Necib Bey, who repaired the Gökmedrese Mosque in 1316 (1898-1899).

There is a debate among scholars about the building's original function. An international database of architectural history reports that the endowment deed refers to the building as an "imara". In medieval and early modern Anatolia this was a general term used for a dervish lodge (zaviye), convent or soup kitchen for the poor; according to the same record, the deed also states that one of the building's functions was to distribute food to the poor. Ethel Sara Wolper has accordingly interpreted the building as a dervish lodge. A building's being a tomb did not prevent it from serving at the same time as a lodge or soup kitchen; in Seljuk Anatolia dervish lodges were important centres of urban life.

A piece of information given by Hüsameddin supports this reading from the local sources as well. The father of Çelebi Şeyhzâde Ahmed Efendi, who lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was Alâeddin Efendi, "sheikh and tomb-keeper of the Torumtay shrine"; when his father died, Ahmed Efendi succeeded to the same post while also pursuing his studies. In 1043 (1633-1634) he became, by examination, professor of the Torumtay Madrasa, and he died around 1044. The presence of both a "sheikh" and a "tomb-keeper" at the head of a tomb shows that the building was kept alive within a lodge arrangement in the Ottoman period as well. Taken together, the reciters mentioned by Hüsameddin, the tomb-keeper and the sheikh show that the building was less a silent burial chamber than a place where the Qur'an was regularly read, visitors were received and the upkeep was met from the revenues of an endowment.

Plan and Building Materials

The tomb is a rectangular, two-storey building covered by a vault. Some sources count it among the iwan-type tombs of Anatolian Seljuk funerary architecture. On each facade a large window opens within a deep arched recess. The building is entered through a door on the east facade, reached by a flight of stone steps; a second entrance on the west facade is also mentioned. Hüsameddin describes the tomb as "very high, reached by a stone stair" and writes that its door faces east. According to one architectural description, the main chamber onto which the door opens lies about two metres above ground level and is covered by a pointed barrel vault. From the outside, as reported, the building is known to have once been covered by a conical roof.

Cut stone was used predominantly in the construction. The exterior is faced with this dressed stone, while rubble stone was used in the inner wall masonry and brick in the vaulting; these lie beneath a layer of plaster and are not visible at first glance. Marble was used very sparingly: only in the window niche at the centre of the south facade and on the surfaces enclosed within its rectangular frame. The east and west sides of the building are supported by three buttresses each, two at the corners and one at the centre of the wall. The stairs and buttresses form projections that stand out from the body walls, so that from outside one sees not a flat mass but surfaces in movement.

There is a further detail in the masonry. Hüsameddin records that Greek inscriptions can be seen on some of the stones of the Torumtay Mosque and Tomb and of the Halifet Gazi Madrasa and Tomb. In his view these inscriptions show that a church and a patriarchate once stood east of the nearby place called "Veng", and that stones from those buildings were later reused in buildings of the Islamic period. The reuse of stones taken from older structures was common practice in Seljuk building in Anatolia; Torumtay's masons seem to have obtained part of their cut stone from the city's older buildings. No published inventory showing which stones are reused has been found.

The sources describing the arrangement of the interior part ways at one point. According to some accounts there is a barrel-vaulted hall on the upper floor where the cenotaphs stand; the lower floor is the crypt in which the dead were buried, reached from inside by a stair on the eastern side. The same stair was also used to reach the roof. Another architectural description likewise states that the cenotaphs stand in the middle of the main chamber, while the dead they represent are buried in the crypt at the lower level of the building. Yet another account says that the lower floor, more than half buried in the ground, is entered through a stepped door on the right-hand side and that the most imposing cenotaph stands there. The two descriptions may arise from the lower floor having been partly buried as the surrounding ground level rose. Hüsameddin, however, while discussing another tomb nearby, rejects the view that the ground of Amasya later filled up and buried old buildings, and cites as evidence the fact that the Halifet Gazi Tomb, built in 622, and the Torumtay Tomb, built in 677, stand "very high". How far the apparently buried lower floor is due to later fill, and how far to an original design with a half-sunken crypt, is therefore not clear from the sources.

The Corner Towers

The most frequently cited feature of the building is the pair of corner towers on the south facade, which forms its front. These towers begin at the lower level as a cubic mass, take on a multi-faceted form as they rise and end at the top in a semicircular shape. Researchers note that this arrangement of towers is found in Anatolia only at the Torumtay Tomb. Such a stepwise change of geometric form is a solution that both strengthens the corners of a rectangular body and softens them visually. İsmail Orman, writing on tomb architecture, states that the tomb built for Torumtay, with its vaulted rectangular plan and its "weight towers supporting the roofing system", points to a different line of experiment in Anatolian Seljuk funerary architecture. On this reading the towers serve a structural as much as an ornamental purpose: they gather at the corners and counter the lateral thrust that the barrel vault exerts on the walls.

The towers draw attention also because the ornament is concentrated in this part of the building. According to one architectural description, the upper parts of the multi-faceted piers attached to the corners are decorated with frieze bands carrying geometric, inscriptional and vegetal palmette motifs. The high reliefs at the upper right and left corners of the south facade are regarded as original examples of Seljuk stone carving. Because the ornament is gathered in the upper rather than the lower parts, the eye travels from the base of the building to the tops of the towers. Whereas in tombs of the period it was the usual rule for decoration to cluster around doors and windows, here the ornament has been moved to the upper structure; official descriptions single out this departure as the building's defining quality.

The corner tower appears on both of the buildings Torumtay commissioned. The facade of the Gökmedrese Mosque that holds the main portal is also bounded on either side by a cylindrical corner tower; in Selda Kalfazade's description, these towers, rising on chamfered cubic bases, are the most striking elements of the facade and give the building its monumental appearance. This facade of the mosque and the south facade of the tomb face each other across the street. It may be supposed that the masons working for the same patron eleven years apart took the idea of the tower from the mosque facade, reduced it in scale and turned it into a multi-faceted form for the tomb. This connection is not drawn explicitly in the sources; it emerges only from placing the descriptions of the two buildings side by side.

The South Facade, Its Niche and Inscriptions

The south facade is the front of the tomb and the place where ornament is densest. At its centre is a decorated window set within a marble niche. Above the window are rectangular panels of palmette and rumi leaves; these panels show that the tradition of vegetal ornament used in Seljuk architecture to enliven a facade was continued here as well. A roundel with a palmette pattern is also reported within the niche, beside the inscription plaque. Beside the windows and on the corner towers appear lotus and palmette leaves in high relief, contained within borders. Hüsameddin likewise writes that the building is adorned on all four sides with carved flowers, while the facade facing the qibla looks more splendid than the others.

Contrary to custom, the tympanum of the niche was left plain, and the four-line building inscription sits on this flat surface. A second inscription above the arch of the niche carries verses from the Qur'an. On entering the building one sees, above the window of the south facade, a versified repair inscription, from which it is understood that the building was repaired in 1891-1892. Around the same window, then, the building, Qur'anic and repair inscriptions can be read together. A description of the building published in a foreign language shows the inscribed facade as the north facade; given that Hüsameddin places the tomb to the north of the mosque and states plainly that the inscribed facade faces the qibla, this orientation appears to be a confusion.

The upper parts of the windows on the east and west facades have been damaged. In these windows and in the lower parts of the corner piers it can be seen that the ornament was left unfinished. Researchers have interpreted this unfinished work as a sign that Torumtay may have fallen into financial difficulty when the tomb was nearing completion. Official descriptions note more generally that not all of the ornament is thought to have been completed. This view rests on no document; it is an interpretation drawn from the places where the carving on the stone was left incomplete. The short interval between the date 677 in the inscription and the founder's death in 679, together with the loss of a son recounted by Hüsameddin, suggests another possible reason why the work may have been left half done; but no record says this directly.

The Interior and the Cenotaphs

The most remarkable object inside the tomb is the cenotaph of Seyfeddin Torumtay. According to Hüsameddin the cenotaph is made of black marble and is "very massive", with the Throne Verse (Âyetü'l-Kürsî) inscribed around it; the governor's name and date of death are also carved on it. Official descriptions note that the verses on this cenotaph are written in the large celî script. It is the most imposing of the cenotaphs in the burial chamber. One architectural description records nine cenotaphs in the middle of the main chamber.

The arrangement of the cenotaphs is given in most detail by Hüsameddin. According to him, on Torumtay's left lie his son Yakup Çelebi, Yakup's son Mehmed Çelebi, Mehmed's son Alaeddin Çelebi and Alaeddin's son Ebu Bekir Çelebi, four generations laid side by side. On his right lies Kılıç Arslan-ı Selçukî, of the Seljuk line, son of Tâceddin Gazi Çelebi and lord of Sivas, and at his feet lie Tâceddin and Gıyaseddin Çelebi, sons of Şehzade Sultan Alaeddin Bey (Prince Alaeddin), who was strangled while governor of Amasya. Hüsameddin states that he read these names from inscriptions carved into "dondurma kireç", a hardened lime plaster, on the graves; in other words, some of the cenotaphs were made of lime mortar rather than marble, with their lettering worked into that mortar. A more recent compilation gives the same list but omits Mehmed Çelebi. Hüsameddin's biographies of individuals mention further family members buried in the tomb. The lime-built grave of Süleyman Bey, son of Şerefeddin Ya'kûb Şâh, a great-grandson of Torumtay, bears the words "Süleyman Çelebi son of Ya'kûb Şâh"; his date of death could not be read. Süleyman Bey's son Sirâceddin Mehmed Çelebi, vizier to Hacı Şâdgeldi Pasha, is also buried here; his name can be read on his gravestone, but not his date of death. His son el-Hâc Ebûbekir Çelebi lies in the same tomb.

These records do not always agree. The Ebu Bekir Çelebi in Hüsameddin's list for the tomb appears as the son of Alaeddin Çelebi, while the el-Hâc Ebûbekir Çelebi of the biographies is the son of Sirâceddin Mehmed Bey; whether they are the same person or two family members bearing the same name cannot be determined. In addition, some sources report that three of the cenotaphs were later moved to the Gökmedrese Mosque, one of them belonging to Necip Bey, a descendant of Torumtay; this is the origin of the cenotaphs seen at the mosque entrance. This removal is one reason why the number and order of names vary from source to source. It is therefore not possible to offer a definitive list of which cenotaph belongs to whom. What the sources share is that several generations of one family lie in the building, with Torumtay at its head.

Kılıç Arslan-ı Selçukî

Little is known of the Kılıç Arslan who gave the tomb its popular name. Hüsameddin counts him among the "descendants of the Seljuks", that is, of the Seljuk dynastic line, refers to him as lord of Sivas and gives his father's name as Tâceddin Gazi Çelebi. He states that he was buried in the tomb after the Torumtay family, "later on". Neither his date of death nor the way he came to be buried in the tomb appears in the sources. The burial of a dynastic prince in a governor's family tomb may have resulted from the close relationship the Torumtay line had formed with the Seljuk house; Torumtay had administered the province as regent (naib-i saltanat) for Kılıç Arslan IV during the years that sultan spent in Amasya. There is no document showing a direct link between that relationship and the Kılıç Arslan buried in the tomb.

The Sons of Prince Alaeddin

Among those who lie in the tomb, the most tragic story belongs to two small Ottoman princes. Şehzade Alaeddin Ali Çelebi, son of Murad II, was sanjak governor of Amasya in the early 1440s. In 846 (1442-1443) he took part with his father in the campaign against the Karamanids, went with him on the way back as far as Bursa, and then returned to Amasya. According to Hüsameddin's account, Kara Hızır Pasha, sent after him, entered Amasya by night, strangled the prince in his bed, and his two sons Gıyaseddin and Tâceddin Çelebi, "one year and six months old", were also strangled and buried in the Torumtay Tomb. In the biographical volumes of Hüsameddin's work it is written that Tâceddin İbrahim Çelebi was born in Amasya in 844, was strangled together with his father in 846 before reaching the age of two, and was seen buried "side by side" with his brother Gıyaseddin in the Torumtay tomb.

The event itself is disputed. Halil İnalcık's article on Murad II writes that the news of Alaeddin Ali Çelebi's death in Amasya deeply shook the sultan, but does not say how the death came about. Hüsameddin also reports that some historians claimed that the prince, on learning that he was to be killed, fled to India and a slave resembling him was strangled in his place, and that Alaeddin went to the Deccan, rose in the service of its ruler, and that his son İsmail Âdil Şâh founded the Adil Shahi dynasty; he notes that figures such as Hayrullah Efendi and Ali Emîrî Efendi were inclined toward this tradition. These traditions concern the prince himself; the information that his two small sons are buried in the Torumtay Tomb is given by Hüsameddin from reading the inscriptions and could not be checked against another source. That the tomb of a Seljuk governor should be used two hundred years later as the grave of two infants of the Ottoman dynasty shows that the building was still regarded in the Ottoman period as one of the city's honoured burial places.

The Family's Other Burial Building

The dead of the Torumtay family were not buried only in this tomb. Hüsameddin refers to the tiled kümbet adjoining the northeastern corner of the Gökmedrese Mosque as the "Tomb of the Martyrs" (Şehîdler Türbesi) and gives a detailed description of it. Beneath the kümbet is a deep stone chamber reached by some eight stone steps; apart from its east-facing door it has no opening for light or air. Inside stand two coffins, one to the south and one to the north; in these covered coffins, as far as Hüsameddin could see, lay the bodies of five or six people, their flesh appearing dried onto the bones. Above the chamber are four grave enclosures and stone cenotaphs, and in a separate compartment to their east are enclosures marking the graves of some eight people.

None of these graves bears an inscription. Hüsameddin nonetheless "strongly conjectures" that buried here are Torumtay's son Emir Sinâneddin Mûsâ, his grandson Emir Celâleddin Mehmed Pervâne Bey, his descendant Zeyneddin Ya'kûb Şâh-ı Rûmî, emir of Amasya, and their descendants. In another of Hüsameddin's biographies it is written that Safiye Hatun, daughter of Hacı Şâdgeldi Pasha and wife of Sirâceddin Mehmed Çelebi, was buried in "the tomb inside the Torumtay Mosque". The encyclopaedia entry on the Gökmedrese Mosque, for its part, states that there are seven cenotaphs in the kümbet, two of them small, and that it is not known who lies within. The generations of the family thus appear divided between two buildings: inscribed graves in the cut-stone tomb across the street, and graves whose names cannot be read in the tiled kümbet beside the mosque.

Graves Around the Tomb

The tomb was not a building standing on its own so much as one in the midst of an old burial ground. Hüsameddin writes that the west of the Gökmedrese Quarter was bounded by a road and a cemetery. He states that the "Tomb of Ebû İshak Çelebi" lay "in an open garden in the row of the Kılıçarslan, that is, Torumtay Tomb", that the graves of Kutlu Pasha and his son Ebû İshak Çelebi were seen there, and that Ebû İshak Çelebi set up an endowment for the reading of Qur'an sections at these graves. Elsewhere he notes that the grave of Tuli Bey, one of the emirs of Amasya, must be one of the black-marble graves seen in a garden east of the Torumtay Tomb, but that its head and foot stones have been lost. He also writes that on a high ridge by the road west of the Torumtay Mosque stood the tomb of a gazi thought to have died in the time of the Danishmendid Melik İsmail Gazi, in the form of a small wooden cell. These accounts show that although the tomb now looks like a solitary monument with its surroundings cleared, at the beginning of the twentieth century it was ringed by graves, gardens and small tombs.

Repairs

The first known repair of the tomb took place in 1891-1892, in the reign of Abdülhamid II, as the versified inscription on the south facade shows. A few years later, in 1316 (1898-1899), the Gökmedrese Mosque was also repaired, and a repair inscription in the name of the trustee Gürcüzâde Mehmed Necib Bey was set up in place of the mosque's old inscription, which had been removed. It appears that the two buildings were looked after within the same decade, and that this care was carried out while the endowment was still administered within the family. No record has been found showing who commissioned the repair of the tomb.

In the twentieth century the condition of the building was documented in photographs. Of a series of seven photographs taken in 1965 by the architectural historian Aptullah Kuran and now preserved in his archive at the Boğaziçi University Library, six show the Torumtay Tomb. Albert Gabriel also included the tomb and the Gökmedrese in the second volume, devoted to Amasya, of his work Monuments Turcs d'Anatolie. These records can be consulted by anyone wishing to see the building's state before its recent restoration.

From 2019 the building was again taken into a process of restoration. According to an announcement by the Governorship of Amasya, this work, carried out by the General Directorate of Foundations, has been completed. The announcement describes the Gökmedrese Mosque as 753 years old and the Torumtay Tomb as 742 years old, a calculation which indicates that it was made around 2020. At the inspection attended by Governor Dr. Osman Varol, Tokat Regional Director of Foundations Yılmaz Kılınç and Provincial Mufti Durmuş Ayvaz, it was stressed that the restoration would carry these works on to future generations. No published report has been found setting out the technical details of the restoration, that is, which parts were renewed or consolidated; there is therefore no firm basis for separating original and later elements in the building's present appearance.

Its Place Among Anatolian Seljuk Tombs

Anatolian Seljuk tombs are generally of two storeys: below lies the crypt in which the dead are buried, and above is the visiting floor with the cenotaphs. The Torumtay Tomb keeps this two-storey arrangement, but departs from the norm in two respects. The first is the plan: here a rectangular plan is used with a barrel-vaulted covering suited to it. The second is the ornament: decoration that one would expect to be gathered around doors and windows is concentrated in the upper parts and at the corners. All the sources describing the building agree that its plan and ornament differ markedly from those of other Seljuk tombs.

This difference becomes sharper when the building is compared with the tombs of viziers and emirs of the same period. İsmail Orman notes that Seljuk viziers contributed more to tomb architecture than the sultans did, and sets two examples side by side: the tomb Sâhib Ata built in 682 (1283) within his complex in Konya draws attention less for its design than for the extraordinary tile decoration covering its domed interior, while the tomb built for Torumtay in Amasya seeks another path with its vaulted rectangular plan and its weight towers. Of two statesmen of the same years, one put coloured tile to the fore, the other carved stone and the ordering of mass.

In a building where cut stone is used so predominantly and marble is confined to the window niche and framed surfaces, the whole burden of ornament is carried by stone relief. The palmette, rumi and lotus motifs set forms carved in stone beside the coloured surface of the neighbouring kümbet with its brick and tile decoration; the patron's two buildings show two different approaches to ornament side by side on the same street. This comparison, too, is not made explicitly in the sources; it emerges only from setting their descriptions side by side.

The Building Opposite: the Gökmedrese Mosque

To understand the tomb one must also look at the mosque opposite, for the two buildings of the same patron complement each other. The Gökmedrese Mosque has a rectangular plan extending in depth; its walls are of thick cut stone, and its three-aisled interior is covered by domes and vaults. Two rows of four massive piers divide the space into three sections perpendicular to the mihrab, and pointed arches rest on these piers. Its iwan-shaped portal is reached by a flight of seven steps; with its mature proportions in cut stone it is regarded as one of the few examples of its kind in Anatolia. The windows on either side of the portal narrow upward with rich muqarnas, and the mihrab is semicylindrical and plain. The mosque's wooden door, worked in the kündekari technique, is now displayed in the Amasya Museum. Hüsameddin read the words "Amile Ebu's-Silm en-Neccâr" ("the work of Ebu's-Silm the carpenter") on the central post of this door and stated that the door was made by this craftsman. The building served as the Amasya Museum between 1926 and 1977.

The kümbet adjoining the mosque rises on a square plan with a tall octagonal drum and was covered by a brick cone, now ruined, with a sixteen-pointed star section. The turquoise and purple glazed bricks and tiles adorning the drum form geometric interlaces, rosettes and stars, and beneath the cone runs a Kufic inscription band laid in turquoise glazed brick. This is the decoration that gave the complex its name. The contrast between the tomb and the kümbet shows how coloured tile and carved stone were used together in two funerary buildings commissioned by the same family.

Visiting

The tomb is in the city centre, directly opposite the Gökmedrese, within walking distance. Its address is given as Gökmedrese, İstiklal Sokağı No:1. In official records the building is listed under faith and cultural tourism. Visiting the mosque and the tomb together allows one to see side by side the two funerary buildings Torumtay left and the corner towers of the two facades standing opposite each other. For the hours during which the building is open to visitors after its restoration, current announcements by local institutions should be consulted.

Chronology

1266-1267: Torumtay's endowment deed is drawn up; the Gökmedrese Mosque and madrasa are completed by this year at the latest.

1278-1279: Construction of the Torumtay Tomb (677 according to the inscription); given in the sources as 1278 or 1279.

1280: Seyfeddin Torumtay dies (Rebiülahir 679) and is buried in his tomb.

1442-1443: Tâceddin and Gıyaseddin Çelebi, the two young sons of Prince Alaeddin, are buried in the tomb.

1633-1634: Çelebi Şeyhzâde Ahmed Efendi, sheikh and tomb-keeper of the Torumtay shrine, becomes professor of the Torumtay Madrasa.

1891-1892: Repair of the tomb in the reign of Abdülhamid II; versified repair inscription.

1898-1899: The trustee Gürcüzâde Mehmed Necib Bey repairs the Gökmedrese Mosque.

1965: Aptullah Kuran photographs the tomb.

2019: Restoration work by the General Directorate of Foundations begins.

Around 2020: Completion of the restoration of the Gökmedrese Mosque and the tomb is announced.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources