The Yörgüç Pasha Mosque stands on the bank of the Yeşilırmak, west of the Sultan Bayezid Complex, on the edge of the old Gökmedrese and Hacı İlyas quarters. Completed around 1430, some forty years after Ottoman rule was established in Amasya, it is regarded as the first large complex built in the city in the Ottoman period, and it forms the surviving core of that complex. A madrasa, a soup kitchen, a bathhouse and a caravanserai once stood around it; most of these have disappeared, and the mosque and the tomb remain. One of the most striking Amasya examples of the early Ottoman zâviye-type mosque, which also contained lodging rooms, the building carries in its reused antique stones, its red and white arches and its inscription the political and architectural traces of the order established in this region in the first half of the fifteenth century.

Yörgüç Pasha, the Founder

The man who had the mosque built, Yörgüç Pasha, is recorded in inscriptions and on his gravestone under the name Yörgüç and the title Celâleddin. His place and date of birth are unknown; the sources give his name as Yörgüç, Yörgeç and Yörgenç. He served as tutor-guardian (lala) to Prince Murad, the son of Çelebi Sultan Mehmed, and after the prince acceded to the throne he served him as beylerbey (governor-general) of Rum. The province of Rum was a broad administrative area that included Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Çorum and Osmancık. According to the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, when Çelebi Mehmed sent the twelve-year-old Prince Murad to Amasya in 1414 to head this province, he placed Yörgüç Pasha at his side as his lala. After Murad's accession he was appointed beylerbey of Rum in 1423 (AH 826). Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin's Amasya Tarihi, by contrast, states that the pasha was in the close service of Çelebi Mehmed and became beylerbey of Amasya in 1413 (AH 816), and that he came to the beylerbeyilik of Amasya from Ankara in 825. The disagreement over the dates of his offices stems from the frequent appointments of the early Ottoman administration in the region and from the different dates the sources give.

Nothing certain is known about his ancestry. Some studies link him to the line of Nâsırüddin Ahmed, founder of the Atabekiye Madrasa in Amasya, and give his name as Yörgüç b. Muînüddin Abdullah b. Şücâüddin İlyâs b. Hayreddin Hızır b. Ömer b. Atabek Nâsırüddin Ahmed. Hüsâmeddin points in the same direction, describing the pasha as the son of Atabeyzâde Abdullah Bey of the Atabeg Oğulları family of Amasya and as the son-in-law of Hacı Şadgeldi Paşazâde Mustafa Bey. Another genealogy ties him to Gâzî Ali b. Gâzî Mihal Bey and claims that his original name was Yörüklüce. Because his father's name appears only as Abdullah on the mosque inscription, on his gravestone and in his endowment deed, none of these genealogies is considered reliable. From his father's name it has also been suggested that he was of Slavic origin and that his name derives from Jorgiç, meaning "son of Yorgi". Hüsâmeddin firmly rejects Solakzâde's account, which presents the pasha as someone who was not a Turk; he points out that the endowment deed states plainly that his forebears were Muslims, that the pasha was called sülâletü'l-ümerâ (scion of emirs) and that the door inscription gives his name as "Yörgüç Pasha son of Abdullah el-Atabegî". The title atabeg in the inscription, according to the TDV entry, refers not to his father but most probably to his own post as lala. His wife's name, according to Hüsâmeddin, is Safiyye Hatun in the deed; Çiçek Hatun, who had an endowment in Edirne, is also recorded as the pasha's wife. Hüsâmeddin further mentions a spouse named Şahbulâ Hatun.

In his first years as beylerbey, Yörgüç Pasha's chief concern was public order in the region. He fought the Kızılkocaoğulları, who cut roads around Amasya and Tokat and from time to time pressed as far as the towns; it appears that they were supported by Karayülük Osman Bey of the Akkoyunlu, Hasan Bey of the Dulkadirids and Halil Bey of the Bayındırs. Hüsâmeddin relates that the pasha invited the leaders of these bandits to Amasya under the pretext of a banquet, had them seized in a single night and imprisoned them in the caves of the citadel rock; he places the episode in 827 in one passage and in 833 in another. He also answers the historians who criticised these harsh measures by recalling that the bandits had burned hundreds of innocent people alive. To these years belong the subjugation in 828, after a siege, of Haydar Bey, lord of Kocakayası; the submission of Hüsâmeddin Hasan Bey son of Alparslan, lord of Canik; and in 1427 the incorporation of the Ordu and Çarşamba district into Ottoman administration. The pasha who restored peace in the region was granted the rank of vizier. Hüsâmeddin reports that he had coins struck in his name and that these were called the Yörgüç Pasha akçe; the TDV entry regards this information as doubtful. The trouble that the Karakoyunlu ruler İskender Mirza caused in the Amasya and Tokat area with his followers in 834-835 was also among the notable events of the pasha's tenure.

Date of Construction and the Inscription

According to the inscription above the mosque door, the building was erected by Atabeg Yörgüç Pasha in AH 834. This year corresponds to 1430-1431, which is why the date is written sometimes as 1430 and sometimes as 1431. Some accounts also give 1428 as the year of construction; no document confirming this has been seen. Hüsâmeddin records the Arabic text of the inscription and its Turkish meaning: this blessed soup kitchen, intended for the poor and the needy, was built at the beginning of the year 834 by the valued vizier Yörgüç Pasha b. Abdullah el-Atabegî, in the time of Sultan Murad, son of Sultan Mehmed, helper in matters of religion and the world and master of conquests. The inscription thus gives the building the character of an imaret for the poor, and the zâviye arrangement and the charitable function of the complex are expressed openly in this wording. It is known that the inscription consists of three lines with scalloped edges and palmette-tipped ends, set under a pointed-arch panel, and that a border bearing the sura of Tawba (Tevbe) encloses the arch above it.

According to Hüsâmeddin, construction of the mosque, madrasa and imaret was under way in Amasya while the pasha was away on his campaigns to restore order around Dârende and Sivas; the pasha returned to the city in 833 and the buildings were completed in 834. For his charitable foundations in Amasya, the pasha endowed his property and real estate in Rebiülevvel of AH 840 (1436), and the deed was registered by the Amasya judge Muslihzâde Abdurrahman Çelebi. The earliest documented phase of the building is this deed together with the inscription; the inscriptions of Yörgüç Pasha and his descendants published by Halil Edhem in 1327 and Ferruh Toruk's studies of the deed are among the main works consulted by those who study the founding of the complex.

The Units of the Complex

Yörgüç Pasha's foundation in Amasya was not made up of a mosque alone. The TDV entry, relying on endowment texts and Ottoman land registers, reports that he had a mosque, a madrasa, an imaret and two bathhouses built in Amasya. Hüsâmeddin describes a small but very sturdy mosque, its façade of marble and its surroundings of reddish stone, "gâyet musanna" (executed with great care), with a minaret on the east side, a tomb beside the door for the pasha and his children, an imaret opposite, and a madrasa with four cells on the two sides of the mosque. The income-producing caravanserai and bathhouse were in the Gökmedrese quarter; Hüsâmeddin writes that the Hayriye and Feyziye madrasas in this quarter stood near and in line with "Yörgüç Pasha's endowed han", and so indirectly fixes the location of the han. The boundary of the old Danishmendid gardens known as Altı Bahçeler, according to Hüsâmeddin, ran from above the Yörgüç Pasha Bathhouse to the Sultan Bayezid Mosque; this sentence also shows the bathhouse's position on the bank of the Yeşilırmak.

The madrasa part consisted of several stone rooms inside and in front of the mosque. Hüsâmeddin notes that the endowment deed states these rooms were built as a madrasa and that they ranked among the esteemed, first-class madrasas of the "sittîn" (sixty-akçe) level. When the number of students grew, the trustee Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey added a wooden madrasa of twelve cells on the east side of the courtyard in AH 1044. The TDV entry considers that the domed closed room next to the entrance iwan may have been the lecture hall of this lost madrasa. Among the five imarets that Hüsâmeddin lists in Amasya is the Yörgüç Pasha Imaret; since a tabhâne stood beside each imaret, it follows that the city had five imarets and five tabhânes in operation. The purpose of the imarets was to supply food to students and teachers in the madrasas and to feed the poor and guests arriving in the city from elsewhere. In the small cemetery east of the Yörgüç Pasha Imaret lies Şeyh Ahmed, a Halvetî sheikh known as Kutub Dede. Northeast of the imaret stands the Melik Gazi Zâviye, built in 819 by Bayram Beyzâde Melikü'l-Ümerâ İsmâil Bey, later known as the Sünbül Tekke.

Plan and Layout

In terms of its plan the building belongs to the group of inverted-T, tabhâne-equipped or zâviye-type mosques of Ottoman architecture, and it has no last-congregation porch. Amasya has other examples of this type; some presentations count the building among the inverted-T mosques common in the city and cite the incorporation of the porch into the main space as its notable feature. In the middle of the three-part entrance section is an entrance iwan covered by a dome reached through fan-shaped pendentives. The great arch of the iwan is built of red and white marble and, rather than being seated directly on the wall, is built to project slightly beyond it, which gives the entrance an elegant appearance.

In the main space entered through the door there is a sofa at the centre, tabhâne units opening from it on both sides through doors, and the raised prayer area on the south side. The dome of the sofa is reached by pendentives; its drum has twelve corners and, with an arrangement of three niches and a window, contains twelve niches and four windows in all. The walls of the raised prayer area are enclosed on three sides by supporting arches, and its drum, reached by pendentives, is again twelve-cornered and organised with niches. The tabhâne rooms are domed spaces entered through marble-framed, flat-arched doors, set on a sixteen-cornered drum reached by prismatic triangles; inside them are open hearths without hoods and plaster shelves on the walls. These shelves and hearths are concrete traces showing that the rooms were intended for lodging travellers and dervishes. In the prayer area the mihrab is of marble and has a plain muqarnas niche; the minbar is of wood and has been renewed. In the north, above the door, there is a wooden gallery, and in the middle of the wall where the gallery stands there are niches with a scalloped arch, flanked by lower round-arched ones.

The façades are of cut stone. Apart from the mihrab wall, rectangular windows set within round relieving arches of coloured stone, inside tall rectangular frames, line the walls. There is one round-arched window at the top of the south wall of each tabhâne room, and two at the top of the east, west and mihrab walls of the prayer area. The first minaret of the mosque has not survived; in its place stands a plain wooden minaret built later. A small door on the east side of the pier on which the door arch rests gives access by a stair to the minaret.

Decoration and Reused Material

The most striking aspect of the mosque is its stone decoration. This carefully executed ornament is concentrated, with restraint, in the entrance iwan. All the arches inside and outside the building are laid in red and white stone, and the yellow-white and red-white colour harmony is evident on the arch soffits and keystones. In the arches of the entrance iwan these colours were applied as paint, and it can be seen that the paint has run over time. On the two sides of the stone door are delicate reliefs composed of rûmî palmettes. Over the flat-arched door of coloured stone to the east of the iwan there is a round-arched panel set in a tall rectangular moulding; inside the panel is painted decoration over stone carving in the hatayî style. At the springing of the iwan arch, inside, there is a scalloped panel with rûmî palmettes and an ornament with a rosette-shaped pendant in the middle, and on the east wall a muqarnas niche resting on two small corbels with a round medallion with rûmî palmettes beneath it. The fan-shaped pendentives in the dome of the iwan are likewise a decorative element.

A great deal of reused material was employed on the façades. Most of this material, beginning with the stone inscription on the north face of the closed section at the entrance, belongs to antiquity. Older accounts say that it was brought from ruins of the Byzantine and Roman periods. The coloured arch work is thought to have arisen under the influence of craftsmen associated with the Syrian and Mamluk sphere who worked in Amasya; this is an interpretation rather than established fact. It may also be said that the building is an important example of how the Seljuk tradition was carried on by early Ottoman masters in its decoration.

Because it stands on the bank of the Yeşilırmak, the mosque suffered severe damage from floods over time, and the interior has been entirely renewed. The pen-work (kalem işi) decoration seen today is likewise new. The original plan and the stone fabric nevertheless still make the features of early Ottoman architecture legible.

The Tomb and the Family

The tomb section beside the entrance iwan is a space raised on a platform, open to the outside through two piers and covered by a dome on pendentives. The tomb is surrounded on three sides by marble railings; on the north, in the middle of the railings, a tall pointed-arch window with a marble frame has been opened. Inside are four marble sarcophagi belonging to Yörgüç Pasha and his family. Hüsâmeddin describes the tomb as a tall cell built of stone on the west side of the mosque door, and writes that Yörgüç Pasha, his son Yûnus Bey and his daughter Hundî Hatun lie in it. The TDV entry states that Yörgüç Pasha had sons named Hızır, Yûnus and Mustafa and two daughters named Sitti and Hundî Hatun. It also mentions another son, Molla Îsâ, who had endowments in Lefke. It is known that of his sons Hızır Bey and Mustafa Bey fell as martyrs at the Battle of Varna in 1444.

Yûnus Bey, the pasha's favourite son and one of the beys in the retinue of Prince Alâeddin Ali, died before his father and was buried in the special tomb in front of his father's mosque. Yörgüç Pasha himself died in Zilhicce 845 (April-May 1442) and was buried in the same tomb. In this way the mosque, madrasa and imaret were joined beneath the same roof with the grave of the man who had built them. This arrangement is a common practice in zâviye-type complexes, which combined worship, education, lodging and commemoration in a single building.

The Endowment and the Descendants

The survival of the complex over centuries depended on the revenues assigned to the foundation and on the choice of trustee. Yörgüç Pasha's trustees were chiefly his own descendants. Hüsâmeddin writes that the Atabeg dynasty in Amasya consisted of three great branches, known as Hoca Mehmed Paşazâde, Yörgüç Paşazâde and Hızır Paşazâde, and he records that at the beginning of the twentieth century the posterity of Yörgüç Pasha survived in full through the male line. The name of the trustee Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey is mentioned together with the madrasa added to the courtyard. The trustees of the Yörgüç Pasha Foundation appear in the sources in later centuries as well: Hüsâmeddin records that, in the middle of the seventeenth century, when Hasan Beyzâde Mustafa Bey died, the nephew Mustafa Bey son of Ali Bey became trustee of the foundation, and elsewhere he names Hakalacı Mustafa Bey as a trustee of the foundation. Hızır Pasha, of the line of Yörgüç Pasha, had a tekke built in the Şâmîce quarter in 971 and arranged its endowment.

The names of people connected with the mosque are also reflected in the sources. Hüsâmeddin records the death of Muhyiddîn Efendi, muezzin of the Yörgüç Pasha Mosque, around AH 1035, and of a scholar who served as preacher at the mosque and also as teacher in its madrasa and who continued his duty of teaching and exhortation to the end of his life. Together with the Atabeg and Halifet Gazi madrasas, the Yörgüç Pasha Madrasa was among the institutions of the city to which teachers were appointed in turn. That from the beginning of the ninth Hijri century until the accession of Süleyman the Magnificent the building of madrasas reached its height in Amasya, and that benefactors such as Yakub Pasha, Yörgüç Pasha, Hızır Pasha and Mehmed Pasha each built a madrasa and set aside funds for learning and students, is a point Hüsâmeddin stresses in his account of the city's history.

The same source also records that Şahbulâ Hatun, one of Yörgüç Pasha's wives, built a school and a fountain beside a mosque in the Sofizâde quarter and arranged the endowment. Hüsâmeddin gives the construction year of the school as 841 in one place and 843 in another; at the time of writing the school was in ruinous condition and used as a primary school (Sıbyan Mektebi).

Yörgüç Pasha's Other Foundations

Yörgüç Pasha's network of charity was not limited to Amasya. As far as can be understood from endowment texts and land registers, he had a bathhouse and a caravanserai built in Tokat, a mosque in Gümüş, an imaret in Havza, a mosque in Kavak and a bathhouse in İskilip; there is also a mosque in Köprü. The mosques in Amasya, Gümüş, Kavak and Köprü and the bathhouse in Tokat have survived to the present. Hüsâmeddin reports that the deed for Köprü dates from 834 and states that a mosque was built at the head of the village of Köprü near the town of Kedeğra; he adds that when the pasha had Haydar Bey, lord of Koca Kayası, brought to Amasya he built a mosque on empty ground near this village and settled some Turkmen tribes around it, and that Köprü began to develop as a result. The same author regards the association of Yörgüç Pasha's name with the Kuş Köprü over the Yeşilırmak, which Vazıh Efendi says the pasha built, as an account lacking historical basis.

According to Hüsâmeddin, a mosque of Yörgüç Pasha in Gümüş was later renewed by Rüstem Pasha and, since it was decorated with tiles, was called the Çinili Cami (Tiled Mosque); this name remained in later years as the name of a quarter. This information should be kept apart from the plan and story of the mosque in Amasya itself.

The Later Centuries

The subsidiary units of the complex gradually disappeared. The buildings of the madrasa and the imaret, the bathhouse and the han were by the twentieth century either ruined or gone; in Hüsâmeddin's Amasya Tarihi the Yörgüç Pasha Imaret is mentioned less as a functioning institution than as a landmark, used to describe the position of the surrounding cemetery and tombs. The mosque, however, has remained open for worship. Because of its position on the riverbank it was affected by floods, and as a result the interior was renewed, the original minaret was lost and a wooden minaret was built. The mihrab is of marble and the minbar was renewed in wood.

In Hüsâmeddin's work the Yörgüç Pasha Mosque is like a reference point for fixing the position of the buildings around it: the western edge of the Hacı İlyas quarter, the western neighbour of the Melik Gazi Zâviye, the neighbour of the cemetery where Kutub Dede lies. Open for worship in the age of the princes as well, the mosque, as the first large charitable building of Amasya after the city passed to Ottoman rule, keeps its place on the bank of the Yeşilırmak today.

Chronology

1413 (816): According to Hüsâmeddin, Yörgüç Pasha becomes beylerbey of Amasya.

1414: According to the TDV, Prince Murad is sent to Amasya at the age of twelve, with Yörgüç Pasha at his side as lala.

1423 (826): Yörgüç Pasha is appointed beylerbey of Rum.

1427: Hasan Bey, lord of Canik, is brought to submission; the Ordu and Çarşamba district is added to Ottoman administration.

1430-1431 (834): According to the inscription, the mosque, madrasa and imaret are completed.

1436 (840): In the month of Rebiülevvel, Yörgüç Pasha endows his property for his charitable foundations in Amasya.

1442 (845): Yörgüç Pasha dies and is buried in the tomb of his mosque.

1444: His sons Hızır Bey and Mustafa Bey fall as martyrs at the Battle of Varna.

1634-1635 (1044): The trustee Yörgüç Paşazâde Mustafa Bey adds a wooden madrasa of twelve cells to the courtyard.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsâmeddin Yaşar, Amasya Tarihi, vols. I-IV, VI-VIII (especially I, pp. 125-131, 144-146, 162, 177-178; III, pp. 465-473).

Academic studies

  • Ferruh Toruk, "Bani Yörgüç Paşa ve İmar Faaliyetleri", Vakıflar Dergisi, no. 29 (2005), pp. 105-133.

Other sources

  • Emine Naza Dönmez, "Yörgüç Paşa Camii", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 43, Istanbul 2013, pp. 567-568. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Yörgüç Paşa", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 43, Istanbul 2013, pp. 566-567. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Yörgüç Paşa Camii", Turkey Culture Portal.
  • Ahmet Şimşirgil, "Rum Beylerbeyi Yörgüç Paşa'nın Hayatı ve Vakıf Eserleri", Prof. Dr. Hakkı Dursun Yıldız Armağanı, Ankara 1995, pp. 459-471.
  • Halil Edhem, "Yörgüç Paşa ve Evlâdına Aid Birkaç Kitâbe", TOEM, II/9 (1327), pp. 530-541.
  • Ayverdi, Osmanlı Mi'mârîsi II, pp. 215-226.

Online sources