388

 Obscure Roots, Solid Foundations:
A Comparative Study on the Architectural Patronage of


This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for any award or any
degree or diploma in any University or other institution. It is affirmed by the candidate that,
to the best of her knowledge, the thesis contains no material previously published or written
by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis.
Signed Ayse Ezgi Dikici
iv
ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the architectural works commissioned by Ottoman court
eunuchs between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century, with special focus on Istanbul.
As the first study that attempts to evaluate the collective behavior of Ottoman court
eunuchs as patrons of architecture, it endeavors to chart particular patterns, trends,
similarities, and differences among the works of eunuchs in terms of choice of architectural
type, location, size, inscriptions, and decorative elements. Contextualizing individual
projects within a historical narrative of eunuch patronage, it explores how the eunuchs’
architectural output related to their identities, status, and power, as well as to the
conceptions of propriety that informed building commissions. This thesis highlights a
hitherto poorly studied part of the history of Ottoman court eunuchs, as it brings to the fore
the white eunuch patrons who dominated the period before institutional change in the late
sixteenth century allowed the chief black eunuch to emerge as an important figure in court
politics. It is argued that the Ottoman court eunuch patronage had two main veins, one
dominated by white eunuchs and the other by the chief black eunuch, two distinct eunuch
identities which differ from one another on the basis of not only race, but also social
origins, employment patterns, career prospects, and probably gender identities.
Keywords:
Court eunuchs, patronage, architecture, pious endowments
v
ÖZET
Bu tez, onbesinci ve onsekizinci yüzyıllar arasında Osmanlı sarayında görevli
hadım ağalar tarafından yaptırılan mimârî eserleri incelemektedir. Osmanlı saray
hadımlarının mimarlık hâmileri olarak kollektif davranıslarını değerlendiren ilk arastırma
olan bu çalısmada, hadım ağaların yaptırdıkları eserlerin mimârî türleri, yer seçimleri,
büyüklükleri, kitabeleri ve dekoratif unsurları incelenerek ortak özellikler, farklılıklar ve
genel eğilimlerin belirlenmesine çalısılmıstır. Mimârî projeler bir tarihsel anlatı içine
yerlestirilerek, eserlerin gerek hâmilerin kimlikleri, statü ve güçleri, gerekse hâmilik
üzerinde belirleyici olan toplumsal normlarla iliskisi arastırılmıstır. Bu tez, Osmanlı saray
hadımları tarihinin simdiye kadar pek az çalısılmıs bir alanını vurgulamakta, onaltıncı
yüzyıl sonunda darüssaade ağasının saray siyasetinde önemli bir aktör olarak ortaya
çıkmasını sağlayan kurumsal değisiklikten önceki dönemde etkin olan ak ağaların mimârî
faaliyetlerini ön plana çıkarmaktadır. Tezde, Osmanlı saray hadımlarının mimârî
hâmiliklerinde biri ak ağalar ve babüssaade ağası diğeri de kara ağalar ve darüsaade ağası
tarafından temsil edilen iki ana damarın varlığına dikkat çekilmekte, bunların dayandığı
kimliklerin yalnızca ırk açısından değil, toplumsal köken, çalısma alanları, atanabilecekleri
mevkiler ve hatta toplumsal cinsiyet bakımından da birbirlerinden ayrıldıklarına vurgu
yapılmaktadır.
Anahtar kelimeler:
Saray hadımları, hâmilik, mimâri, vakıflar
vi
ACKOWLEDGEMETS
I would like to thank especially to my advisor Nina Ergin for her meticulous
attention, support, patience, and kindness throughout the production of this thesis. Many
thanks also to Lucienne Thys-Senocak and Maureen Jackson, who provided valuable
feedback on my work. Finally, I thank my classmates for their friendship and
encouragement.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iv
ÖZET ...................................................................................................................................... v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................... vii
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. viii
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER I : A SHORT HISTORY OF OTTOMAN COURT EUNUCHS IN
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ...................................................................................... 11
CHAPTER II - FROM AMASYA TO ISTANBUL: THE PATRONAGE OF BAYEZID
II’S EUNUCHS .................................................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER III - READJUSTING THE LIMITS: THE PATRONAGE OF SÜLEYMAN’S
EUNUCHS ........................................................................................................................... 69
CHAPTER IV - HOW FAR CAN THE LIMITS BE STRETCHED? THE PATRONAGE
OF HABESÎ MEHMED AGHA ........................................................................................... 88
CHAPTER V - BUILDING AFTER MEHMED AGHA: COURT EUNUCH PATRONS
IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.............................................................................. 105
CHAPTER VI - THE LAST OF THE GREAT EUNUCH PATRONS: EL-HAJJ BESHIR
AGHA ................................................................................................................................ 138
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 162
MAPS ................................................................................................................................. 167
FIGURES ........................................................................................................................... 169
APPENDIX: LIST OF THE OTTOMAN COURT EUNUCHS WHO COMMISSIONED BUILDINGS IN
ISTANBUL FROM THE MID-FIFTEENTH TO THE MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY……………...183
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................. 191
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs belong to the author.
Fig. 1. The west side of the Hüseyin Agha bedestan in Amasya. Source: Uğur Çelik,
Amasya Kapu Ağası Hüseyin Ağa Bedesteni Restorasyon Önerisi, unpublished MA thesis
(Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi, 2008), 33, fig. 3.1.
Fig. 2. Satellite image of Amasya. Source of the base image: Google Earth.
Fig. 3. The Kilârî Süleyman Agha Mosque. Source: Naciye Altas, T.C. Basbakanlık
Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü Tarafından Tescili Yapılan Cami ve Mescitler, unpublished MA
thesis (Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi, 2007), 62, fig. 21.
Fig. 4. The inscription of the Kilârî Süleyman Agha Mosque. Source: Recep Gün, Amasya
ve Çevresindeki Mimarî Eserlerde Yazı Kullanımı, unpublished MA thesis (Samsun:
Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi, 1993), 33, fig. 23.
Fig. 5. Plan of the Kilârî Süleyman Agha Mosque. Source: Ersel Oltulu, Amasya’nın
Anıtsal Eserleri ve Hızır Pasa Külliyesi Restitüsyon ve Koruma Önerisi, unpublished MA
thesis (Istanbul: Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi, 2006), 40, fig. 4.35. Original source: Đ. A.
Yüksel, Osmanlı Mimârîsinde II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim Devri (886-926/1481-1520)
(Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1983), 38, pl. 18.
Fig. 6. The still standing architectural projects of eunuchs in Amasya. Source of the base
image: Google Earth.
Fig. 7. The foundation inscription of Hüseyin Agha’s bedestan in Amasya. Source: Çelik,
Amasya Kapu Ağası Bedesteni, 15, fig. 2.6.
Fig. 8. Perspectival drawing of the Kapu Ağası Medresesi in Amasya. Source: Oltulu,
Amasya’nın Anıtsal Eserleri, 52, fig. 4.53. Original source: Albert Louis Gabriel,
Monuments Turcs d’Anatolie II, Amasya-Tokat-Sivas (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1934).
Fig. 9. Detail from Matrakçı Nasuh’s miniature of Istanbul (1537-38). Source: Sabancı
University Information Center, Ottoman Culture Images Digital Collection; identifications
are taken from Ç. Kafesçioğlu, The Ottoman Capital in the Making: The Reconstruction of
Constantinople in the Fifteenth Century, unpublished PhD dissertation (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University, 1996), fig. 105a.
Figs. 10a-10b. Procession of Süleyman the Magnificent through the Hippodrome (1533) by
Pieter Coeck van Aelst (1502–1550). Source: Metropolitan Museum website,
<www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cnst/ho_28.85.7a.htm>. Original source: Moeurs et
fachons des Turks (Customs and Fashions of the Turks), 1553.
Fig. 11. The Firuz Agha Mosque. Source: Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Đstanbul'un Tarihsel
Topografyası: 17. yüzyıl baslarına kadar Byzantion-Konstantinopolis-Đstanbul, tr. Ülker
Sayın (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2007), 414, fig. 488.
Fig. 12. The foundation inscription of the Firuz Agha Mosque.
ix
Fig. 13. Plan of the Ayas Agha Complex in Amasya. Source: Oltulu, Amasya’nın Anıtsal
Eserleri, 55, fig. 4.56. Original source: Đ. A. Yüksel, Osmanlı Mimârîsinde II. Bâyezid
Yavuz Selim Devri (886-926/1481-1520) (Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1983),13, fig.3.
Fig. 14. The Küçük Ayasofya Mosque. Source: <www.archnet.org>.
Fig. 15. Plan showing the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque together with the Çardaklı Hamam.
Source: Müller-Wiener, Đstanbul'un Tarihsel Topografyası, 180, fig. 188.
Fig. 16. Interior of the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque. Source: <www.archnet.org>.
Fig. 17. The portico of the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque.
Fig. 18. The Çardaklı Hamam.
Fig. 19. The main entrance to the Küçük Ayasofya precinct.
Fig. 20. The hadith inscription on the main entrance to the precinct.
Fig. 21. The remodeled northern gate and the portico of the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque.
Fig. 22. The hadith inscription on the northern gate of the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque.
Fig. 23. The foundation inscription and the hadith inscription on the main portal of the
Küçük Ayasofya Mosque.
Fig. 24. The western entrance to the Küçük Ayasofya zâviye/medrese.
Fig. 25. The mausoleum (türbe) of Hüseyin Agha.
Fig. 26. Kapı ağası Mahmud Agha’s mosque in Ahırkapı.
Fig. 27. Plan and cross-section of kapı ağası Mahmud Agha’s mosque in Ahırkapı. Source:
<www.archnet.org>. Original source: G. Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural
Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 489, fig.513.
Fig. 28. Plan of the Cafer Agha medrese. Source: Çelen Birkan, Soğukkuyu Cafer Ağa
Medresesi Restorasyonu, Restorasyon Belgeleri Dizisi 2 (Istanbul: Vakıf Đnsaat
Restorasyon, 1990).
Fig. 29. South-north section of the Cafer Agha medrese. Source: Ç. Birkan, Soğukkuyu
Cafer Ağa Medresesi Restorasyonu.
Fig. 30. The Cafer Agha medrese (Soğukkuyu Medresesi), view from Alemdar Street.
Fig. 31. The three inscriptions on the entrance of the classroom at the Cafer Agha medrese.
Fig. 32. Plan and elevation of Odabası Behruz Agha’s mosque. Source:
<www.archnet.org>. Original source: Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 492, fig. 516.
Fig. 33. Thomas Allom’s engraving of the Samatya bath of Yakub Agha. Source: R.
Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches (London, 1838), 115.
Fig. 34. Plan of the Habesî Mehmed Agha Complex. Source: <www.archnet.org>. Original
source: Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 497, fig. 521.
Fig. 35. The Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque, view from the south. Author’s photograph.
Fig. 36. Elevation of the Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque. Source: <www.archnet.org>.
Original source: Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 497, fig. 522.
Fig. 37. The mausoleum of Habesî Mehmed Agha next to his mosque.
Fig. 38. The muqarnas-galleried stone minaret of the Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque.
x
Fig. 39. The fountain next to the entrance of the Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque precinct.
Fig. 40. The foundation inscription of the Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque above the
entrance of the precinct.
Fig. 41. Plan of the Malika Safiyya Mosque in Cairo. Source: <www.archnet.org>.
Fig. 42. Interior of the Malika Safiyya Mosque in Cairo. Source: <www.archnet.org>.
Fig. 43. Plan of the Gazanfer Agha Medrese Complex. Source: <www.archnet.org>.
Original source: Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 510, fig. 536.
Fig. 44. The Fountain of Departure (Ayrılık Çesmesi).
Fig. 45. The Osman Agha Mosque in Kadıköy.
Fig. 46. The Mısırlı Osman Agha fountain in Kadıköy.
Fig. 47. The inscription of the fountain next to the Abbas Agha Mosque.
Fig. 48. Entrance of the Beshir Agha Mosque Complex.
Fig. 49. Plan of the Beshir Agha Mosque Complex. Adapted from the plan in M. Günal,
Đstanbul’da Bir XVIII. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Mimarlık Eseri: Besir Ağa Külliyesi, unpublished MA thesis
(Istanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi, 2003), 190.
Fig. 50. Plan of the Beshir Agha Complex with the exception of the tekke. Source: N.
Mumcu, Hacı Besir Ağa Darülhadisi’nin Koruma Uygulaması Sorunları Üzerine Bir
Değerlendirme, unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul: Mimar Sinan Üniv., 2006), 40 (modified).
Fig. 51. The Beshir Agha Mosque Complex and its vicinity. Based on the map in E. H.
Ayverdi, 19. Asırda Đstanbul Haritası (Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1978), 2nd ed.
Fig. 52. The minaret and the entrance of the Beshir Agha Medrese.
Fig. 53. The Beshir Agha sebil.
Fig. 54. The fountain next to the Beshir Agha sebil.
Fig. 55. The foundation inscription of the Beshir Agha Mosque.
Fig. 56. The fountain and entrance gate of the Beshir Agha Mosque Complex.
Fig. 57. Detail from the Beshir Agha sebil.
1
ITRODUCTIO
While it is widely known that Ottoman court eunuchs wielded considerable power
in the empire’s politics especially from the late-sixteenth century onwards, their patronage
of art and architecture has so far attracted scarce scholarly attention. As patrons, eunuchs
were a peculiar group. Devoid of a lineage to boast and descendants to be concerned about,
their works seem to have been intimately connected to present-day concerns of gaining
legitimacy and acceptance in the eyes of the courtly community and the Ottoman public at
large. The heights of power they attained after coming from the depths of their obscure and
presumably lowly origins earned them the notoriety of undeserving individuals who
reached authority and wealth through illegitimate means. Moreover, as the products of an
archaic body project, they were condemned forever to otherness in the eyes of the rest of
the society. What, then, informed, motivated, and shaped their patronage endeavors?
This thesis investigates this question by examining the architectural works
commissioned by court eunuchs between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries,
especially in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. As such, it is the first study that attempts to
evaluate a multitude of architectural projects undertaken under the auspices of this group
within a certain time frame and that focuses on the collective behavior of Ottoman court
eunuchs as patrons of architecture. It addresses various questions as to not only how the
2
patronage of individual aghas compared and responded to one another, but also how their
collective patronage patterns changed over time.
In doing so, my principal purpose is to make a preliminary survey and analysis of
the architectural record of Ottoman court eunuchs in order to obtain a comprehensive
picture of their architectural patronage, which can serve as a basis for future research. As a
contribution to the recently expanding scholarly literature on Ottoman court eunuchs, I seek
to understand how their architectural output related to their identities, status, and power,
taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the eunuch community as well as the
conceptions of propriety that informed patronage (i.e., the suitability of the scale and sort of
architectural undertakings of a given individual to his status).
This research is intended to fill a gap in the academic literature not only through its
assessment of architectural evidence but also through its call for a more nuanced
understanding of the diversity of the eunuch community and the plurality of eunuch
experience. The interest in Ottoman court eunuchs has notably increased in the last two
decades, as the growing corpus of scholarly work on this subject implies. However, despite
the high scholarly quality of most of these studies, the recent contributions to the existing
literature tend to create an imbalanced picture due to their focus on African eunuchs,
particularly the “chief black eunuchs” (darüssaade ağaları), at the expense of lowerranking
eunuchs and white eunuchs in general, who are conspicuously more understudied.
As a result, possible indications of affinity, competition or solidarity among different
3
members of the eunuch community remain unaddressed to a large extent. Furthermore,
given that a large part of the existing literature concentrates on selected individual eunuchs,
there is clearly a need for studies that seek to draw a more complete picture of eunuch
employment at the Ottoman court. The present study, which uses architectural evidence to
reflect on the power configuration among eunuchs over a time period, can be seen as a step
towards this goal.
My research has benefited from several descriptive studies of singular structures
built by eunuch patrons, which provided the information that I endeavored to integrate into
a single historical narrative of Ottoman eunuch patronage of architecture in the early
modern era. In fact, the architectural patronage of Ottoman court eunuchs has mostly been
dealt with in such documentary-descriptive works,1 which now need to be surpassed for
more sophisticated analyses of patronage. In that sense, recent studies on Ottoman
eunuchs’ patronage of books represent a more advanced stage. The studies by Jane
Hathaway (1994), Zeren Tanındı (2004), and Emine Fetvacı (2005) give insights into the
connections between the eunuchs’ bibliophilistic activities and their changing positions in
the power configuration as well as their personal tastes, inclinations, and ideological
1 Two examples for these are Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, “Gazanfer Ağa Manzûmesi,” Đstanbul Enstitüsü
Mecmuası 3 (1957): 85-96; and Munise Günal, Đstanbul’da Bir XVIII. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Mimarlık Eseri: Besir
Ağa Külliyesi, unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Đslam
Tarihi ve Sanatları Anabilim Dalı, 2003).
4
motives.2 The centrality of eunuch identity in these analyses is also a feature of the present
study, which provides a new perspective for looking at several patrons whose eunuchhood
is often unacknowledged or deemed insignificant in the present scholarly literature.3
While much of the basic information on Ottoman eunuchs and the court structure in
general is found in several classicized works on the imperial court, such as those of Penzer
(1936), Uzunçarsılı (1945), and Uluçay (1971),4 in the last three decades there have also
been sporadic but significant contributions that have brought to light several essential
sources pertaining to Ottoman court eunuchs. An article by Toledano (1984)5 introduced an
important official register comprising the biographies of 194 black eunuchs who served at
the Ottoman court at the turn of the twentieth century. The Risale-i Teberdariyye, an
eighteenth-century treatise that is particularly hostile towards black eunuchs was first
examined in an article by Orhonlu (1988).6 Another key text from the eighteenth century,
2 Jane Hathaway, “The Wealth and Influence of an Exiled Ottoman Eunuch in Egypt: The Waqf Inventory of
‘Abbās Agha,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 4 (1994): 293-317; Zeren
Tanındı, “Bibliophile Aghas (Eunuchs) at Topkapı Saray,” Muqarnas 21 (2004): 333-343; Emine Fetvacı,
Viziers to Eunuchs: Transitions in Ottoman Manuscript Patronage, 1566-1617, PhD dissertation (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University, History of Art and Architecture Department, 2005).
3 For instance, as the most important study on a prominent eunuch patron, Semavi Eyice’s article on Hüseyin
Agha’s pious foundations does not even mention that the agha was a eunuch; Eyice, “Kapu Ağası Hüseyin
Ağa’nın Vakıfları,” Atatürk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Arastırma Dergisi, Prof. Albert Louis Gabriel
Armağanı Özel Sayısı 9 (1978): 149-246.
4 N. M. Penzer, The Harem: An Account of the Institution as it Existed in the Palace of the Turkish Sultans,
with a History of the Grand Seraglio from its Foundation to Modern Times (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott,
1936; republished New York: Dorset Press, 1993); Đ. H. Uzunçarsılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teskilâtı
(Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1945); Çağatay Uluçay, Harem II (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1971).
5 Ehud R. Toledano, “The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the Heart of Islam,” Middle Eastern
Studies 20, no. 3 (1984): 379-390.
6 Cengiz Orhonlu, “Dervis Abdullah’ın Darussaade Ağaları Hakkında Bir Eseri: Risale-i Teberdariye Fî
Ahvâl-i Dâru’s-saâde,” in Đsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı’ya Armağan (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1988).
5
Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, a compilation of biographies of chief black eunuchs, was published in
2000.7 Ottoman eunuchs of African origin have also been of interest to scholars who
specialize in Egypt. Among those studies that suggest the activities of exiled black eunuchs
in Egypt as a fertile ground of research are the two articles by Badr and Crecelius (1992-
93)8 and the publications of Jane Hathaway (1992, 1994, 1997, 2003, 2005).9 Her inquiry
into the political influence exercised by black eunuchs in Egyptian politics recently
culminated in her biography of el-Hajj Beshir Agha (d. 1746), the first book devoted
entirely to an Ottoman black eunuch.
As these works have recommended Ottoman chief black eunuchs as a worthwhile
subject of research, new studies emphasizing different aspects of the ascendancy of these
officers have begun to emerge. One of these, the master’s thesis of Yıldız Karakoç
(2005),10 highlights the power struggle between chief black and chief white eunuchs, as it
explores the historical process by which the former became a pivotal figure in palace
politics. Another important contribution, Baki Tezcan’s article (2007) on the apparently
7 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, ed. Ahmet Nezihî Turan (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2000).
8 Hamza Abd al-Aziz Badr and Daniel Crecelius, “The Waqfs of Shahin Ahmad Agha,” Annales
Islamologiques 26 (1992): 79-114; “The Awqaf of al-Hajj Bashir Agha in Cairo,” Annales Islamologiques 27
(1993): 291-311. These introduce some documents concerning the waqfs endowed by wealthy Ottoman
eunuchs in Egypt.
9 Jane Hathaway, “The Role of the Kızlar Ağası in 17th-18th Century Ottoman Egypt,” Studia Islamica 75
(1992): 141-158; “The Wealth and Influence of an Exiled Ottoman Eunuch in Egypt: The Waqf Inventory of
‘Abbās Agha,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 4 (1994): 293-317; The
Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997); “Exiled Chief Harem Eunuchs as Proponents of the Hanafi Madhhab in Ottoman Cairo,”
Annales Islamologiques 37 (2003): 191-9; Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem
(London: Oneworld Publications, 2005).
10 Yıldız Karakoç, Palace Politics and the Rise of the Chief Black Eunuch in the Ottoman Empire,
unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University, 2005).
6
only African member of the ulema and the Imperial Council provides an interesting insight
on the question of race in the Ottoman context as it examines a treatise written by this
person in defense of Africans and the black eunuchs who supported him throughout his
career.11
The present study is also a part of these efforts to understand the power and
activities of Ottoman court eunuchs. Yet, diverting from the general trend of these studies
which focus exclusively on the period after the late sixteenth century, it suggests taking a
broader perspective on the issue, a perspective that takes into account the earlier
development of the Ottoman eunuch institution, which has received little scholarly
attention. As a work on architectural history, this study also makes a departure from the
traditional focus of Ottoman architectural history on grandiose projects, by bringing
relatively modest structures into discussion. It particularly takes inspiration from Gülru
Necipoğlu’s analysis of the norms of decorum that informed the architectural projects by
patrons of diverse ranks.12 In fact, the striking contrast between the tremendous power that
eunuchs are so often said to have wielded and the modesty of their architectural
undertakings has been a consideration that inspired this research.
11 Baki Tezcan, “Dispelling the Darkness: The Politics of ‘Race’ in the Early Seventeenth-Century Ottoman
Empire in the Light of the Life and Work of Mullah Ali,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 13 (2007):
73-95.
12 See Gülru Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005), 115-24.
7
The survey of the architectural record by court eunuchs, which is the most
important contribution of this study to the existing body of knowledge, is based to a large
extent on several compilations and surveys of buildings. An essential work of reference for
this research has been the eighteenth-century writer Ayvansarayî’s compilation of the
mosques in Istanbul,13 which also provides information on various buildings that did not
survive to the present day. Ayvansarayî’s other important work, a compilation of
inscriptions from Istanbul, has also been very useful.14 Also indispensable is the 1546
survey of pious endowments in Istanbul,15 and several modern compilations of the
architectural inventory of Istanbul, such as those by Tanısık and Yüksel.16
The list of the architectural works of Ottoman court eunuchs obtained from the
systematic scanning of these and other studies is assessed in this study in relation to the
changing architectural culture and the changing status of eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire.
In a large part of this thesis, I try to chart particular patterns, trends, similarities, and
differences (e.g., in terms of choice of architectural types and locations) among the works
of eunuchs. In my interpretation of the meanings of the architectural record of Ottoman
13 Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, The Garden of the Mosques: Hafiz Hüseyin al-Ayvansarayi’s Guide to the
Muslim Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul, ed. and tr. Howard Crane (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
14 Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, ed. Fahri Ç. Derin and Vâhid Çabuk (Istanbul: Đstanbul
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1985).
15 Ömer Lutfi Barkan and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları Tahrir Defteri 953 (1546) Tarihli
(Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1970).
16 Đbrahim Hilmi Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, 2 vols (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1943-45); Đ. Aydın Yüksel,
Osmanlı Mimârîsinde Kānûnî Sultan Süleyman Devri (926-974/1520-1566), Đstanbul (Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih
Cemiyeti, 2004). Another work of Đ. Aydın Yüksel, Osmanlı Mimârîsinde II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim Devri
(886-926/1481-1520) (Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1983) provides a list of all architectural works
undertaken in that specific period.
8
eunuchs, I look at such issues as the proximity of a particular building to other significant
buildings (e.g., the probably meaningful proximity of the chief black eunuch Beshir Agha’s
sebil-küttab in Cairo to that of his predecessor el-Hajj Beshir Agha) and the suggestive
overlaps among different acts of patronage (e.g., the so-called Ayrılık Çesmesi [the
Fountain of Departure, after the departure of the pilgrimage caravan] on the Asian side of
Istanbul, which was built by a chief white eunuch and subsequently rebuilt by another).
The inscriptions on buildings and how these compare with one another in terms of their
messages are also an important aspect of this analysis.
In trying to answer the question of how the architectural patronage patterns of
different groups of Ottoman court eunuchs compare and relate to one another from the
fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the thesis investigates several other questions revolving
around the issues of identity, power, gender, and propriety: In what ways did the buildings
they commissioned relate to the eunuchs’ educational, religious, and financial roles and to
their proximity to women and the imperial family? Were there any recognizable responses,
dialogues, and intertextual patterns among the architectural works produced by eunuchs?
How did the choices and decisions that eunuchs made as architectural patrons relate to their
struggle for or assertion of power? How did architecture serve as a medium for the eunuch
patrons to negotiate their places within the power configuration of the empire? What were
the limits of propriety concerning the patronage of eunuchs and how were these modified
9
over time? What clues does architecture give us concerning the perception of eunuchs in
terms of gender in the Ottoman world?
One difficulty of this investigation arises in identifying the eunuchs through the
existing written evidence. This is done primarily by means of their duties and titles. While
there are a number of offices which are known to have been consistently occupied by
eunuchs (such as saray ağası, which would always be allocated to white eunuchs), there is
also a grey area constituted by those cases where we cannot ascertain whether a given
individual was a eunuch or not. In the frequently changing system of offices and titles of
the Ottoman court, it is not easy to track the holders of offices such as has oda bası, which
appear to have been assigned to white eunuchs at one point in time and to other palace
officers at another. Therefore, this survey takes into consideration all the potential eunuchs
and discusses the implications of their activities as well. Still, it should be acknowledged
that there is always a possibility that the analysis in this thesis is missing a (hopefully
marginal) number of eunuchs because of the gaps and limitations of the sources. In any
case, a great majority of the works examined in this thesis were commissioned by the chief
black and chief white eunuchs, who are almost always identified.
The focus of this research had to be limited for various considerations. For example,
the white eunuchs who served as viziers and provincial governors clearly followed a
different pattern in their architectural patronage; therefore, they constitute an elite group
separate from the eunuchs who were employed in the palace service. For this reason, this
10
group is excluded from the focus of this study. It also needs to be noted that this thesis is
not an exhaustive survey that takes into account all the extant sources. As a preliminary
investigation, it is limited largely to published sources, while an exploration of extensive
archival materials, such as the entire corpus of endowment deeds (vakfiyes) belonging to
eunuchs, is left to future studies. Likewise, the architectural works in Istanbul, which I have
been able to examine on site, inevitably receive more attention than those located in other
parts of the former Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Balkans. In determining the
temporal focus, I have taken into consideration the period when court eunuchs were most
active and influential both as political actors and as patrons of architecture.
The structure of the thesis consists of an introductory overview of the Ottoman
eunuch institution in the early modern era and a series of chapters devoted to specific
periods of eunuch patronage. The survey can broadly be construed to consist of two parts:
the period marking the apex of white eunuch patronage and power until the late sixteenth
century, and the subsequent period dominated by chief black eunuchs.
This investigation will hopefully contribute to the emergence of a more
contextualized understanding of the meanings of the patronage agendas of certain
individual eunuchs whose architectural undertakings surpassed those of their colleagues in
scale and scope (such as the chief black eunuch Habesî Mehmed Agha), as well as to new
conclusions concerning the relations between architecture, power, representation, and
norms of decorum in the Ottoman context.
11
CHAPTER I
A SHORT HISTORY OF OTTOMA COURT EUUCHS
I COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Almost from its foundation in the fourteenth century until its demise in the
twentieth, the Ottoman imperial court followed the example of the earlier empires of the
Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, and Muslims in employing a corps of castrated
male slaves. Recruited from a large pool of ethnicities and provenances, eunuchs worked
inside the Ottoman palace as guardians of the inner court and the imperial harem and as
tutors of the princes and pages, while a minority of them became viziers and governors in
the early centuries of Ottoman history. Throughout their existence, the changes in their
numbers, ethnic composition, duties, hierarchy, and standing in the power configuration
shaped their group identity and individual experiences. This chapter seeks to delineate the
salient features of the practices of eunuch employment at the Ottoman court, with
occasional comparisons drawn with the Chinese, Byzantine, and medieval Islamic
examples. In doing so, I aim not only to present a concise account of the eunuch
community associated with the Ottoman imperial court in the early modern era, but also to
provide insight on how the Ottoman case fits into the world history of eunuchs and
compares with other traditions of eunuch employment.
12
Eunuchism and the keeping of castrated servants in royal households have a long
history which predates their Ottoman variants by millennia. Human castration was a
widespread phenomenon evidenced from ancient to modern times, in a vast geographical
area comprising the Mediterranean basin, the Near East, and the Far East. Apparently
having originated in Asia, it may have emerged as a form of punishment or a practice
inspired by animal gelding.1 The earliest mentions of eunuch court servants are found in
Mesopotamian textual sources from as early as 2000 BC, in Egyptian texts from ca. 1300
BC, and in Chinese sources from 1100 BC.2 Apart from their courtly duties, one encounters
eunuchs in various other capacities in different historical contexts: for instance, as castrated
priests in the service of religious cults, and as castrati in early modern Italian opera.3 The
practice of maintaining eunuchs, however, was often related to the need to keep the
womenfolk of an elite household under control, although over time eunuchs assumed a
greater variety of roles and functions, including military command.4 The etymology of the
word “eunuch” attests to their domestic function, with which they are primarily associated.
1 Shaun Tougher, “Eunuchs,” Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, vol. 2, ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas et al. (New
York: Thomson Gale, 2007), 486-7.
2 Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 8.
3 Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, 9; Miles Hoffman, “Castrati,” The TPR: Classical Music Companion: Terms
and Concepts from A to Z (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 45-7.
4 Lewis A. Coser, “The Political Functions of Eunuchism,” American Sociological Review 29, no. 6 (1964):
880-1; Tougher, “Eunuchs,” 487. The varieties of the practice of eunuch employment, however, have been
subject to uneven scholarly attention. Thus, in comparison to the extensive literature on the numerous and
powerful court eunuchs of Chinese history, studies on the role of eunuchs in the Islamic world are largely
lagging behind. This is despite the fact that, as a pioneer in the latter field, David Ayalon states that “[i]n
Islam, … [the eunuch institution] acquired importance and dimensions which may have exceeded any
comparable one in other civilizations;” David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in Power
Relationships (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1999), 13.
“Eunuch” is derived from the Ancie
and (“to hold” or “to keep”), thus meaning “bed
In various historical contexts, eunuchs performed a specific set of functions, which
would not have been possible had they not been
differentiation, they were also often readily recognized by their distinct physique and
possibly different bodily comportment. In an observation which would also resonate
outside the Byzantine context, Kathryn M.
a separate gender category; they were “consciously reared and trained to present
themselves and act in ways considered appropriate for eunuchs.”
remember that the physical appearance of most
non-castrated men. Those who were emasculated before puberty were distinguished by
their beardless faces, peculiar high
their adult age. The surgical interven
which in turn would produce either extremely slim figures or a disposition to obesity.
these features would constitute a distinct physiological profile, which distinguished
eunuchs from the non-ca
5 Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Weste
6 Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, 4.
7 In addition, problems in urination, osteoporosis, and disproportionate development of bones were among the
problems eunuchs suffered in their lifetime as effects of castratio
effects of castration, see Jane Hathaway,
(London: Oneworld Publications, 2005),
13
Ancient Greek word , comprising
bed-keeper” or “bed chamber attendant.”
castrated. In addition to this functional
Ringrose notes that eunuchs were conceived as
6 It is important to
eunuchs was visibly different from that of
high-pitched voices, and prematurely appearing wrinkles in
intervention would result in a different hormonal development,
castrated. While their inborn male sexual identity would be
Western Manhood (New York: Routledge, 2002), 33.
, castration. For a description of the physiological
Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem
21.
(“bed”)
5
tion 7 All
strated.
14
recognized,8 the professional and physical distinction of eunuchs from the rest of society
must have resulted in a distinct gender identity in most contexts.
In the medieval Islamic world, eunuchs played key roles in elite households as
“guardians of political, sacred, and sexual boundaries.”9 Most often these would be
emasculated men, rather than “natural” eunuchs, i.e., men who congenitally lacked sexual
organs. The Arabic word khadim (Turkish: hadım), meaning servant, became a common
euphemism for eunuch in Islamic contexts from the tenth century onwards, due to their
widespread mode of employment in household service.10 As in the Byzantine judicial and
ecclesiastical context, in Muslim religious scholarship human castration was condemned.
Yet, as in Byzantium, this condemnation had little effect in practice.11 Their services being
especially needed in the context of sexual segregation sanctioned by Islamic morals,
eunuchs worked as male servants whose access to women was relatively permissible.12 On
8 Jennifer W. Jay points out that Chinese eunuchs “were referred to as males both in formal address … as well
as in kinship terminology. They wore male attire, married, adopted children, and ran the households as male
heads of the family when off duty or when retired from the palaces. … Even their sexuality, or rumours of it,
remained male-oriented;” Jay, “Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History: Castration, Marriage, Adoption,
and Burial,” Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 28 (1993): 465.
9 Baki Tezcan, “Eunuchs,” Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, vol. 1, ed. Josef W. Meri
(London: Routledge, 2006), 242-43.
10 Ibid.
11 Ayalon, Eunuchs, 61; and Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, 3.
12 Still, their direct contact with the women of the household was apparently regarded as somewhat morally
pernicious. Therefore, it was sometimes avoided by means of female servants acting as go-betweens among
women and eunuchs; Tezcan, “Eunuchs,” 242. A document from the mid-eighteenth century implies a similar
practice at the Ottoman court. According to this document, the three highest-ranking harem eunuchs had
female attendants assigned to serve them: the chief black eunuch had five, the second-ranking eunuch (the
“second-in-command of the black eunuch corps”) had two, and the agha of the treasury had four female
servants; Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 136.
15
the other hand, in a medieval Islamic elite residence, the usual work space of eunuchs
would be the vestibule of the house, as not only the female zone but the entire home was
deemed as sacred and forbidden.13
The role of eunuchs as guardians of sacred boundaries is most evident in their duties
at places of great religious significance. The tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina as
well as the Ka’ba in Mecca were guarded by a eunuch corps from the twelfth century
onwards almost to the present day: as late as in 1990, seventeen eunuchs in Medina and
fourteen in Mecca were guarding these sanctuaries.14 Eunuchs thus assumed a distinctive
role in the Islamic tradition as markers of the sacred quality of certain spaces.
Apart from these, castrated servants performed many duties in medieval Islamic
courts. Armed eunuchs guarded palace gates, attended audiences and parades, and fulfilled
various tasks within or outside the palace at the ruler’s behest.15 Eunuchs also served in the
military establishment as commanders.16 Moreover, they gained additional functions
starting with the creation of the institution of elite slavery during the Abbasid period. As
13 Tezcan, “Eunuchs,” 242-3; and Shaun E. Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6-7.
14 Information from an interview published in a Saudi magazine; Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries,
ix, 111, and 109-110, fn. 320.
15 Ayalon, Eunuchs, 16-17. The multiple tasks assigned to eunuchs, in combination with the usually large
harems of grandees, resulted in the employment of enormous numbers of eunuchs in elite households in
medieval Muslim societies. According to one medieval text, the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908-932) had
11,000 eunuchs in his court, as opposed to the 4,000 women in his harem. This gives a proportion of almost
three eunuchs per one woman, which is explained by Ayalon with reference to the necessity of shifts in
keeping watch in the harem as well as to the fact that eunuchs guarded the entire court complex and
performed various tasks within and outside the palace. Naturally, all these activities required large numbers of
eunuchs; ibid.
16 See ibid., 122-27.
16
tutors of mamluk novices, i.e., the youths recruited to be military slaves, eunuchs assumed a
central role in the training and formation of the military elite.17 Since the mamluk
institution was unique to the Islamic world, the duties of eunuchs relating to this institution
gave a peculiar character to the Muslim tradition of employing eunuchs, and differentiated
it from the practices of keeping eunuchs in other cultures.18
Due to their freedom of movement within the court and across sexual boundaries,
court eunuchs exercised immense influence. A eunuch not only had access to his patron
any time during the day, even in his private quarters, he was also privileged to see and
accompany his patron’s womenfolk on a large array of occasions. His condition, thus, often
entitled him to a freedom of movement, which other members of the court—sometimes
including even the patron himself—did not have due to the rules of etiquette.19
The reliability of eunuchs in the eyes of their patrons, as evidenced in medieval
Islamic texts, appears to have stemmed from their inability to have offspring and form
families, which resulted in what Ayalon calls “the absence of divided loyalty.”20 Unlike
other slaves, eunuchs did not pose the threat of founding dynasties of their own. Moreover,
often coming from outside the realm of Islam, most eunuchs in medieval Islamic contexts
were people without roots and without ties in the society that now hosted them. Thus, in the
absence of familial bonds, eunuchs were plausibly expected to have a strong allegiance to
17 Tezcan, “Eunuchs,” 243.
18 Ayalon, Eunuchs, 15-16.
19 Ibid., 18-9.
20 Ibid., 32.
17
their patrons who maintained them and gave them an opportunity of attaining power and
prestige.21
Much of what has been pointed out above concerning the medieval Islamic context
resonates with the Ottoman case. The strategic positioning of eunuchs at the significant
thresholds of the palace, their various duties at the court, their role in the training of
devsirme pages, the appointment of some eunuchs to military positions, and the Ottomans’
sustenance of the eunuch corps in Mecca and Medina reveals the affinity between the
Islamic framework and the Ottoman custom.
Deriving its many facets from this background, the Ottoman eunuch institution was
born and flourished together with the Ottoman court and polity in an area where the
practice of employing emasculated men was already a well-established tradition. Both the
Byzantines and the Seljuks, the Ottomans’ two greatest territorial predecessors, employed
eunuchs as court servants and military commanders.22 The Ottomans, just like the Seljuks,
inherited from the earlier Islamic empires the age-old tradition of maintaining castrated
servants to guard secluded and populous harems in line with Islamic morality. While the
Ottomans’ cultural debt to earlier Islamic traditions is evident, Byzantine practices
21 Ibid., 31-2. To this one should add, as Ayalon has noted, the dreadful prospects that awaited the
emasculated man if he happened to be ousted from the patron’s abode: the likelihood of being an object of
contempt in a society hostile and scornful to a man in his condition must have been an additional incentive
that urged the eunuch in his attachment to his patron; ibid., 32-3.
22 For Seljukid eunuchs, see David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships
(Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1999), 144-65. For the Byzantine tradition, one may
consult Shaun F. Tougher, “Byzantine Eunuchs: An Overview, with Special Reference to Their Creation and
Origin,” in Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium, ed. Liz James, 168-184 (London and New
York: Routledge, 1997), and Ringrose’s book The Perfect Servant.
18
probably also played a role in the development of the Ottoman eunuch institution. It is,
however, somewhat more difficult to identify the specifically Byzantine elements under the
Islamic coloring that marks the Ottoman practices of eunuch employment.23
The Ottoman court apparently began to employ castrated slaves from a very early
date onwards. In what seems to be a continuation of an earlier practice to entrust court
eunuchs with the administration of royal waqfs,24 the eunuch Serefeddin Mukbil, who was
a manumitted slave of Sultan Orhan (r. ca. 1326-62), appears as the trustee in the
endowment deed of a dervish convent built by this Ottoman ruler.25 In a later endowment
deed dated to 1360, a certain Evrenkus Hadım (probably Evrenkus the Eunuch) appears as
a witness.26 Yet, little is known about the first two centuries of the Ottoman eunuch
institution, which had developed into an articulated hierarchy by the sixteenth century. The
23 On this matter, see for instance M. Fuad Köprülü’s discussion in his Bizans Müesseselerinin Osmanlı
Müesseselerine Tesiri (Istanbul: Ötüken, 1981 [Originally printed in Türk Hukuk ve Đktisat Tarihi Mecmuası 1
(1931): 165-313.]), 75-81. Köprülü rejects the view that the Ottoman eunuch institution was a derivation from
the Byzantine custom by emphasizing the affinity between the Ottoman and medieval Islamic traditions of
keeping court eunuchs, while he ignores any possible relation with the Byzantine court tradition.
24 For instance, the Seljukid ruler ‘Izz al-Din Kayka’us I appointed the ustād al-dār—which M. Cevdet
translates to the Ottoman parlance as darüssaade ağası, thus a high-ranking court eunuch—and treasurer (al-
ḫāzīn al-ḫāṣṣ) Ferruḫ b. ‘Abdullah as the trustee of the waqf of the hospital he built in Sivas in 614/1217; M.
Cevdet, “Sivas Darüssifası Vakfiyesi ve Tercümesi,” Vakıflar Dergisi 1 (1938): 36 and 37-38. Süheyl Ünver
identifies this trustee, who was apparently a eunuch, as the same person as Atabey Cemaleddin Ferruh, a
member of the Seljukid military elite under ‘Ala’ al-Din Kaykubad and the builder of a hospital in Çankırı
(constructed in 1235); A. Süheyl Ünver, “Büyük Selçuklu Đmparatorluğu Zamanında Vakıf Hastanelerinin Bir
Kısmına Dair,” Vakıflar Dergisi 1 (1938): 22.
25 Đsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, “Gazi Orhan Bey Vakfiyesi,” Belleten 5 (1941): 279-81 and plate LXXXVI.
According to Peirce, this information suggests that the early Ottoman royal household was already wellstructured
in accordance with Islamic practices; Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and
Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 36.
26 Đsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, “Orhan Gazi’nin Vefat Eden Oğlu Süleyman Pasa Đçin Tertip Ettirdiği
Vakfiyenin Aslı,” Belleten 27 (1963): 442; and Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 296, endnote 34.
19
developing institution also included African eunuchs, who in the Ottoman parlance were
designated as kara ağalar (“black aghas”) and distinguished from the “white” eunuchs, ak
ağalar (“white aghas”). Ağa (agha) was a title commonly applied to eunuchs in court
service, along with several groups of non-castrated office-holders. The terms hadım and
tavâsî—borrowings from the medieval Islamic usage and originally euphemisms for
“eunuch”27—referred unequivocally to emasculated men in the Ottoman jargon.
While the use of castrated slaves was a phenomenon mostly associated with court
service in the Ottoman Empire, several white eunuchs were appointed as governors,
military commanders, and even grand viziers between the fifteenth and the seventeenth
centuries. Contrary to the modern assumption that eunuchs were solely needed to ensure
the segregation of women, they were also widely employed in the military in medieval
Islamic, Byzantine, and Chinese contexts.28 Accordingly, six of the Ottoman governorgenerals
of Egypt in the sixteenth century were white eunuchs who rose to militaryadministrative
positions after serving in the imperial household.29 The military mode of
27 Both terms originally meant “servant”; for an extensive discussion on the usage of the terms meaning
“eunuch” see Ayalon, Eunuchs, 200-3 and 207-84.
28 The military mode of employment gave rise to several famous eunuch commanders, such as the Byzantine
Narses, who led the reconquest of Italy during the reign of Justinian I (r. 527-565), and the fifteenth-century
Chinese admiral Zheng; Shaun Tougher, “Eunuchs,” Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, vol. 2, ed. Fedwa
Malti-Douglas et al. (New York: Thomson Gale, 2007), 487.
29 Michael Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule 1517-1798 (London and New York: Routledge,
1992), 32. Two of these, Hadım Süleyman Pasha and Hadım Hasan Pasha, served in the highest echelons of
palace administration typically assigned to eunuchs—for example, as the chief treasurer of the inner court
(hazinedarbası)—before being promoted to posts outside the palace; Münir Aktepe, “Khādim Ḥasan Pasha
Ṣoḳolli,” EI IV: 900-1; Cengiz Orhonlu, “Khādim Süleymān Pasha,” EI IV: 901-2.
20
employment, however, discontinued from the seventeenth century onwards, and eunuchs
began to serve only courtly duties.
A major dynamic in the history of Ottoman court eunuchs was the relative standings
of the “black eunuchs” and the “white eunuchs,” which changed significantly over time.
Until the late sixteenth century, all eunuchs, whether African or non-African, appear to
have been subordinate to the authority of the chief white eunuch (babüssaade ağası, “the
agha of the Gate of Good Fortune [or Felicity]”, or kapı ağası, “the agha of the Gate”).
Thus, the chief white eunuch was the officer-in-chief in the palace. However, the
establishment of the royal family in the capital as well as the installment of the imperial
harem in the Topkapı Palace in the course of the sixteenth century led to a new set of
arrangements in the social structure of the court. These developments formed the ground
for the separation of the office of the chief harem eunuch from the authority of the kapı
ağası in 982/1574-75, when it was assigned to a black eunuch.30 The appointment of the
Abyssinian (Habesî) eunuch Mehmed Agha as “the agha of the maidens” (kızlar ağası) or
“the agha of the Abode of Good Fortune” (darüssaade ağası), i.e., the “chief harem
eunuch” or “chief black eunuch,” meant not only the black eunuchs’ stepping out from
underneath the authority of the white eunuchs, but also a new division of labor based on
racial criteria. Beginning with the new regulation, harem eunuchs began to be chosen
30 As Baki Tezcan has noted, the date was most probably 1575, and not 1574, as is widely assumed; Baki
Tezcan, “Dispelling the Darkness: The politics of ‘race’ in the early seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire in
the light of the life and work of Mullah Ali,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 13 (2007): 78, fn. 18.
21
mostly from among Africans. These would serve in the imperial harem as guardians of
women and tutors of young princes, while white eunuchs would be employed mostly as
supervisors in the training of palace pages and as guardians at the Gate of Good Fortune
(babüssaade), the gateway to the third (the inner) court of the Topkapı Palace. In other
words, white eunuchs began to concentrate in the male zone of the inner court (enderun),
whereas the entrance to the harem quarters became the locus of African eunuchs.31
This event early in the reign of Murad III (1574-95) also marked the beginning of
the ascendancy of the chief black eunuch and black eunuchs in general, due to their newly
gained proximity to the imperial family. Moreover, in 995/1586-87,32 the position of
superintendent of the waqfs established to support the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina
(Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn, Haremeyn evkâfı) was taken from the hands of the chief white
eunuch and assigned to the chief harem eunuch (i.e., chief black eunuch).33 As a result of
this shift, the latter rose to unprecedented prominence as a palace officer with extraordinary
financial, religious, and ceremonial functions.34 In the subsequent period, as the power of
the chief white eunuch faded away, the influence of the chief black eunuch in state affairs
31 The term darüssaade (‘the Abode of Good Fortune’ or ‘the Abode of Felicity’) was used to denote chiefly
the imperial harem quarters; Ülkü Altındağ, “Dârüssaâde,” TDVĐA 9: 1.
32 Ibid.
33 At the time of Mehmed Agha, these waqfs included the Dashīshat al-Kubra endowed by the Mamluks, the
Hassekiye established by Hürrem Sultan, wife of Süleyman I, and the Muradiye founded by Murad III (1574-
1595). A fourth waqf was added later to Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn, which was the Mehmediye endowed by
Mehmed IV (1648-1687); Jane Hathaway, “The Role of Kızlar Ağası in the 17th-18th Century Ottoman
Egypt,” Studia Islamica 75 (1992):141-42.
34 As the overseer of the haremeyn foundations, the chief black eunuch had a prominent role in the annual
surre-i hümayun ceremonies; see Đsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teskilâtı (Ankara:
Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1945), 181-83.
22
increased to the point of having a say in the appointment of grand viziers.35 As will be seen
in the last chapter of this thesis, the authority of the chief black eunuch reached its
culmination during the tenure of el-Hajj Beshir Agha in the first half of the eighteenth
century.
The Ottoman sources are silent on the reasons of the new arrangement of offices in
1575. However, it possibly resulted from two considerations: first, a necessity to meet the
needs of the expanding harem by creating a new office solely responsible for it; and
second, an administrative wisdom to divide the authority of the chief palace eunuch among
two officers so as to restrain any single office-holder from becoming overly influential in
court affairs.36 Nevertheless, the question why the positions in the harem service—which
proved to be advantageous in the long run—were assigned to black eunuchs rather than
white eunuchs still remains unanswered.
I believe that there were at least two factors that recommended African eunuchs as
the most suitable servants for serving in the harem. One of these was related to the varieties
in castration practices. The emasculation procedure varied from one region of the world to
another; the operation consisted either of the removal of the penis or the testicles only or of
35 For a detailed discussion of this important shift, see Yıldız Karakoç, Palace Politics and the Rise of the
Chief Black Eunuch in the Ottoman Empire, unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University, 2005).
36 Ibid., 19.
23
the severing of both.37 The vastness of the Ottoman sphere of influence seems to have
allowed the imperial court to accommodate eunuchs who underwent different varieties of
the operation according to the tradition in their provenance. For the African slaves, who
would undergo the operation before entering the Ottoman territories proper, the common
manner of castration was the radical removal of all genitalia in one clean cut.38 Abyssinian
children would typically be brought through the two major slave trade routes, which
extended from the Darfur region and Sennar respectively to Cairo.39 Their castration,
carried out by Coptic physicians in the villages of Upper Egypt, would entail severe pain
and a high risk of mortality, as was often the case with other methods of emasculation.40
The radical castration of African eunuchs, however, probably increased their chances to
serve in the imperial harem, since, as Penzer has noted, a major consideration in selecting
eunuchs for harem service was to ensure the Ottoman harem to be guarded only by the
fully emasculated.41 In the case of the white eunuchs from Europe and the Caucasus, who
must have been acquired through slave trade or captured in war, the mode of castration
37 See Penzer, The Harem, 142-43. According to a seventh-century medical description, the two methods used
by the Byzantines were compression and excision. In either case, it seems that it was only the testicles that
were damaged; Shaun F. Tougher, “Byzantine Eunuchs,” 175.
38 For a nineteenth-century description of the operation and its aftermath, see G. Tournès, Les Eunuques en
Egypte (Genève, 1869), 9-13.
39 See H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (Oxford, 1969), vol. I, pt. I, 305, fn. 3.
Abyssinia (Habes) was a region that comprised parts of modern-day Ethiopia and Sudan.
40 For instance, evidence from sixth-century Byzantium suggests that, in one case, only three people out of
ninety survived the operation; Tougher, “Byzantine Eunuchs,” 175-6.
41 Penzer, The Harem, 149.
24
seems to have consisted of the removal of the testicles only.42 It is noteworthy that this was
also the common mode of castration in Byzantium.43 There are many black holes in our
current knowledge of the acquisition and castration practices of non-African eunuchs, who
seem to have been recruited in different ways from diverse regions; still, the varieties in
castration possibly accounted for some of the disadvantage they suffered in court
promotions.
Another point to consider is the fact that it was much harder and more improbable
for African eunuchs to maintain contact with their own families, unlike for some white
eunuchs, such as the kapı ağası Gazanfer Agha (d. 1603), who reunited with their family
members and cultivated new alliances with and through them.44 One may conjecture that
such activities on the part of eunuchs, who were supposed to be without family ties, were
probably not very pleasing from the perspective of the sultan and the imperial family. As
for other Islamic states before them who relied heavily on slaves, for the Ottomans too, the
perfect slave-servant was one with no roots and no bonds other than to his master. The
sheer unlikelihood of black eunuchs to find their families, whom they were forced to leave
behind in a distant land, probably played a role in their consideration as reliable servants fit
for close domestic service for the Ottoman royal family. Yet, despite the existence of these
42 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 19.
43 Tougher, “Byzantine Eunuchs,” 176. When Liudprand of Cremona presented four fully emasculated slaves
to the Byzantine emperor as presents during the diplomatic mission in 949, these were clearly regarded as
very rare and valuable gifts; ibid., 168 and 176.
44 For Gazanfer Agha’s connection with his family, see Chapter V.
25
factors before the 1575 regulation, the dynastic preference for harem service shifted onto
the black eunuchs only from the first months of Murad III’s reign onwards. The reasons for
the shift are unclear, to our present knowledge, and prone to speculation.
It is also important to note that the consolidation of the black eunuchs’ monopoly
over the office of chief harem eunuch did not happen all of a sudden in 1575, but took
almost half a century. It was only from Idris Agha’s appointment in 1623 onwards that the
office of darüssaade ağası was occupied by black eunuchs in an uninterrupted fashion. In
the period between 1575 and 1623, two white eunuchs held this office. El-Hajj Mustafa
Agha of Bosnian origin (tenure: 1592-96) was appointed after the dismissal of the
unpopular and unsuccessful Server Agha, the immediate successor of Habesî Mehmed
Agha. Ismail Agha of Malatya, who held the office in 1621-23, as the only eunuch to have
occupied the offices of babüssaade and darüssaade simultaneously, was also the last non-
African promoted to the latter position.45
At the Ottoman court, there were a variety of ranks to be assigned to eunuchs. Some
of these seem to have been dominated by white eunuchs from an early date onwards. As
already noted, kapı ağası or babüssaade ağası was the highest among these. As the head of
all palace officers and the chief guardian of the babüssaade gate opening to the third court
of the Topkapı Palace, the kapı ağası would be prestigiously lodged in a private room next
to this gate. The agha would accompany the sultan during his mosque visits as well as on
45 Altındağ, “Dârüssaâde,” TDVĐA 9: 1. Altındağ writes that from around 1480 to 1922, seventy-seven
Africans, as opposed to around twenty-one white eunuchs, were appointed as darüssaade ağası; ibid.
26
campaigns.46 The position of the kapı ağası as the chief administrator of the palace is
revealed in an early seventeenth-century treatise, which laments the “degeneration” of the
court order. This source counts the chief white eunuch as one of the three pillars of the
sultanate, the others being the seyhülislam and the grand vizier. While the kapı ağası was
entitled to discuss with the sultan everything related to the inner court, the sultan was
dependent on him in order to learn about events outside the palace. This text also accuses
the holders of this office in the last quarter of the sixteenth century for the erosion of
authority over the palace pages, whose recruitment, discipline, and training was overseen
by the chief white eunuch.47
After the kapı ağası lost the administration of the imperial harem to the now
independent chief black eunuch in 1574/75, he continued to administer the rest of the inner
court together with the white eunuchs under his authority, whose numbers ranged between
forty and eighty.48 Another change in the court hierarchy in the first half of the eighteenth
century took the top position in the palace administration from the hands of the chief white
eunuch and assigned it to the silahdar, who was not a eunuch.49 This change was also
46 Uzunçarsılı, Saray Teskilâtı, 355.
47 Anonymous, “Kitâb-ı Müstetâb,” in Osmanlı Devlet Teskilâtına Dair Kaynaklar, ed. Yasar Yücel (Ankara:
Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1988), 25-26.
48 Ali Ufkî or Wojciech Bobowski, who lived in the imperial palace between the 1630s and the 1650s, gives
the total number of white eunuchs as around fifty; Ali Ufkî, Topkapı Sarayı’nda Yasam: Albertus Bobovius
ya da Santuri Ali Ufki Bey'in Anıları, ed. Stephanos Yerasimos and Annie Berthier; tr. Ali Berktay (Istanbul:
Kitap Yayınevi, 2002), 27. According to the editors’ notes, the number was around forty in the sixteenth
century, while it doubled in the eighteenth; ibid., 113, n. 23. Uzunçarsılı writes that there were eighty white
eunuchs under the authority of the kapı ağası by the eighteenth century; Uzunçarsılı, Saray Teskilâtı, 355.
49 Uzunçarsılı, Saray Teskilâtı, 355-56.
27
reflected in the enthronement (cülus) ceremony: while the sultan-to-be would be led to the
throne by the darüssaade ağası and the babüssaade ağası, after the eighteenth century the
latter was replaced with the silahdar ağa.50
Below the kapı ağası in the white eunuch pyramid there were several aghas who
served as the heads of separate chambers, each of which housed a distinct group of pages.
One of these officers was the agha of the Privy Chamber (has oda bası), who would take
care of the sultan’s bedchamber and wardrobe. While white eunuchs would often be
appointed to this post, it is true that sometimes non-eunuch pages of the court were
promoted to has oda bası.51 A well-known one among these non-eunuch aghas was the
makbul and maktul (favorite and slain) Ibrahim Pasha, who later became a grand vizier
under Süleyman the Magnificent.52
Another prominent position reserved for eunuchs was chief treasurer
(hazinedarbası). This agha was the head of the pages in the Treasury Chamber and
responsible for the sultan’s inner treasury, which consisted of precious objects including
textiles, jewels, and artifacts of gold and silver as well as money.53 Ranking below the chief
treasurer was the head of the commissary (kilercibası or serkilârî-yi hassa), who could also
be a non-eunuch. Together with the pages of the commissary whom he would oversee, the
50 Ibid., 188.
51 Ibid., 340. This officer was responsible for putting on the sultan’s ceremonial robes; ibid.
52 Đsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, Osmanlı Tarihi 2 (Đstanbul’un Fethinden Kanunî Sultan Süleyman’ın Ölümüne
Kadar) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1943), 546.
53 Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries (Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 1991), 117.
28
kilercibası was in charge of setting the royal table and maintaining the necessary
provisions.54
The agha of the palace (saray ağası) was also a high ranking white eunuch and
responsible for the maintenance and care of the palace complex.55 The white eunuch
hierarchy also included various other positions such as the palace steward (saray kethüdası)
and the steward of the lads of the gate (kapı oğlanı kethüdası).56 However, this study will
show that, out of this varied community, only those occupying the highest echelons became
patrons of architecture.
The same is also true for the black eunuch hierarchy. The kızlar ağası or
darüssaade ağası was naturally the most prominent patron of architecture among the black
eunuchs. Yet, under him there were various other levels on the ladder of promotion.
Starting from the rank en asağı (the lowest), harem eunuchs would ascend through the
ranks of acemi ağası, nöbet kalfası, ortanca, hâsıllı (or hasırlı), yayla bası gulamı and yeni
saray bas kapı gulamı. One of the top positions in the hierarchy of black eunuchs was agha
of the Old Palace (eski saray ağası), the holder of which would have been a candidate for
chief black eunuch. Also important was the harem treasurer (hazinedar), who would take
care of the harem budget.57
54 Uzunçarsılı, Saray Teskilâtı, 313.
55 Ibid., 356.
56 Ibid., 356-57.
57 Ibid., 172-73.
29
An important reason for the prominence of the chief white eunuch and the chief
black eunuch as architectural patrons was the wealth that they were able to accumulate. Not
only would they receive the highest stipends among the eunuch community but they would
also earn money for serving as the superintendent of various royal waqfs. Ali Ufkî writes
that by the seventeenth century, the kapı ağası had a daily income of a hundred golden
coins from the pious foundations under his supervision.58 According to this author, while
the kızlar ağası had the same stipend as the chief white eunuch for his courtly duty, the
amount that he received from waqfs was almost three times as large.59 In addition to
overseeing the immense waqfs supporting the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, the chief
black eunuch was also the superintendent of many royal foundations, particularly those
founded by the mother of the sultan. Being thus at the head of an extensive waqf network,
the agha was able to pursue his own commercial interests through various connections and
agents in different parts of the empire.60
A particularly important province in the chief black eunuch’s career was Egypt. It
was not only an African eunuch’s first workplace after his enslavement and castration and a
stepping-stone for his career in the imperial capital, but also the place where many of the
58 Ali Ufkî, Topkapı Sarayı’nda Yasam, 27.
59 Ibid., 28.
60 For his commercial representatives, see Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 40-41. The intermingling of duty and
personal interest is illustrated in Jane Hathaway’s analysis of the seventeenth-century chief black eunuch
Abbas Agha’s waqf inventory; Hathaway, “The Wealth and Influence of an Exiled Ottoman Eunuch in Egypt:
The Waqf Inventory of ‘Abbās Agha,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 4
(1994): 293-317.
30
endowments for the Holy Cities were located. Moreover, from the mid-seventeenth century
onwards, salaried exile in Egypt had become a routine way of putting an end to a black
eunuch’s service at the court. This practice had produced a sizeable eunuch population in
Cairo, who often played an active role in Egyptian factional politics; yet, it was the chief
black eunuch who, even during his tenure, held the greatest sway in this province with the
help of his representatives.61
The following chapters examine how the eunuchs of the early modern Ottoman
imperial court translated the wealth and power they thus acquired into permanent icons in
the cityscape of the capital and in the provinces. Establishing pious endowments in one’s
own name was no doubt a prestigious investment for any patron in a Muslim society and a
socially legitimate way of making use of one’s wealth. Yet, in contrast to many other
patrons who built socio-religious structures, eunuchs did not have descendants whom they
could appoint as superintendents of the waqfs they established to maintain their buildings.
The safe transmission of inheritance to descendents was not a consideration for the
eunuchs’ patronage. It was, however, not only acceptable but also advisable for them—
from both the religious and social points of view—to spend their wealth in such religiously
sanctioned ways. Thus, as Ayalon has noted concerning the difference between mamluks
and eunuchs in their engagement in architectural projects, “the first did it because they had
61 See Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 139-64. The activities of Ottoman eunuchs in Egypt have been explored
in several studies by Hathaway; also see her “The Role of the Kızlar Ağası in 17th-18th Century Ottoman
Egypt,” 141-158; and “The Wealth and Influence of an Exiled Ottoman Eunuch in Egypt,” 293-317.
31
children, and the second because they had not, and thus found an accepted and very
acceptable way to dispose of their inheritance, or part of it.”62 While this chapter has
illustrated the diversity of the Ottoman eunuch community and the vicissitudes in their
power over the course of the early modern era, how their architectural patronage took shape
in accordance with these factors will be investigated in the following chapters.
62 Ayalon, Eunuchs, 32.
32
CHAPTER II
FROM AMASYA TO ISTABUL:
THE PATROAGE OF BAYEZID II’S EUUCHS
As respectable office-holders in the Ottoman Empire, palace eunuchs of varying
ranks inscribed the cityscape of Istanbul over the centuries with mosques, theological
colleges, dervish lodges, elementary schools, public baths, libraries, and fountains, which
often publicly proclaimed the names of their patrons on carved plaques. Usually structures
of quite modest proportions when compared to the works of the royal family and grand
viziers, these monuments stand as permanent reminders of the power and prestige that their
builders once attained. For their modern users and beholders, these are the vestiges of an
obsolete social, political, and economic order and of an extinct species of architectural
patron. For Ottoman eunuchs themselves, these buildings possibly stood for sites that
encapsulated the memory of their predecessors, works that were to be protected, emulated,
and perhaps surpassed whenever possible.
This chapter is the first of a series of chapters that trace the output of the
architectural patronage of court eunuchs from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth
century, with special focus on their constructions in Istanbul. The historical survey that
33
follows seeks to understand each individual act of architectural patronage by
contextualizing it within a chronological sequence that reflects the synchronicities,
continuities, gaps, and breaks in the history of Ottoman eunuch builders. The survey
presented in these chapters aims to delineate the original contexts of these building projects
and to make sense of the various patronage choices surrounding each project in the light of
earlier and contemporary patronage activities.
Focusing exclusively on court eunuchs, this investigation excludes the patronage
activities of those eunuchs who rose to the ranks of viziers. Eunuch viziers such as Reyhan
Pasha, a vizier under Murad II, were, in fact, among the earliest eunuch patrons of
architecture.1 Simple observation reveals that the works of eunuch viziers such as Atik Ali
Pasha and Mesih Mehmed Pasha were subject to different propriety rules, which clearly
allowed them to commission more monumental buildings compared to the humbler works
of court eunuchs.2 The fact that they began commissioning buildings before palace eunuchs
did suggests a greater license for eunuch viziers almost from the beginning. It is, therefore,
imperative that they be considered as a distinct category of patrons whose patronage is
comparable to those of viziers at large rather than that of the varied community of eunuchs.
1 See Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, Osmanlı Mimârîsinde Çelebi ve II. Sultan Murad Devri 806-855 (1403-1451)
(Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti Đstanbul Enstitüsü, 1972), 330, 353, and 362.
2 For the works of Atik Ali Pasha, see, for instance, Đ. Aydın Yüksel, Osmanlı Mimârîsinde II. Bâyezid Yavuz
Selim Devri (886-926/1481-1520) (Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1983), 162-77. For Mesih Mehmed
Pasha, see Gülru Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2005), 403-08.
34
The patronage of Ottoman court eunuchs, on the other hand, does not seem to have
begun before the conquest of Constantinople.3 The small neighborhood mosque built by a
certain Hacı Mercan Agha b. Abdullah to the east of the Old Palace (which occupied the
site where Istanbul University is now located) and in the most densely populated area of the
new capital might be the first building commissioned by an Ottoman court eunuch (see
Map 1). The proximity of the mosque to the Old Palace as well as the attention and care
that the mosque received from black eunuchs in later periods4 suggest that Mercan Agha
may have been a eunuch at the court of Mehmed II, possibly employed in the Old Palace.5
His endowment deed dated to 868/1463-64 lists various residential structures in the vicinity
of the mosque and, thus, attests to Mercan Agha’s share in the urbanization efforts during
the reign of Mehmed II by means of his contribution to the development of this quarter,
which was soon to be named after him.6
3 So far I have not encountered any buildings commissioned by court eunuchs in pre-Ottoman Anatolia,
which would have been precedents for the works of Ottoman court eunuchs. One example of pre-Ottoman
eunuch patronage, however, is found in Sinop. An inscription pertaining to the repair of a fortress tower in
838 bears the name of Shihab al-Dīn Shāhīn al-mamlūk al-tavāshī, a eunuch vizier of the Candaroğulları
Principality; M. Fuad Köprülü, Bizans Müesseselerinin Osmanlı Müesseselerine Tesiri (Istanbul: Ötüken,
1981 [Originally printed in Türk Hukuk ve Đktisat Tarihi Mecmuası 1 (1931): 165-313.]), 79, fn. 135.
4 See Chapters IV and V.
5 Ayvansarâyî states that he was “not [the Mercan Agha who was] darüssaade ağası;” Ayvansarâyî, Garden,
221. He also writes that Mercan Agha’s grave was there and that the mosque had a quarter. The summary of
the agha’s endowment deed stipulates that the waqf should be overseen by his manumitted slaves and their
descendents, which suggests that he did not have offspring; Ömer Lutfi Barkan and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi,
eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları Tahrir Defteri 953 (1546) Tarihli (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1970), 84.
6 Çiğdem Kafescioğlu, The Ottoman Capital in the Making: The Reconstruction of Constantinople in the
Fifteenth Century, unpublished PhD dissertation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1996), 335-38. Also
see the vakfiye summary in Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 84, which gives the date of the
endowment deed as Zilhicce 878 (April/May 1474) and a list of properties different from that of the 1464
vakfiye, according to Kafescioğlu, The Ottoman Capital, 335-36, fn. 88. Mercan Agha also had his residence
35
Another eunuch patron of the early period is identified in the 1546 waqf survey as
“Sinan Agha the Eunuch” (Sinan Ağa’t-Tavâsî), the builder of a no-longer extant mosque
near the Binbirdirek Cistern (see Map 1).7 Sinan Agha b. Abdülhayy’s endowment is much
smaller compared to Mercan Agha’s waqf record in the survey; yet his mosque also
constituted the center of a neighborhood. The clue for the date of Sinan Agha’s mosque
comes not from his own endowment record but from that of Hızır Agha the Eunuch (Hızır
Ağa’t-Tavâsî), who stipulated the recitation of parts of the Qur’an in the former’s mescid.8
Accordingly, the date of Hızır Agha b. Abdullah’s endowment deed, 1512 (Ramazan 918)
is the terminus ante quem for the construction of the Sinan Agha Mosque.9 A eunuch of the
court of either Mehmed II or Bayezid II, Sinan Agha is referred to as a babüssaade ağası in
Ayvansarâyî’s much later survey of the mosques in Istanbul.10
No matter to whose reign the Sinan Agha Mosque could be dated, the rise of
eunuchs to further prominence as architectural patrons occurred during the reign of
Bayezid II (1481-1512), which witnessed an expansion in the range of builders. Thus,
whereas construction efforts had been chiefly led by the military elite during the rule of
Mehmed II, eminent court eunuchs such as the chief eunuch of the palace (kapı ağası)
in the vicinity of his mosque; see ibid., 362. Another architectural patron of the period is Handan Agha, who
is known to have been an attendant in the court of Mehmed II; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 324. However, whether
he was a eunuch or not could not be verified.
7 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 21.
8 Ibid., 21 and 73.
9 Ibid., 73.
10 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 134.
36
Hüseyin Agha and the chief treasurer (hazinedarbası) Firuz Agha endowed large waqfs for
the buildings they constructed in prominent spots of the capital in the times of Sultan
Bayezid.11
The patronage of these eunuchs both in the capital and in the provinces seems to
have corresponded closely to the imperial urban policies of the period. Possibly in order to
balance his father’s concentration on the urban development of Istanbul, Bayezid
established two lofty socio-religious complexes in Amasya and Edirne during the first
years of his reign.12 In the last two decades of the fifteenth century, when building activities
slowed down in Istanbul and their focus shifted to provincial centers, eunuchs of the
imperial court followed suit in sponsoring architectural projects in these towns. Thus, some
of the earliest products of the architectural patronage of Ottoman court eunuchs appeared in
the provinces and, before long, sprang from there back to the heart of the new capital.
In the 1480s and 1490s, three or four high-ranking palace eunuchs commissioned
architectural projects in and around the towns of Amasya, Tokad, and Sivas. Given that
Amasya was Bayezid’s post prior to his enthronement, his eunuchs’ constructions in this
town suggest that, earlier in their careers, they had possibly served in the princely
household of the now reigning sultan. It should also be noted that Amasya and the nearby
towns thrived economically in the fifteenth century, owing to a large extent to their location
on the north Anatolian trade route which Iranian silk caravans traversed on their way to
11 Kafescioğlu, The Ottoman Capital, 394.
12 Ibid., 393-4.
37
Bursa.13 It was, therefore, both a reflection of and a contribution to this region’s importance
in long-distance trade that the first building commissioned as part of kapı ağası Hüseyin
Agha’s waqf in Amasya was a bedestan or covered market (Fig. 1). This building type
served merchants by providing them with lodgings as well as quarters for storing and
exchanging goods.14 Completed early in Bayezid’s reign, in 888/1483-84, the six-domed
rectangular market building in Amasya’s Kazancılar quarter was not far from the royal
mosque complex that was being built simultaneously (Fig. 2).15 This middle-sized bedestan
was probably destined to generate income for the medrese that Hüseyin Agha, as a
pioneering patron among court eunuchs, was going to found in the same town.16
One year after its completion, a new neighboring monument appeared near Hüseyin
Agha’s bedestan. This was a mosque constructed opposite the market building by an
officer—probably the head—of the palace commissary, known as Kilârî Süleyman Agha,
who was most probably also a eunuch (Figs. 2 and 3). Judging by the location and timing
13 Halil Đnalcık, “The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman Economy,” in Studies in the
Economic History of the Middle East: From the Rise of Islam to the Present Day, ed. M. A. Cook (London:
Oxford University Press, 1970), 209.
14 Huri Đslamoğlu-Đnan, State and Peasant in the Ottoman Empire: Agrarian Power Relations and Regional
Economic Development in Ottoman Anatolia during the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 240.
15 For the bedestan, see Semavi Eyice, “Kapu Ağası Hüseyin Ağa’nın Vakıfları,” Atatürk Üniversitesi
Edebiyat Fakültesi Arastırma Dergisi, Prof. Albert Louis Gabriel Armağanı Özel Sayısı 9 (1978): 154-59;
and Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 52-56. For detailed information on the current and original physical
characteristics of the bedestan, see Uğur Çelik, Amasya Kapu Ağası Hüseyin Ağa Bedesteni Restorasyon
Önerisi, unpublished MA thesis (Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Mimarlık Anabilim
Dalı, 2008), 29-138. During the controversial destructions in the 1860s and the 1960s, the bedestan lost its
original domical superstructure and two of its domed units. Today, it survives in its shrunken state, with four
domes and a square shape, which it gained during the restoration in the 1970s; Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 156-58.
16 The relevant vakfiye has not yet been discovered; Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 52. For comparisons of
the size of this building with those of other bedestans, see ibid., fn. 7; and Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 159.
38
of the construction vis-à-vis the bedestan, we may imagine a close relationship between the
two palace aghas, the commissary officer more likely to be a protégé of the chief eunuch.
This single-domed and square-shaped mosque, constructed with ashlar masonry and
fronted by an unusual double-domed portico, was apparently Süleyman Agha’s only
architectural creation (Fig. 5).17 The agha’s name, which looks like “Selim” in the
mosque’s Arabic inscription (Fig. 4), is better known as Süleyman;18 the latter name being
also supported by the endowment records.19 He is most probably the same agha who
appears in the 1546 survey of the Istanbul waqfs as “Süleyman Agha, the chief of the
commissary officers of the late Sultan Bayezid Khan (may God illuminate his tomb).”
According to this record, Süleyman Agha made an endowment for the recitation of the
Qur’an in the Mercan Agha Mosque in Istanbul.20 However, none of the endowed
possessions are listed, since, according to the entry, they were not in Istanbul but
elsewhere.21 The location of his mosque brings to mind the possibility that they might be in
17 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 37. The structure was completed in 889/1484-85, ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 According to the relevant record in the Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü archive, the agha’s name is Süleyman;
see Naciye Altas, T.C. Basbakanlık Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü Tarafından Tescili Yapılan Cami ve Mescitler,
unpublished MA thesis (Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi, 2007), 59.
20 Süleyman Ağa reis-i kilârdârân-ı merhûm Sultan Bâyezid Hân tâbe serâhu; Barkan and Ayverdi, eds.,
Đstanbul Vakıfları, 86.
21 Ibid. There is another Süleyman Agha who endowed houses and other possessions in the mahalle of the
Firuz Agha Mosque near the Hippodrome for the benefit of his manumitted slaves Hamdi, Süheyl, Yusuf, and
other Yusuf. According to the stipulation, the endowments would later be added to the agha’s waqf(s) in
Anatolia (Anadolı); ibid., 25. Although the date is not given, this might be the same Süleyman Agha who
built a mosque in Amasya, in the province of Anadolı.
39
or around Amasya, which in turn suggests that Süleyman Agha might have served at some
point in the princely palace in that city.
Yet another architectural project of the 1480s was undertaken by the chief treasurer
Firuz Agha in Tokad. In 890/1485-86, he built a smallish hamam, as a prelude to his
extensive constructions in the next few years. This bath, consisting of a dressing room and
a hot room, each covered by a dome, was registered in his endowment deed along with the
thirty-nine shops in its vicinity.22 According to the waqf survey of 1546, the hamam was
producing an annual income of 12,000 akçes.23 Its inscription, which, according to
Uzunçarsılı, consisted of four couplets written in beautiful thuluth, albeit on an ordinary
stone, used to commemorate the founder not in Arabic but in Persian24—an interesting
language choice, probably related to the presence of Iranian merchants in the town.
Meanwhile, having completed his bedestan and before building his medrese, the
chief eunuch Hüseyin Agha contributed a Friday mosque and an adjacent medrese to the
urban development of the small town of Sonisa (today Uluköy) near Amasya.25 We do not
know whether Sonisa had any peculiarity that may have played a role in the agha’s favor,
22 Đsmail Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, Kitâbeler: Anadolu Türk Tarihi Vesikalarından (Istanbul: Millî Matbaa,
1345/1927), 32; Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 24.
23 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 24.
24 Uzunçarsılı, Kitâbeler, 32. The hamam is known as the “Sultan Hamamı.” It had fallen into disuse by the
time Uzunçarsılı visited it in the early twentieth century. Today, it does no longer exist; Yüksel, II. Bâyezid
Yavuz Selim, 389. The inscription noted by Uzunçarsılı refers to Bayezid II as “the shah of Iran” and gives the
construction date as 819, although in the main text Uzunçarsılı gives the date as 890, which must be the
correct one; Kitâbeler, 32.
25 Known as Kursunlu Cami, this mosque was destroyed by an earthquake in 1942. It was covered by six
domes, reminiscent of Atik Ali Pasha’s mosque near Edirnekapı in Istanbul; Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 166.
40
other than being a satellite town of the former seat of the princely court. The mosque’s
surviving inscription in Arabic reveals the date of completion as 892/1486-87. This
inscription is identical with those on the agha’s Amasya foundations, except for the date.
All repeat the same formula, which can be translated as follows:
This building was constructed by the builder of pious works Hüseyin Agha
son of ‘Abd al-Mu‘īn, known as the kapu ağası at the sublime threshold
of the sultan of the two continents
and the ruler of the two seas, sultan son of sultan, Sultan Bayezid
son of Mehmed Khan
—may God perpetuate his reign!—during his heyday, as a token of his generosity
and beneficence
—may God immerse him in His mercy!—in the year…26 (Fig. 7)
Thus, all three inscriptions basically function as an elaborate signature of the chief
eunuch, which prestigiously associate his name with that of the sultan. Considered together
with the inscription on the lesser palace officer Kilârî Süleyman Agha’s mosque, which
does not cite the sultan’s name,27 associating one’s name with the reigning monarch seems
to have been a prerogative enjoyed by those in the higher echelons of the palace hierarchy.
Thus, Hüseyin Agha apparently took advantage of his privileged position in formulating his
public signatures in the Amasya region.
26 Ḳad benā hāze’l-binā’ ṣāḥibü’l-ḫayrāt bānī mebāni’l-meberrāt Ḥuseyn Ağa ibn cAbdi’l-Mu‘īn es-sehīr bi-
Kapu Ağası fi’l-catabeti’l-caliyye li-Sulṭāni’l-Berreyn ve’l-Ḫākāni’l-Baḥreyn es-Sulṭān ibni’s-Sulṭān es-Sulṭān
Bāyezīd ibn Muḥammed Ḫān – halled Allāhu Subḥānehu mülkehu ve sulṭānehu – fī eyyāmi devletihi min
ḳurāzati cūdihi ve iḥsānihi – tegammedehu’llahu Tecālā bi-gufrānihi – fī tārīḫ sene ... For the inscriptions of
the bedestan, the medrese, and the mosque in Sonisa, see Uzunçarsılı, Kitâbeler, 123, 130, and 82 and Eyice,
“Kapu Ağası,” 155-56, 161-62, and 167-68 respectively. There are some mistakes and omissions especially in
Eyice’s copy of the Sonisa inscription, which first appeared in Uzunçarsılı’s book.
27 Recep Gün, Amasya ve Çevresindeki Mimarî Eserlerde Yazı Kullanımı, unpublished MA thesis (Samsun:
Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Đslam Tarihi ve Sanatları Ana Bilim Dalı, 1993), 33.
41
The medrese that Hüseyin Agha commissioned in Amasya is sited to the northeast
of the town center, near the western bank of the Yesilırmak river (Fig. 6). Known as the
“Büyük Ağa Medresesi” or “Medrese-i Hüseyniye,” the building was completed in
894/1488-89, six years after the bedestan. The structure is particularly renowned for its
octagonal shape, which is noteworthy as an unusual and ambitiously innovative design
(Fig. 8). The courtyard is surrounded by a domed colonnade, which in turn is encircled by
twenty domed medrese cells and a dominating classroom-mescid, located forty-five degrees
off the entrance axis. An examination of the remaining columns show that, to complement
the geometric aesthetics, the column shafts were also given an octagonal shape and their
capitals a stepped profile.28 All these constitute a consciously implemented aesthetic
program unprecedented in Ottoman architecture.
Yüksel is probably right in arguing that topographical irregularities must have
played a role in the originality of the design by preventing the execution of the more usual
rectangular arrangement.29 Nevertheless, the source of inspiration for the medrese’s
octagonal design remains a puzzle to be solved. Gabriel, for instance, has raised the
possibility that the medrese’s architect might have been Iranian, on the grounds of the
existence of octagonal medreses in Iran. Eyice dismisses this view for chronological and
other reasons and points out the strange coincidental resemblance between the Büyük Kapu
28 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 163. There is also a fountain in front of the medrese. Given that its marble plaque
reserved for an inscription remains uncarved, we may imagine that this fountain was also a charitable work of
Hüseyin Agha; ibid., 166.
29 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 46-8.
42
Ağası Medresesi and the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna.30 While it is likely that the
sixteenth-century chief royal architect Sinan found inspiration in Hüseyin Agha’s college
for designing Rüstem Pasha’s octagonal medrese in Istanbul,31 it is more difficult to
establish connections between the Amasya medrese and its formal precedent(s). None of
the scholars, however, have so far noted the more possible and plausible inspiration of the
most accessible example of octagonal structures: the Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus in
Istanbul, which Hüseyin Agha was to convert into the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque in a few
years’ time, had an octagonal interior.
II.a. The Firuz Agha Mosque: Appropriating Byzantine Imperial Space
It was, however, not Hüseyin Agha but the chief treasurer Firuz Agha who built the
mosque which would arguably be the most prestigiously sited monument among all the
buildings ever commissioned by Ottoman court eunuchs.32 Constructed in 896/1490-91 at
the intersection of the Mese (Divan Yolu) with the Hippodrome (At Meydanı) in Istanbul,
the mosque constituted a visual and spatial marker of Ottoman rule and Islam in an area
characterized by a dense assemblage of Byzantine remains (see Map 1). The dilapidated
state of these relics of the glorious Byzantine past, including the ruined Great Palace and
30 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 163-64.
31 Ibid., 164-65.
32 Although the Firuz Agha Mosque is widely known as a cami, the waqf survey of 1546 refers to the building
as a mescid; Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 23. If there is no imprecision in terminology, it
appears that the mosque later became a Friday mosque.
43
the desolate Hippodrome, must have constituted a rather shabby setting for the new
mosque, while at the same time a source of motivation for new constructions and the
revival of the area. As the first Muslim place of worship to have been constructed in the
vicinity of the Hippodrome, which in the post-conquest period had become a locus of crime
and the uncanny due to the thieves and the mysterious talismanic columns it housed, the
mosque was a move towards the area’s rehabilitation.33 Firuz Agha’s large residence built
on top of the nearby Binbirdirek cistern,34 and his endowment of a number of properties in
the vicinity of the mosque35 can also be cited in this context.
Apart from the visible ruins above ground, the site of the Firuz Agha Mosque was
also—as construed today—one of great archaeological potential, for it was in its immediate
vicinity that the remains of the church of St. Euphemia and the palaces originally founded
by the Byzantine eunuchs Lausos and Antiokhos were found in the twentieth century.36 As
the palatial, royal, and ceremonial associations of this area go back many centuries, Firuz
Agha was, in fact, adding just another layer to the accumulation of traces that remained
from generations of courtly people.
33 On the state of the Hippodrome in this period and its “magical” columns, see Seza Sinanlar, Atmeydanı:
Bizans Araba Yarıslarından Osmanlı Senliklerine (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2005), 51-53.
34 Kafescioğlu, The Ottoman Capital, 364.
35 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 23-24.
36 Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Đstanbul'un Tarihsel Topografyası: 17. yüzyıl baslarına kadar Byzantion-
Konstantinopolis-Đstanbul, tr. Ülker Sayın (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2007), 122-25 and 238. Müller
also writes that the mosque was possibly erected on top of the foundations of a church dedicated to St. John
the Baptist; ibid., 414.
44
The location of the mosque suggests a resolution on the part of the Ottomans not to
violate the Mese and the Hippodrome, but to superimpose their own structures upon the
basic layout of the Byzantine city, at least in this part of Istanbul.37 Indeed, the construction
of the Firuz Agha Mosque constituted one of the earliest attempts towards the remonumentalization
of the Mese and, hence, its transformation into an Ottoman ceremonial
thoroughfare. Thus, by the end of Bayezid II’s reign, the artery featured not only the Firuz
Agha Mosque, but also the eunuch grand vizier Atik Ali Pasha’s mosque complex (built in
915/1509) in the old Forum of Constantine (today’s Çemberlitas), and the complex of
Sultan Bayezid himself at the Forum Tauri.38
However, once built, the Firuz Agha mescid led to the flourishing of a new mahalle
(neighborhood or quarter) around it. We know that by the time the street regularization
campaign following the 1865 Hocapasa fire was launched, the dense residential fabric
surrounding the mosque was allowing for a much narrower passage from the At Meydanı
to the Divan Yolu.39 It is possible that the residential fabric had grown parallel to the
relaxation of Ottoman stately ceremonial, and thus of the traffic of parading retinues. Still,
for a long time, until modern conceptions of urbanism intervened to highlight the
monument by isolating it, we may imagine that Firuz Agha’s minaret and dome were
functioning as an urban marker amidst a greater multitude of house roofs than today. The
37 Sinanlar, Atmeydanı, 53.
38 Kafescioğlu, The Ottoman Capital, 395.
39 Zeynep Çelik, The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Tineteenth Century (Berkeley:
University of California, 1986), 61.
45
mosque’s once wider courtyard was also dwarfed by the enlargement of the Divan Yolu in
the nineteenth century.40
It is probably to its mnemonic quality as the building marking the turn of the
ceremonial route that the Firuz Agha Mosque owes its appearance in some sixteenthcentury
depictions of Istanbul—a distinction that rarely applied to the modest foundations
of court eunuchs. In the Ottoman writer and artist Matrakçı Nasuh’s well-known
representation of Istanbul (1537-38), the relatively small mosque near the leftmost column
of the Hippodrome is in all probability the Firuz Agha Mosque (Fig. 9). Precision,
however, was not a strong point of Nasuh’s depictions of small monuments; therefore, he
wrongly placed the mosque’s minaret on the right side and omitted the three domes of its
portico, conveying little more than its essential “mosqueness.” The picture, nonetheless,
gives a sense of the significant buildings surrounding the mosque almost fifty years after its
construction. In addition to the no longer extant Byzantine building used by the Ottomans
as the royal menagerie, a more complete group of the Hippodrome columns and the
neighboring palace of Sultan Süleyman’s grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha are seen in the
mosque’s vicinity.
A notable pictorial testimony to the mosque’s prominent situation on the ceremonial
route is the Dutch artist Pieter Coeck van Aelst’s engraving that depicts a procession of
Süleyman the Magnificent and his retinue through the Hippodrome (1533) (Fig. 10a). As
40 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 250.
46
Cerasi has noted, the picture works best when reversed, since only then does it show the
correct topographical sequence with the Firuz Agha Mosque and the Hippodrome on the
left side of the parade (Fig. 10b).41 Viewed as such, the image reproduces the minaret on
the correct side, although there are inaccuracies in the rendering of the portico and the
fenestration. The mosque, nevertheless, occupies a central place in the image. Its crowded
portico—where the faithful turn their backs to the procession—illustrates its practical
function as a mahalle mosque and provides an early confirmation to Evliya Çelebi’s
statement that it had a populous congregation (cemaat-i kesire).42 The picture also shows a
curious little structure with a dome, which stands—according to the reversed image—on
the left side of the mosque, where now there is a marble sarcophagus framed by the
remaining foundations of a building.43 If the anonymous sarcophagus belongs to Firuz
Agha (d. 918/1512-13), as is assumed, then the building seen in van Aelst’s engraving is
possibly his türbe.44
In terms of its physical characteristics, the mosque of Firuz Agha moderates its
signs of prestige with its formal simplicity. Being anything but experimental, the mosque
can be conceived as “the prototype of the single-domed classical Ottoman mosque,” as
41 Maurice Cerasi, The Istanbul Divanyolu: A Case Study in Ottoman Urbanity and Architecture (Würzburg:
Ergon Verlag in Kommission, 2004), 49, fig. 21.
42 Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, ed. O. S. Gökyay (Istanbul: YKY, 1996), vol. 1, 126.
43 See Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 252.
44 According to Ayvansarâyî, Firuz Agha was “buried in a separate tomb” in the year “divine longing”
(Müstāḳḳ el-ilāhī) 918/1512-13; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 173.
47
Aptullah Kuran has once noted.45 A dome resting on a twelve-sided drum covers the almost
square-shaped prayer hall, which is given access through a three-domed portico (Fig. 11).
In accordance with its privileged location, the mosque is constructed entirely of ashlar. The
stalactite capitals of its marble columns and the muqarnas decoration repeated on the
entrance gate, the mihrab, and the transitional zones of the interior dome also contribute to
the overall impression of wealth and status.
Above its entrance gate, there is an inscription of four lines, topped by two identical
chessboard kufic renderings of the name “Muhammad” and decorative medallions (Fig.
12). Composed in Arabic, the inscription cites the name and title of Firuz Agha together
with the sultan’s name; yet it refrains from the grandiloquent expressions that we have seen
on Hüseyin Agha’s inscriptions in the Amasya region.46 By virtue of being a work of the
celebrated calligrapher Sheikh Hamdullah, this thuluth inscription was also an object of
prestige. A native of Amasya, Sheikh Hamdullah (d. ca. 926/1520) had achieved fame as
Prince Bayezid’s teacher of calligraphy during the future sultan’s tenure in that town. After
the succession, he was invited to Istanbul and held in great esteem in his new post at the
imperial palace.47 It is, therefore, no surprise that Firuz Agha had access to his services; the
45 Aptullah Kuran, Sinan: The Grand Old Master of Ottoman Architecture, photographs by Ara Güler and M.
Niksarlı (Washington D.C.: Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc.; Istanbul: Ada Press Publishers, 1987), 44.
46 The chronogram is as follows (Howard Crane’s translation):
He is the imperial treasurer of Sultan Bayezid / The chief treasurer, Firuz.
The noble Rıdvan composed its chronogram. / “Paradise of shelters and abode of the thankful,
[Cennet al-me’vâ wa dâr al-ḥâmidîn]” 896 [1490-91]. Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 173, and ibid., fn. 1330.
47 Ali Alparslan, Osmanlı Hat Sanatı Tarihi (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1999), 34-40.
48
two may even have known each other from Amasya. The calligrapher was particularly
renowned for developing a novel style of the six scripts (aklâm-ı sitte), which had a
profound and lasting impact on Ottoman calligraphy.48 Prior to the mosque of Firuz Agha,
Sheikh Hamdullah had written an inscription for the grand vizier Davud Pasha’s Friday
mosque in Istanbul. By the end of Bayezid’s reign, he would have exhibited his
calligraphic skills on the sultan’s mosque complex in Istanbul, as well as on the Edirnekapı
gate, for which he wrote a kelime-i tevhid.49 Thus, it was a token of privilege for Firuz
Agha that his mosque was one of the very few places that boasted a public display of the
famous calligrapher’s legendary talent. Moreover, according to Ayvansarâyî, Sheikh
Hamdullah was also the first calligraphy teacher of the mekteb of Firuz Agha’s mosque.50 If
true, this information indicates an even closer relationship between the chief treasurer and
the royal calligrapher.
The summary of Firuz Agha’s waqf in the 1546 register of pious endowments gives
a lengthy list of rich possessions endowed to his mosque and school (muallimhane) in
Istanbul, his medrese and mescid in the town of Havza near Amasya, and his fountains in
Semendre (Smederevo) and Sarajevo.51 The written record constitutes the sole evidence for
Firuz Agha’s foundations in Havza as well as for the hamams in Semedre and Sivas, which
48 Ibid., 38-40.
49 The last item is no longer extant; ibid., 40-41.
50 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 173. It is possible that there was no separate building for this mekteb and that it
functioned within the mosque.
51 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 23-24.
49
were constructed at unknown dates and listed among the revenue-producing establishments
of his waqf.52 The fact that the agha’s endowments included several villages around
Amasya, Sonisa, Havza, Merzifon, and Lâdik, all in the same region, increases the
possibility for him to have acquired these lands during his earlier service at Bayezid’s
princely court. In fact, by 1546, the greatest portion of the waqf revenue, amounting to
about 43 percent, was coming from this region known as Rum-i Kadim, the province of
Old Rum. The now perished hamam in Semendre and a host of properties in the urban area
of Istanbul were making the other major contributions to the upkeep of the waqf. Also
included in the list are villages in the vicinity of Istanbul and Izmit (Đznigmud) and various
shops in Edirne and Sarajevo. Firuz Agha’s waqf was, thus, receiving its income from
various localities lined within the vast geographical span from Sarajevo to Sivas.
Firuz Agha apparently did not cease his charitable activities after establishing this
waqf, as there are other buildings that have been attributed to him. Some of these
attributions, however, are of dubious character. One of these is a small neighborhood
mosque (mescid), which used to stand to the south of the Valens Aqueduct, on the presentday
Atatürk Bulvarı in Fatih, Istanbul. As long as Ayvansarâyî is correct in writing that the
patron Firuz Agha was buried next to this mosque, it is unlikely that this patron is the same
Firuz Agha who built the mosque at the At Meydanı.53 There is yet another Firuz Agha
mescid, still standing in the Firuzağa quarter of Beyoğlu. In this case, Ayvansarâyî clearly
52 See Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 145, 366, and 373.
53 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 176. The mosque was demolished in 1934; see ibid., fn. 1361.
50
differentiates the patron from the other Firuz Agha(s) by noting that the whereabouts of his
grave are unknown. He also describes him as “an agha of the palace,” thereby
distinguishing this high-ranking white eunuch from his namesake, the chief treasurer of
Bayezid II.54 Likewise, Firuz Agha’s patronage in Edirne also poses some difficulties, in
the absence of adequate written record. He apparently founded a mescid at an unknown
date in the vicinity of Bayezid II’s imaret in this town. However, his association with this
mescid and its mahalle is blurred by the existence of another historical Firuz Ağa Mahallesi
possibly established at a different date by a namesake.55
It is much more likely that a certain medrese known to have been completed in
900/1494-95 in the town of Gümüs near Amasya was a charitable work of the same famous
Firuz Agha, the builder of the mosque at the At Meydanı.56 The same is also true for two
buildings in Amasya: a mosque (mescid) built in the Saray quarter in the same year as the
Gümüs medrese and a bedestan built at an unknown date in the Kazancı(lar) quarter.57
Given that none of these structures is extant today, hardly anything else can be said about
Firuz Agha’s construction program in Amasya. It is, however, noteworthy that he also built
a bedestan in the same quarter where Hüseyin Agha had built one a decade earlier. This
suggests the rapid growth of commerce in Amasya as much as the high-ranking eunuchs’
interest in this development.
54 Ibid., 390. The minbar of this mosque was donated by a certain Emine Hatun; ibid.
55 The Firuz Agha Mosque in Edirne is no longer extant; Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 127.
56 Ibid., 141.
57 Ibid., 30.
51
II.b. The Ayas Agha Complex in Amasya
Sometime before 1495, another court eunuch was undertaking a construction in
Amasya. This was the mosque-medrese complex of a certain Ayas Agha, often referred to
as “Küçük Kapu Ağası Medresesi,”58 to be distinguished from the nearby “Büyük Kapu
Ağası Medresesi” of Hüseyin Agha. This title suggests that Ayas Agha was a eunuch,
though a lesser one ranking under Hüseyin Agha, given that the latter was the kapı ağası
(chief eunuch of the palace) at the time. On the other hand, his Arabic endowment deed
dated to 26 March 1495 (28 Cemâziyelâhir 900) identifies Ayas Agha b. Abdurrahman as a
manumitted slave of Bayezid II and the perdecibası of his son Prince Ahmed, who is
known to have held the governorship of Amasya.59 Obviously, this was a eunuch who had a
career in the provincial princely court of this town.
Ayas Agha endowed this complex in the Samlar quarter and stipulated it to be
supported by the revenue of a small hamam he built on the other side of the river in
Amasya (Figs. 6 and 13).60 Built near Hüseyin Agha’s octagonal medrese, the complex
58 Ibid., 14.
59 The translation of Ayas Agha’s endowment deed in Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü Arsivi defter no. 582, p.
189, no. 125 is given in Seçkin Tan, Ayas Ağa Külliyesi’nin Koruma-Kullanma Sorunlarının Saptanması ve
Restorasyon Önerisi, unpublished MA thesis (Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Mimarlık
Anabilim Dalı, 2007), 301-05, appendix 10. Perdedar, perdeci, and perdecibası refer to those attendants who
guarded entrances (for instance, that of the harem) and controlled the access to private spaces. Therefore, it
makes sense that a eunuch was appointed perdecibası.
60 See the vakfiye, Tan, Ayas Ağa Külliyesi, 302. The Kocacık or Komacık Hamamı takes its name from the
previous owner of the lot. It was constructed in 900/1494-95, in the same year as the complex; Yüksel, II.
Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 56.
52
consists of a square-planned, single-domed mosque and a contiguous and rather irregular
U-shaped medrese, which in turn abuts a mekteb consisting of two cells.61 Both the
complex and the hamam were built mainly of rubble stone. While the place reserved for the
foundation inscription was left empty, the only inscription of the complex is a highly
intricate one in the Seljukid style, which is placed in the tympanum of the arched window
to the left of the minaret. This inscription, which has not yet been entirely deciphered,
possibly originally belonged to the mosque of Melik Danishmend Gazi, which used to
stand on the lot now occupied by Ayas Agha’s mosque.62 The court eunuch, thus, seems to
have paid homage to the memory of the legendary gazi and pre-Ottoman conqueror of
Amasya by means of this visual reminder.
Ayas Agha’s vakfiye lists a relatively limited number of properties endowed for the
complex, the most notable of which are several villages near Amasya and Merzifon.63 Yet
another noteworthy information concerns Ayas Agha’s brother Ali Bey and the dispute
between the two over the properties endowed for the waqf. It appears that Ayas Agha
replaced his brother as the superintendent (mütevelli) after the latter won a legal case
against the agha, who intended to reestablish his property rights over his unregistered
endowments. Despite this event, the eunuch still prioritized Ali Bey and his descendants for
61 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 11. For a detailed description of the physical characteristics of the
complex, see Tan, Ayas Ağa Külliyesi, 28-74.
62 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 12. Also see ibid., 14, pl. 18. See the two widely different suggestions of
reading the inscription provided in Tan, Ayas Ağa Külliyesi, 61-62.
63 The vakfiye, Tan, Ayas Ağa Külliyesi, 303.
53
the superintendence of the foundation after his death, thus circumventing his own
childlessness in order to keep the waqf benefits within the family.64 Considering that his
brother’s honorific title bey and presence in Amasya implies a distinguished family
background and even origins in the region, the case of Ayas Agha is certainly a revealing
one for the history of Ottoman eunuchs.
These constructions undertaken by Firuz Agha and Ayas Agha around 1494-95
appear to have been the reverberations of the more massive building activities of the 1480s
in Amasya, which were led by the sultan and the grand vizier Mehmed Pasha. It is perhaps
not accidental that, as the highest ranking eunuch of the royal court, Hüseyin Agha took the
lead and synchronized his acts of patronage in this town with those of the sultan and other
members of the ruling elite; all these projects completed within the first five years of
Bayezid’s reign may well have shared the same workforce. However, any assumption of a
strict relation between the timing of the constructions and the rank of the patrons seems
problematic, given that Kilârî Süleyman Agha’s mosque precedes the Amasya foundations
of Firuz Agha, who must have been his superior. Instead, the propriety of any given
architectural project needs to be assessed according to the overall impact of a complex set
of signs including not only the project’s timing in relation to other projects, but also its
physical size, construction materials, formal complexity, economic proportions, specific
function(s) within the society, as well as the functional variety of its units, and the
64 Ibid., 304-05.
54
composition and aesthetic quality of its inscriptions. Thus, although among the eunuchs of
Bayezid II it was Firuz Agha who took initiative for building in Istanbul, the chief eunuch
Hüseyin Agha soon crowned the period with a more extensive building project that
eventually occupied a wider niche not only in the capital’s cityscape but also in the
economic and social web of relations.
II.c. The Küçük Ayasofya Complex
Around the turn of the sixteenth century, Hüseyin Agha converted the deserted
royal Byzantine church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus into a Friday mosque, making it the
centerpiece of a full-fledged Ottoman complex (Fig. 14). By doing so, the agha joined the
ranks of a series of Ottoman grandees who had been converting churches in post-conquest
Istanbul.65 The religious legitimacy of this act of patronage was undeniable. Yet, at the
same time, as one of the first major endowments of court eunuchs in the capital, the socalled
“Küçük Aya Sofya” (Little Hagia Sophia) foundation, with its converted mosque and
newly built dependencies, represented an upward step in the negotiation of the limits of
eunuch patronage (see Map 1).
65 The conversion of churches into mosques indeed reached its apogee in the reign of Bayezid II. In this
period, the church of the Studios monastery was converted by the chief of the imperial stables (imrahor) Ilyas
Bey (before 1504), that of the Lips monastery by Fenarizade Alaaddin Efendi (before 1497), the Hagios
Andreas monastery (1486) and another church of unknown name (perhaps Hagia Thekla) by the grand vizier
Koca Mustafa Pasha, the Myralaion by Mesih Pasha (before 1501), and the Khora by the white eunuch grand
vizier Atik Ali Pasha; Semavi Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 170; Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 255, 249, 273,
281, 221, and 177 respectively.
55
Although Evliya Çelebi incorrectly claims that it was constructed by Constantine I’s
mother Helena and dedicated to the prophet Zachariah,66 the church was originally founded
by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (r. 527-565) and his wife Theodora shortly after his
enthronement, as an expression of his gratitude to the martyred soldier-saints Sergius and
Bacchus, who he believed had saved his life.67 Constructed intra muros, in a locality very
close to the Sea of Marmara, the church was situated to the south-west of the Sphendone. It
used to adjoin the church of Sts. Peter and Paul on the south and the Hormisdas Palace on
the north, where Justinian had resided before his accession to the throne.68 The church also
had a direct connection with this part of the Great Palace complex. As the buildings
surrounding it did not survive into Ottoman times, Justinian’s church began its afterlife
stripped of its palatine context and the physical support of its neighbors.69
Under Hüseyin Agha’s patronage, this thousand year-old building was transformed
into a mosque through the addition of a five-domed portico (son cemaat yeri) and a noncontiguous
minaret in the exterior, as well as a mihrab, a minbar, and a muezzin lodge in
the interior (Figs. 16 and 17). One of the earliest interventions includes the creation—or
rearrangement—of a courtyard in front of the mosque through the construction of a
66 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 1, 18. He also wrongly attributes its conversion to Mehmed II, ibid., 57.
67 John Freely, The Companion Guide to Istanbul and around the Marmara (Woodbridge: Companion
Guides, 2000), 92. The monograms of Justinian and Theodora on the column capitals and the frieze
inscription in the interior attest to this, ibid., 93.
68 John Freely and Ahmet S. Çakmak, Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 129. “The puzzling misalignments in the plan of SS. Sergius and Bacchus would
seem to be due at least partly to its position between these two earlier buildings, which were not entirely
parallel to one another,” ibid., 130.
69 For further information on the Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, see ibid., 129-36.
56
surrounding row of cells for the use of dervishes (zâviye); a school (mekteb) was annexed
to the southern end of this row. Together with the domed prayer hall, cut-stone portico,
minaret, U-shaped row of vaulted cells, and central ablution fountain (sadırvan), a typical
Ottoman mosque with a courtyard was obtained, albeit a geometrically imperfect one (Fig.
15). Two other dependencies located nearby, a public bath known as the Çardaklı Hamam
and a soup kitchen (imaret), complemented the foundation (Fig. 18).70
A number of modifications that these structures underwent since their construction
prevents the modern visitor from perceiving what the complex looked like in Hüseyin
Agha’s lifetime. For instance, as the dervish convent came to be converted into a medrese
towards the end of the Ottoman Empire, it seems to have lost several of its cells, which
probably stood to the west of the structure.71 The Küçük Ayasofya’s minaret, on the other
hand, was rebuilt by a grand vizier in the “baroque” fashion probably in the second half of
the eighteenth century.72 This new minaret with an onion-shaped cap was also demolished
for unknown reasons around 1936 to be replaced in 1955 by the still standing minaret.73
In fact, as a consequence of its significance to the community, Küçük Ayasofya
attracted several other benefactors who contributed to it in various ways. Most notable
70 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 259; Semavi Eyice, “Küçük Ayasofya Camii”, DBĐA 5: 146-47.
71 Although Ayvansarâyî gives the number of cells as thirty-six, Eyice notes that only twenty-two survived to
the republican era; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 209; and Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 189. Eyice suggests that some of the
structures belonging to the complex, including the sheikh’s cells and the Küçük Ayasofya imaret, were
probably standing on the plot to the west of the zâviye-medrese; ibid., 189-90.
72 Ayvansarâyî identifies the grand vizier as Mustafa Pasha; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 209. Eyice suggests that
he must have been Köse Bâhir Mustafa Pasha, in which case the minaret was built probably between 1752
and 1765, when he served as the grand vizier for three separate terms; Semavi Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 176.
73 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 176, fn. 58, and 177.
57
among these were the rebuilding of the mekteb and the sadırvan in 1153/1740-41 by
another grand vizier of the eighteenth century, and the addition of a nearby hadith college
(dârülhadis) to the endowment by a certain Amine or Emine Hatun.74 This hadith college,
just like the foundation’s original soup kitchen (imaret), has since perished without a trace.
As a more recent modification, the mosque’s connection with the sea walls was cut off by
the railroad built between them in the 1860s. Harmful to the building’s stability, this
development also caused the area between the mosque and the zâviye courtyard to be used
as a passage to the railroad, and thus, separated the two halves of the complex (Fig. 17).75
These later modifications put aside, what remains from the earliest Ottoman
interventions in Küçük Ayasofya allows us to trace a number of choices that may well have
belonged to the patron Hüseyin Agha. The transformation of the Byzantine church into an
Ottoman mosque involved more than the attachment of external and internal symbols such
as a finial (alem) and a mihrab. It also involved an aesthetic adjustment that included the
remodeling of gates and windows in the “Ottoman style” (Fig. 21) and the carving of small
engaged columns in hourglass forms on the corners of the piers.76 During the process, some
Byzantine pieces of carved stone, which were presumably found in or around the building,
were assigned new contexts and functions. One such stone plaque was skillfully placed
above the staircase leading to the upper gallery, and two others assumed new roles on the
74 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 209. The benefactor who installed the minbar of the Firuz Agha Mosque in Beyoğlu
is also identified as a certain Emine Hatun, “a founder of charitable works;” ibid., 390.
75 Eyice, “Küçük Ayasofya Camii”, DBĐA 5: 147.
76 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 183.
58
minbar.77 Yet another piece of Byzantine carved stone was respectfully displayed on the
entrance of the hamam,78 which seems to have adopted its unusual plan from a Byzantine
building upon the foundations of which it may have been erected.79 Finally, several
inscriptions attached to different parts of the complex complemented the conversion of the
Küçük Ayasofya.
Among the inscriptions there is a remarkable concentration of hadith, as no less
than three quotations are placed above the northern entrance of the precinct and the
mosque’s main portal and northern gate. The one at the main entrance to the enclosure is
apparently a shortened form of the hadith that promises forgiveness of sins as long as one
behaves properly during the performance of the Friday rituals of communal prayer and
sermon (Figs. 19 and 20).80 Placed at the entrance facing the neighborhood, it underscores
the Küçük Ayasofya’s function as a Friday mosque. Another inscription attached to the
remodeled northern gate of the narthex reiterates the hadith that heralds that awaiting the
righteous believers are such marvelous things “as no eye has ever seen, nor an ear has ever
heard nor a human heart can ever think of” (Figs. 21 and 22).81 In the specific spot where it
is found, the inscription may well have been intended to convey a second and this-worldly
meaning that acknowledges the unusual beauty of the mosque interior, which awaits the
77 Ibid., 182 and 184.
78 See ibid., 192-93.
79 This point has been made by Semavi Eyice, ibid., 193.
80 Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 2, book 13, no. 8. For the Arabic text of the inscription, see Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 177.
81 Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 9, book 93, no. 589. For the inscription text, see Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 178.
59
faithful who enter through this door. Finally, a third hadith pertaining to the recording of
one’s good and bad deeds is seen on top of the mosque’s main entrance on the western
façade (Fig. 23).82 Eyice suspects, however, that this one might have originally been placed
on the monumental western entrance of the dervish convent (Fig. 24).83 Next to it is what
looks like the mosque’s foundation inscription, which is so intricate and illegible that it
seems to defy its own purpose of conveying information about the patron and the building
date (Fig. 23).84 On the other hand, it is true that, perhaps with the exception of the
foundation inscription, the Küçük Ayasofya inscriptions—including the three hadith
quotations and the calligraphic band on the mihrab that cites the first verse of sura al-
Isra85—are difficult to attribute to Hüseyin Agha with certainty. There is a chance that
some of these might be the contributions of unknown benefactors after the patron’s death.
On the other hand, the foundation inscription of double-bath called the Küçük
Ayasofya Hamamı or Çardaklı Hamam (see Map 1), which Hüseyin Agha built in
909/1503-4 in order to fund his waqf,86 apparently dates from his lifetime and contains a
82 Bukhari, Sahih, vol. 1, book 2, no. 40. See the inscription text in Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 180-81.
83 Ibid., 180.
84 See ibid., 179-80.
85 Ibid., 183-84. Eyice also writes that there is a kelime-i tevhid inscription on the mihrab, ibid., 184. Today,
the kelime-i tevhid is seen on the minbar, while the mihrab inscription cites the Qur’anic verse 3:37: Kullimā
dahala ‘alayhā Zakariyyā al-mihrāba (“Whenever Zachariah visited her in the sanctuary”).
86 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 191. The Çardaklı Hamam was thus named probably because of a gallery (çardak)
unusually placed within the men’s hot room; ibid., 194-95. As Evliya Çelebi jocularly matches public baths
with groups of people according to profession or physical trait, he includes both names of this hamam in his
list and assigns the Küçük Ayasofya Hamamı to imams and the Çardaklı Hamam to pederasts; Evliya Çelebi,
Seyahatnâme, vol. 1, 137. Apparently, the Küçük Ayasofya was associated with piety, but the name
“Çardaklı” had a different connotation.
60
noteworthy detail. This elaborate calligraphic inscription placed above the entrance to the
male section refers to the patron as “Hüseyin Beğ” and as an emîr. Although it also
identifies him as the kapı ağası, the use of the titles beğ (bey) and emîr is, needless to say,
very unusual for eunuchs and brings to mind a military position and a non-eunuch grandee.
To stretch the imagination further, his descent from a family of notables—perhaps even
from one of the “aristocratic” families who were more influential in the early centuries of
the empire—could be considered as a possibility. If this is the case, it might not necessarily
mean that he was not a eunuch. As seen above, the implication of a military function is
completely absent in the inscriptions of Hüseyin Agha’s earlier foundations in Amasya and
Sonisa, where he is referred to by the title “Agha,” as the kapı ağası working at the sultan’s
“sublime threshold.” His association with the sultan is also omitted from the foundation
inscription of the hamam—and also apparently from that of the mosque. Granted that those
buildings and the Küçük Ayasofya belonged to the same person’s waqf, this change of title
and the general manner of reference is interesting for the history of Ottoman eunuchs as
well as of the kapı ağası office, and therefore, in need of further consideration.
Legend holds it that, after establishing his foundation, Hüseyin Agha was falsely
accused of letting in spies through a crack in the sea walls near the Küçük Ayasofya, and as
a result of this calumny, he was decapitated. However, he did not die until after he carried
his severed head to the spot where his mausoleum stands today. This miraculous event led
the sultan to accept Hüseyin Agha’s innocence. Inspired by this legend, the misfortunate
61
agha’s mausoleum came to be known to the general public as the tomb of “Kesikbas
Hüseyin Ağa” (Hüseyin Agha the Severed Head).87 His octagonal türbe made of brick and
rubble stone still stands within the cemetery to the north of the mosque (Fig. 25).
Ayvansarâyî, who partly confirms this legend by writing that Hüseyin Agha was either
executed or murdered (maktûlen), records a couplet which he claims was written on the
türbe wall: “Life in the world is a single moment. / Spend the time only in obedience to
God!”88 Given that he died during the reign of Bayezid II,89 the date of his death must have
been between 1507, the date of his endowment deed,90 and 1512, the date of Bayezid’s
death.
Today, the mausoleum contains not only the tomb of Hüseyin Agha but also that of
the Halvetî sheikh Hacı Kâmil Efendi (d. 1330/1912), who used to be associated with the
Küçük Ayasofya zâviye/medrese.91 This fact attests to the strong Sufi presence at the
Küçük Ayasofya throughout the history of the complex. A Halvetî center in the midsixteenth
century, the Küçük Ayasofya zâviye possibly housed this Sufi order from the
beginning of its foundation. After the renowned Aziz Mahmud Hüdaî became its sheikh in
87 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 152-53, fn. 10.
88 Saat-i vâhidedir ömr-i cihân / Saat-i taata sarf eyle hemân.
89 Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmânî, ed. Nuri Akbayar, tr. Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Kültür Bakanlığı
and Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 1996), vol. 2, 198.
90 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 16.
91 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 187.
62
1584, the Celvetî order dominated the dervish convent until a branch of the Sabanî order
took over in the twentieth century.92
The Sufi presence in the complex, moreover, was not restricted to the dervish cells
only, as the mosque itself was used as the tevhidhâne, i.e., the hall where Sufi rituals and
ceremonies were practiced. Indeed, Baha Tanman has noted that, with its central octagonal
plan and spacious gallery, the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque provided an appropriate
environment for the Halvetî and Celvetî mystic rites.93 In addition to this link between the
zâviye and the mosque, the soup kitchen (imâret) unit of the complex also appears to have
been an integral part of the dervish convent. The summary of the complex’s endowment
deed in the waqf register of 1546 stipulates that daily meals should be prepared “in the
zâviye” and served to the poor residing there.94 The Küçük Ayasofya foundation, thus,
functioned as one social unit consisting of complementary branches that supported a
community of dervishes and—according to the waqf register—a staff of no less than thirty
people.95
The summary of the vakfiye of Hüseyin Agha b. Abdülhayy signed in 913/1507 by
Mehmed b. Mustafa lists a number of properties in Istanbul, Galata, Iznik, and Edirne that
were assigned to generate revenue for the Küçük Ayasofya complex. In addition to two
92 Baha Tanman, “Küçük Ayasofya Tekkesi,” DBĐA 5: 149.
93 Ibid.
94 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 17.
95 Ibid.
63
hans near the Ayasofya and another one in Edirne,96 the list includes the Çardaklı Hamam,
which used to have an annual contribution of 42,500 akçes as of 1546 (i.e., around 30
percent of the entire waqf revenue).97
In the absence of descendants, the superintendence of Hüseyin Agha’s waqf was
assigned to manumitted slaves. As the holder of the office of kapı ağası for at least twenty
years, Hüseyin Agha also stipulated that whoever became kapı ağası were to be the
“honorary superintendent” (hasbî nâzır) of the Küçük Ayasofya waqf and entitled to
dismiss staff in the case of misdeed.98 The agha thus encouraged his successors to honor his
memory and strengthened the ties that linked him to the future holders of his office.
Although his successors in the office apparently did not attach their names to any
notable contribution to the Küçük Ayasofya complex, the small neighborhood mosque that
Hüseyin Agha is known to have founded in Esirpazarı in Istanbul was indeed rebuilt by a
kapı ağası after a destructive fire (see Map 1). Seyyid Salih Agha, the chief white eunuch
(kapı ağası) under Selim III (r. 1789-1807), constructed the mosque anew in 1217/1802-03,
in the year “Hüseyin Agha’s congregational mosque became even loftier than before.”99
The chronogram composed for the reconstruction begins with the usual reference to the
reigning sultan; then it duly acknowledges the original patron by reiterating his name three
96 Ibid., 16-17. None of these hans have survived; see Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 199-200.
97 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 16.
98 Ibid., 17.
99 Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 196-97. Hüseyin Ağa’nın oldu câmii evvelkinden zîbâ, in Pertev Efendi’s
chronogram, ibid., 197.
64
times, while Seyyid Salih Agha’s name is mentioned only once in the poem.100 Today,
perhaps with the exception of the minaret base, nothing remains from Hüseyin Agha’s
original building.101
The Çarsıkapı/Esirpazarı mosque was recorded not in the same vakfiye as the Küçük
Ayasofya but in a separate endowment deed, together with a mescid and a single bath in
Samakov (Samokov in present day Bulgaria) and a hamam in Leskofça (Leskovac in
present day Serbia).102 Hüseyin Agha’s pious foundations in the Balkans also included a
mescid and a school in Filibe (Plovdiv in present-day Bulgaria).103
Two other architectural products of eunuchs during the reign of Bayezid are dated
to the same decade as the Küçük Ayasofya. One of these is the fountain built in 912/1506-
07 in Kadıköy by a certain Mehmed Agha, whose identification as kapı ağası—if correct—
suggests that Hüseyin Agha had already retired by that time or been appointed to a different
post.104 The other one, the small mosque built by Selman Agha near the seashore in
Üsküdar was completed in the same year105 as one of the first mosques of this town.
Situated not far from the late-fifteenth-century mosque of Rum Mehmed Pasha, the Selman
100 The poem is recorded in a certain copy of Ayvansarâyî’s Hadîka, Süleymaniye Manuscript Library, Esad
Efendi collection, MS no. 2248, fol. 26; Eyice, “Kapu Ağası,” 196. See the poem in ibid., 196-97.
101 Ibid., 198-99.
102 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 71. The Samakov hamam’s annual revenue was 3150 akçes
and that of the Leskofça hamam was 1900 akçes by 1546; ibid.
103 Ibid., 71-72.
104 Kolağası Mehmed Râ’if, Mir’ât-ı Đstanbul, I. Cild (Asya Yakası), ed. Günay Kut and Hatice Aynur
(Istanbul: Çelik Gülersoy Vakfı Yayınları, 1996), 48-49. This is the oldest fountain in the Asian side of the
city, according to Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 2, 253. It does not exist any more.
105 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 177.
65
Agha Mosque belongs to the wave of construction in Üsküdar in the early sixteenth
century, which also included the Kapudan Pasha Mosque (before 1499-1500) and the
Küçük Davud Pasha Mosque (ca. 1505-06). Clearly, these constructions responded to the
growing needs of the Muslim community flourishing in Üsküdar.106
The Selman Agha Mosque, which is also known as the Horhor Mosque, is a modest
one with a rectangular plan, a pitched roof, and a thick minaret made of brick. Constructed
of brick and stone, the mosque has an Arabic foundation inscription, which simply gives
the patron’s name and the date.107 The inscription on Selman Agha’s tomb in the mosque’s
precinct reveals the date of his death as 914/1508 and identifies him as the darüssaade
ağası, thus adding one more title to the range of eunuch patrons of the Bayezid era.108
The survey presented so far has, indeed, featured holders of almost all of the major
offices that were associated with eunuchs: two officers serving as kapı ağası (Hüseyin
Agha and Mehmed Agha), a hazinedarbası (Firuz Agha), a darüssaade ağası (Selman
Agha), a kilârî (Süleyman Agha), and even a provincial court’s perdecibası (Ayas Agha).
To these we may also add a certain Hüseyin Agha, identified as an agha of the Old Palace,
106 Sinem Arcak, Üsküdar as the Site for the Mosque Complexes of Royal Women in the Sixteenth Century,
unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul: Sabancı University, 2004), 17-18. The Kapudan Pasha Mosque was
originally commissioned by Hamza Fakih and received its name from the eighteenth-century admiral who
built it anew. Other constructions of the early sixteenth century include the Demirci mescid (before 1508), the
Toygar Hamza Mosque (before 1509-10), and the Kazgancı Mosque (before 1523); ibid.
107 Recording the eunuch’s name wrongly as Süleyman Agha, Ayvansarâyî gives the mosque’s Arabic
chronogram: “Seeking God’s mercy, the foundations were laid for the construction of this blessed place by
Süleyman Ağa ibn Abdullah, and it was completed in Receb of the year nine hundred twelve, 912 [1506]. At
the beginning of Cemaziyelâhir;” Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 503.
108 Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 177. According to Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 503, he was kapı ağası.
66
who, according to the 1546 survey, built—or rebuilt—the mosque known as the Mescid of
Âsık Pasha in Istanbul in Muharrem 898/1492 (see Map 2).109 It is noteworthy that even in
this early period—apparently not long after their debut as architectural patrons—court
eunuchs of a variety of offices undertook architectural projects. The need and the drive for
new buildings as well as the relatively large number of available spots in the new capital no
doubt had a role in prompting this situation. Yet it is also striking that Amasya and the
nearby towns on the north Anatolian route stood out as an important locus of the patronage
of court eunuchs in this period. By showing so much interest in this provincial capital, the
eunuchs were not only emulating their master Bayezid II’s favor for the town, but also
providing the earliest examples of a general tendency among eunuch patrons to build near
royal courts, which were also their current or former workplaces.
On the other hand, although it is true that the availability of space made it possible
for Firuz Agha to build his mosque in such a prominent spot and the availability of a
splendid and ready-to-convert Byzantine church allowed Hüseyin Agha to create a socioreligious
complex around it, it is important to note that it was their being the two highestranking
eunuchs that allowed these aghas to undertake these relatively ambitious projects.
109 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 273-74. Based on this defter, Mitchell suggests that Hüseyin
Agha might have rebuilt an existing mosque that stood together with a dervish convent; Edward Mitchell,
“Âsık Pasa Çesmesinin Gizli Tarihi,” Tarih ve Toplum 90 (1991): 370. The mosque is also associated with
the historian Âsıkpasazâde, who might be its original builder and the same person as Seyh Ahmed, who is
buried inside the mosque; ibid., 369. For the mosque, also see Kafescioğlu, The Ottoman Capital, 332-33.
Ayvansarâyî’s designation of Hüseyin Agha as babüssaade ağası is most probably wrong, given that he was
identified as the agha of the Old Palace in the waqf survey, a much earlier source; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 170.
67
The architectural works of eunuchs were, indeed, permeated with a sense of hierarchy
which regulated the dimensions of each patron’s individual imprint on the city and the
empire at large. It was clearly the kapı ağası who, by virtue of being practically the chief
eunuch of the imperial palace, surpassed all the others in creating large waqfs. In his
undertakings, whether in Istanbul, Amasya, or Sonisa, Hüseyin Agha acted confidently in
shaping and transforming urban spaces. The Küçük Ayasofya complex supported by his
wealthy waqf, his centrally situated bedestan and unusually designed medrese in Amasya,
as well as his pioneering building project in Sonisa became the foci of their respective
urban environments. While it is difficult to make precise judgments in the absence of
evidence for other possible works of the other contemporary eunuchs, the second-largest
architectural legacy among them apparently belongs to the chief treasurer Firuz Agha. On
the basis of their known constructions, it looks as if it was not the darüssaade ağası Selman
Agha but the hazinedarbası Firuz Agha who was second in rank after the kapı ağası.
It is also important not to project the popular feminized image of the socially
uprooted late Ottoman court eunuchs upon the eunuchs of this early period. The evidence
on Ayas Agha’s family connection and the use of bey as a title for Hüseyin Agha suggests
that assumptions about court eunuchs on the basis of later examples may not necessarily be
true for these early aghas. Yet another example in this respect is Firuz Agha himself, who,
according to the Hest Behist of Idris-i Bitlisî, was later promoted to the governorate first of
Đskodra (Shkodër) and then, in 912/1506-07, of Bosna (Bosnia), and thus became “Firuz
68
Bey.”110 This information attests to the permeability of the division between courtly posts
and military-administrative positions in this early period. As castrated officers with little or
no contact with women—except for the Old Palace agha—the eunuch patrons in Bayezid’s
reign were perhaps seeing the difference between themselves and vizier patrons simply as a
matter of rank—a gap which could easily be bridged with a promotion. How this gap
evolved in subsequent periods will be addressed in the following chapters.
110 Noted in Uzunçarsılı, Kitâbeler, 32-33.
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CHAPTER III
READJUSTIG THE LIMITS:
THE PATROAGE OF SÜLEYMA’S EUUCHS
Focusing on the patronage of palace eunuchs during the reign of Süleyman the
Magnificent (1520-66), this chapter offers a bottom-up look into what is often
characterized as the golden age of the history of Ottoman architecture as well as of the
Ottoman polity itself. Evoking prolific building activity and grandiose construction projects
launched under the supervision of the celebrated royal architect Sinan, the long reign of
Süleyman was marked by some of the greatest architectural achievements of Ottoman
history. However, overshadowed by these ambitious undertakings which claimed the
Ottoman skyline in the name of the sultan and his family, there were also minor projects
that pursued the glorification of courtly patrons—and, by extension, of the imperial court—
on the neighborhood level. This chapter looks at the buildings commissioned by a
succession of high-ranking palace eunuchs in this period, some of which constituted the
humblest works undertaken by Sinan in the 1550s and 60s.
What is noteworthy in the first place is the shrunken volume of the architectural
works by court eunuchs in the first half of the sixteenth century. Although probable
deficiencies in the endowment records hinder precision in any comparison between the
70
reign of Bayezid II and the reigns of his two successors, the impression one gets from the
available evidence is that no eunuch of the later era established waqfs that were in
proportions comparable to those of Hüseyin and Firuz Aghas. While one reason could be
that these two aghas had relatively longer terms of office, which allowed them to expand
their foundations, another reason could well be the renegotiation of the allowed limits of
patronage during the reign of Süleyman. The latter possibility is supported by the fact that,
in spite of the visibly increased amount of construction by the mid-sixteenth century, the
architectural works of court eunuchs do not seem to have increased in a proportionate
fashion. Having said that, the building activity of eunuchs still seems to have been affected
by the general increase of constructions in the 1550s and 60s, as in these years their
architectural undertakings became slightly more frequent and the highest-ranking court
eunuchs, after a long interval, had a comeback as patrons of architecture.
The consolidation of the royal family in the capital and particularly in the Topkapı
Palace—a significant process the first steps of which were taken during the reign of
Süleyman—also seems to have had an impact on the architectural patronage of court
eunuchs. Unlike in the times of Bayezid II, when the prestigious provincial capital Amasya
and the region around it rivaled Istanbul in attracting eunuch patrons’ attention, eunuchs
under Süleyman began to concentrate their building efforts on the imperial capital. While
71
occasional constructions also took place in the provinces, on the whole Istanbul emerged as
the principal scene of the eunuchs’ public display of wealth, status, and piety.1
The leading role of the kapı ağası among the eunuch patrons in the late fifteenth
century appears to have had a weakened continuation in the sixteenth. While the holders of
this office were better represented among eunuch patrons, their architectural projects never
reached the spectacularity of Hüseyin Agha’s works in the earlier era. In fact, what
characterized this period was that the differences among the outputs of eunuch patrons of
diverse ranks came to be less pronounced. As the number of separate architectural projects
undertaken by any given eunuch patron decreased, small unpretentious mahalle mosques
accompanied by elementary schools, plain fountains, and the founders’ graves seemed to
become the norm.
During the relatively short reign of Selim I (1512-20), which was marked by the
victorious campaigns against the Safavids and the Mamluks, there was a sharp decrease in
building activity compared to the previous period. Consequently, we find only one building
sponsored by a court eunuch patron in the whole empire: a dervish convent (tekke) built by
kapı ağası Mustafa Agha in the vicinity of Hagia Sophia and thus of the Topkapı Palace,
the workplace of the builder (see Map 1). The chronogram of the no longer extant convent
was recorded by Evliya Çelebi, who possibly omitted the beginning of the inscription
1 Gülru Necipoğlu observes that the focus on Istanbul was a general feature of the patronage of the aghas and
attendants of the inner imperial palace—a group which also included non-eunuchs—from the 1550s to the
1580s: “[t]he mosques of patrons belonging to this group invariably situated in the capital and its suburbs;”
Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 489.
72
where the patron’s name might have been cited. It yields the year 926/1519-20, dating the
construction to the very end of Selim’s reign and possibly the beginning of the age of
Süleyman.2
From this date to the 1540s, there is again a conspicuous gap in the architectural
patronage of court eunuchs, which is interrupted only by the works of a certain Tavâsî
Süleyman Agha b. Abdülkerim. Süleyman Agha’s situation as a castrated man of non-
Muslim origin is underlined by this appellation; nevertheless, his rank is not specified.3 His
endowment deed summarized in the 1546 waqf survey is dated to February-March 1531
(Receb 937). According to the summary, in order to fund his mescid and mekteb, Süleyman
Agha endowed among other properties 15 cells in the mosque’s vicinity and a han in At
Pazarı, Fatih, with an annual income of 5,000 akçes.4 While the mekteb and the han have
perished, the mosque that he built in Kumkapı, which used to form the nucleus of a
2 Ola makbûl-i Hüdâ bânî, didi târîhini / Hamdullah: Oldı zîbâ tekyesi hâlen tamam 926 (May its builder be a
favorite of God! Hamdullah composed its date: His lofty convent has now been completed.); Evliya Çelebi,
Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, ed. Orhan Saik Gökyay (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1996), vol. I, 320; also
quoted in Yüksel, II. Bâyezid Yavuz Selim, 438. Soon after the completion of this convent, in May 1521 (“927
Cümadelührâ’sının evâili”), a certain Sinan Agha endowed a mosque that he constructed in a location very
close to the present day Sultan Ahmed Mosque. Even though it later came to be known as the Kapı Ağası
Sinan Agha Mosque, neither the 1546 waqf survey nor Ayvansarâyî’s Garden of the Mosques indicate that
the builder was a eunuch. Ayvansarâyî, in fact, identifies him as müteferrika bası; therefore, the apellation of
Kapı Ağası might well be the result of confusion. See Ömer Lutfi Barkan and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, eds.,
Đstanbul Vakıfları Tahrir Defteri 953 (1546) Tarihli (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1970), 8 and fn. 1; and
Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 192. The statement in Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 192, fn. 1493 that the mosque was
“originally built in the seventeenth century” is also doubtful, given the information in the 1546 survey.
3 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 125; see fn. 2 and 3.
4 Ibid.
73
neighborhood, survives in the form it was given during a remodeling in the late Ottoman
period (see Map 2).5
In 948/1541, the waqf of another Süleyman Agha was registered. It is unclear
whether this Süleyman Agha b. Abdülmu‘in was the same person as Tavâsî Süleyman
Agha, yet his being a eunuch is implied by the proximity of his mekteb to the Old Palace.
Another indication is the fact that he assigned his waqf’s superintendence first to his
manumitted slaves and, after the end of their line of descendants, to whoever would be
appointed by the agha of the Old Palace. Apart from various properties in Istanbul,
Süleyman Agha also endowed for his mekteb a meadow near Deliorman in the Balkans. His
endowment deed allocates part of the waqf revenue for the staff of the Kalenderhane
Mosque and the Bayezid Mosque.6
The next court eunuch who engaged in architectural patronage in the 1540s was also
an affiliate of the same palace. Yakub Agha (d. 954/1547-48) was the chief eunuch or the
Agha of the Old Palace (eski saray ağası). As the second eunuch patron identified with this
title after Hüseyin Agha—the rebuilder of the Asık Pasa Mescid—around half a century
earlier, Yakub Agha’s term of office corresponded to a period when the Old Palace began
to decline in importance. The first palace to have been built after the conquest of the city,
the Old Palace had served after the construction of the Topkapı Palace (the New Palace) as
5 Đ. Aydın Yüksel, Osmanlı Mimârîsinde Kānûnî Sultan Süleyman Devri (926-974/1520-1566), Đstanbul
(Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 2004), 713.
6 Barkan and Ayverdi, eds., Đstanbul Vakıfları, 437.
74
the residence of royal mothers, young princes and princesses as well as the women
population constituting the bulk of the imperial harem. During the reign of Süleyman, the
royal favorite (then the sultan’s legal wife) Hürrem and her children began to reside in the
Topkapı Palace, even though the Old Palace on paper remained their official residence.7 By
the 1540s, when Yakub Agha was in charge, it was functioning basically as a repository of
young girls, as the royal family was no longer residing there and the sultan’s mother Hafsa
Sultan had already died in 1534. Still, the palace was probably housing a population close
to 167, i.e., the number of people living there by 1552, including the household staff.8
As a patron of architecture, Yakub Agha sought to construct a structure of practical
value for the palace population and built a mescid, together with a fountain, across the
entrance gate of the Old Palace (see Map 2). Thus cultivating the agha’s link with his
workplace, his mosque was intended to be of service especially during the funerals of the
palace residents;9 at other times, it was probably used by the palace staff. Located to the
east of the palace grounds, the mosque is also not far from the Mercan Agha Mosque, the
builder of which was probably, just like Yakub Agha, also employed in the management of
the imperial harem. Given Yakub Agha’s connection with royal women, it is thus not a
7 Peirce, The Imperial Harem, 119-121. Peirce points out that even after Hürrem and her suite took up
residence in the Topkapı Palace, they were still recorded in the privy purse register as residents of the Old
Palace; ibid., 122, the note under the table.
8 See the table on ibid., 122.
9 “[The leading of] funeral services in the Eski Saray opposite [the mosque] is assigned to the imams of the
mosque;” Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 44. After being destroyed by a fire, the mosque was built anew by the Italian
architect Bariori in 1869 under the auspices of the grand vizier Âli Pasha; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 740. Today,
it is to the east of the Istanbul University complex, at the intersection of Fuat Pasa Caddesi and Mercan
Caddesi.
75
surprise that it was Nurbanu Sultan, the consort of Selim II and mother of Murad III, who
upgraded his mescid to a Friday mosque by installing its minbar.10 In fact, it is quite
probable that Nurbanu was personally acquainted with the agha.
According to Ayvansarâyî, eski saray ağası Yakub Agha was the builder of another
mescid and an adjoining mekteb located not far from the Divan Yolu axis. Interestingly, the
minbar of this mosque was also installed by a palace woman called Fatma Hanım at an
unknown date.11 In raising the status of the agha’s mosques to Friday mosque, these
women were honoring the memory of either an acquaintance or a former servant and fellow
resident of the Old Palace.
Yakub Agha died in 954/1547-48 according to his tombstone inscription and was
buried in the courtyard of a mekteb that he had established in Otakçılar, Eyüp.12 The date of
his death is also the date of construction of a Yakub Agha Mosque Complex in Kastamonu,
which puzzlingly also includes a mausoleum. Among the dependencies of the “Yakup Ağa
Đmaret Camii” are a medrese, a soup kitchen, an elementary school, a hostel (tabhane), and
a hamam.13 Constructed of ashlar masonry, the single-domed square-shaped mosque with a
three-bay portico and its dependent medrese comprising eighteen cells are perched on a
hillside overlooking the town.14 If built by a eunuch as it seems, the mosque complex
10 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 44.
11 Ibid., 246.
12 Ibid.
13 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 762.
14 Godfrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1971), 191.
76
arguably constitutes the most spectacular architectural work by a eunuch patron in this
period. The building project apparently took advantage of the larger available space and
perhaps also less rigid norms of decorum in the provincial center. While the reasons for
Yakub Agha’s interest in building in Kastamonu are obscure, the fact that his construction
was simultaneous with that of Kara Mustafa Pasha’s medrese in this town suggests a
concerted Ottoman elite interest in giving an impetus to the development of this old
Anatolian capital.15
Another major eunuch patron of the era was kapı ağası Mahmud Agha, whose most
notable work was a neighborhood mescid in Nahlbend (today Ahırkapı) (Fig. 26, see Map
1). The no longer extant Persian chronogram used to give the mosque’s construction date as
961/1553-54.16 The building is counted among the works of the royal architect Sinan, who
was simultaneously in charge of several other projects, including the Süleymaniye
Complex in Istanbul. As the mosque was heavily rebuilt in the late nineteenth century, little
remains from its original construction apart from its cut-stone basement. Nevertheless, the
current structure consisting of a square shaped prayer hall and an adjacent square extension
15 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 762.
16 Mahmud Ağa, that sun of felicity, / Mine of prosperity and spring of generosity,
[Built] his mosque as a pious deed. / He composed the date. “Charitable building of Mahmud,” 961[1553-54];
Howard Crane’s translation on Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 58. The chronogram is Binā-ı ḫayr-ı Maḥmūd; ibid., fn.
440. Ayvansarâyî notes that Mahmud Agha’s tomb was next to the mosque and that the mosque had a
quarter.
77
for latecomers, both covered with a hipped roof, possibly bears some similarity to the
original mosque (Fig. 27).17
Several archival documents noted by Gülru Necipoğlu unravel the mosque’s
subsequent conversion into a Friday mosque at the agha’s request. The permission was
given in 1574, while Mahmud Agha survived until 1579, when he obtained another permit
for being buried next to his Friday mosque.18 The endowment deed, which dates from
1575, assigns the agha’s residence in the mosque’s vicinity as a source of revenue for the
Friday mosque and its mekteb.19 Sinan’s autobiographies also refer to a medrese as part of
the complex; this unit was probably subsequently added to the ensemble.20 The fountain
that Ayvansarâyî mentions is still standing near the mosque.21
An even humbler building project of the period was the mescid built by Sinan in
Nisanca, Eyüp, under the auspices of Davud Agha, who is identified in the inscription as
17 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 489.
18 Ibid., 490. As a senior and much respected palace agha who lived to see the reign of Murad III, Mahmud
Agha was probably the same person described in an early-seventeenth-century treatise as the last perfect kapı
ağası before the “deterioration” of the palace order during this sultan’s reign; Anonymous, “Kitâb-ı
Müstetâb,” in Osmanlı Devlet Teskilâtına Dair Kaynaklar, ed. Yasar Yücel (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu,
1988), 25-26. According to this, while the ideal kapı ağası was Mahmud Agha, the ideal grand vizier was
Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and the ideal seyhülislam Ebussu‘ud Efendi. This source’s claim that Mahmud Agha
was still holding the office by the time Murad III ascended to the throne is probably incorrect. Given that
Cafer and Yakub Aghas were in charge during the last years of Süleyman, Mahmud Agha must have already
been retired by that time. Another Mahmud Agha became kapı ağası after Yakub Agha in 1566 and,
according to Sicill-i Osmânî, died early in the reign of Selim II; Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmânî, ed. Nuri
Akbayar, tr. Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Kültür Bakanlığı and Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih
Vakfı, 1996), vol. 3, 907. Sicill gives the date of the earlier Mahmud Agha’s death as 961/1553-54; ibid.
19 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 490.
20 Ibid. According to Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 58, the mosque’s lower storey was used as a medrese.
21 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 58.
78
ağa-yı saray, the agha of the palace (see Map 2).22 As noted in the first chapter, this was an
office assigned to white eunuchs, and its holder was in charge of the cleaning and
maintenance of the imperial palace.23
The mosque itself is almost square-shaped, yet smaller than the square-shaped
mosques of the earlier eunuchs Firuz Agha, Ayas Agha and Kilârî Süleyman Agha.24 It is
made of rubble stone and has a hipped roof instead of a dome. Complemented with a short
and thick minaret, the mosque is, thus, of a very modest appearance.25 Its three-lined
thuluth foundation inscription in Arabic above the door gives the year 962/1554-55, the
same date given on Davud Agha’s gravestone within the mosque precinct.26 Ayvansarâyî
also mentions a mekteb of the same patron, which might have been near the mosque.27
A better-known eunuch patron of the reign of Süleyman was Cafer Agha, who is
referred to as kapı ağası or babüssaade ağası in Ayvansarâyî’s compendium, in the
treatises of Sinan, as well as in one of the inscriptions of his Soğukkuyu Medresesi.28 Cafer
Agha is known as a brother of the famous chief white eunuch Gazanfer Agha (d. 1603),
who is believed to have completed the Soğukkuyu Medresesi in 967/1559-60 after his
22 This appellation is also repeated in the autobiographies of the mosque’s architect Sinan in the form of saray
ağası; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 104. Ayvansarâyî might be confusing two typical white eunuch offices when he
refers to Davud Agha as kapı ağası; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 310.
23 Uzunçarsılı, Saray Teskilâtı, 356.
24 Its inner dimensions are 7.70 x 7.75 m.; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 104.
25 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 104.
26 Ibid.
27 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 310. The mosque was the center of a neighborhood; ibid.
28 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 10; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 78-79.
79
brother’s death in 964/1557.29 As this identification—as well as the whole story about the
two brothers’ voluntary castration—seems dubious,30 it is possible that this Cafer Agha is
confused with his namesake, the brother of Gazanfer.
Kapı ağası Cafer Agha’s most well-known construction is the theological college
that he built on the slope of the same hill as Hagia Sophia (see Map 1). The proximity of
this location to the Topkapı Palace, no doubt, must have facilitated Cafer Agha’s inspection
of the project. This was the second medrese of a eunuch builder, after that of Mustafa
Agha, to have been constructed in the vicinity of the great imperial mosque; and acquiring
property in this area, as the waqf summaries of Hüseyin and Firuz Aghas also suggest, was
not at all uncommon among court eunuchs.
The medrese consists of a domed classroom and a courtyard surrounded by a Ushaped
row of sixteen cells, which are fronted by a colonnaded portico featuring pointed
arches (Figs. 28 and 29).31 Laundry and ablution facilities are thought to have been located
in the area behind the classroom. Alternating courses of brick and stone were used in the
construction, while the classroom façade and the colonnade facing the courtyard were made
of cut stone. Due to the sloped terrain, the medrese cells bordering today’s Alemdar
Caddesi were constructed on top of a series of shops (Fig. 30). The medrese entrance is
29 Aptullah Kuran, Sinan: The Grand Old Master of Ottoman Architecture (Istanbul: Ada Press Publishers,
1987), 134.
30 See Chapter IV.
31 Yüksel notes that some sources refer to a greater number of cells; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 78 and 79, fn. 1.
80
from the Hagia Sophia direction, through a cul-de-sac leading to the arched gate of the
courtyard.32
While Cafer Agha did not place any inscription on the medrese in his lifetime, three
inscriptions were attached next to the classroom door in later periods (Fig. 31). These are
very unusual inscriptions of “documentary” character, which give the impression of
archival documents carved in stone. The earliest one, placed above the door, dates from
July 1560 (Zilkāde 967) and reveals that Cafer Agha had died by that time. This is an order
of Sultan Süleyman commanding a certain amount of water to be allocated to the
medrese.33 The other two inscriptions on the classroom façade date from the 1840s and
record two endowments of olive oil for the consumption of the medrese residents. Both of
these were dedicated to the souls of two deceased palace employees by their heirs who
were members of the corps of halberdiers with tresses.34 The closeness of the imperial
palace once more seems to have played a role in these endowments, which served to link
the memory of fellow palace staff members to that of Cafer Agha. The interest of
halberdiers in the chief eunuch’s medrese may also have stemmed from the proximity of
this group of officers to court eunuchs.35
32 Ibid., 78-79.
33 Ibid., 79-80.
34 The inscription on the right, dating from 1261/1843, gives the names of the late el-Hajj Mustafa Agha, a
flour provider at the imperial palace (uncubası), and his heir Süleyman Agha, the chief of the halberdiers
(serteberdârân-ı hassa); ibid., 80. The other inscription bears the date 1263/1846-47 and mentions Süleyman
Agha of Niğde, the steward of the halberdiers (teberdârân-ı zülüfliyân-ı hassa kethüdâsı), who died during a
pilgrimage, and his heir Mustafa Agha, a halberdier (teberdârân-ı merkum neferâtından); ibid., 81.
35 See Đ. Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teskilâtı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1945), 432-38.
81
In addition the Soğukkuyu Medresesi, Cafer Agha also built a han in Antakya, as
understood from an imperial order dating from 975/1567.36 It is, however, less certain
whether it was the same Cafer Agha who built the mosque of this name in Kadıköy.
Ayvansarâyî writes that it was built by babüssaade ağası Cafer Agha, although he does not
explicitly state whether he was the same agha who built the medrese near Hagia Sophia.37
Today, this simple mosque with a hipped roof does not seem to have any part remaining
from the sixteenth century. Cafer Agha’s grave, which, according to the eighteenth-century
writer, was next to this mosque, is no longer extant. In the absence of Cafer Agha’s
endowment deed, the attribution, thus, remains uncertain.38
Odabası Behruz Agha’s mosque commissioned to Sinan and his other pious works
also need to be cited in this context. As the chief agha of the Privy Chamber, Behruz Agha
was likely to have been a eunuch. Even though the appointment of a non-eunuch to this
office during the reign of Süleyman weakens this possibility,39 Behruz Agha’s
constructions still need to be taken into account in any general assessment of court
eunuchs’ patronage.
36 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 78.
37 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 544. The present mosque was probably built in 1760-73; ibid., fn. 3743.
38 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 78.
39 See Chapter I.
82
Behruz Agha completed his Friday mosque in Sehremini in 970/1562-63 and also
built an accompanying elementary school and a fountain within its precinct (see Map 2).40
However, the rectangular mosque, covered with a hipped roof, might well have been
originally built as a mescid and converted afterwards into a Friday mosque (Fig. 32). Its
prayer hall is larger compared to many other buildings by eunuch patrons in this period.41
Considered together with the relatively large number of monuments attributed to Behruz
Agha, the patron’s high status among other palace aghas seems clear. As we learn from
Sinan’s autobiographies, the agha also built a public bath in the same district as his mosque
in order to support his waqf.42 Ayvansarâyî’s Mecmuâ mentions a market building (çarsı)
near the mosque, and adds a fountain and a hamam in Beykoz.43 The Beykoz fountain later
came to be known by a certain Ishak Agha’s name, as this person—a customs officer—
rebuilt it in 1159/1746.44
The last of the eunuch patrons under Süleyman the Magnificent was Yakub Agha,
who was the kapı ağası until his death soon after the sultan’s demise on the Szigetvár
40 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 33. This source also provides the mosque’s chronogram, which is not extant today:
“Obligation of obedience to God,” (Minnet-i ṭā‘at) 970/1562-63. According to Ayvansarâyî, the whereabouts
of the agha’s grave are unknown. However, a tomb located next to the mosque is known as Behruz Agha’s
grave; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 416.
41 Its internal dimensions are 9.80 x 16.50 m.; Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 415. The building used to have a
wooden portico, which is enclosed today. Although the mosque was extensively rebuilt in subsequent periods,
it still retains its original walls made of stone and brick; see ibid. and Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 492.
42 Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 492.
43 Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, ed. Fahri Ç. Derin and Vâhid Çabuk (Istanbul: Đstanbul
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1985), 260-61.
44 It is also known as “On Çesmeler” (the Ten Fountains); Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 416 and 426.
83
campaign.45 The double bath that Yakub Agha commissioned in the present day Samatya
(Kocamustafapasa) is acknowledged as a work of Sinan in the treatises that listed the
architect’s constructions, Adsız Risale, Tuhfetü’l-Mimârîn, and Tezkiretü’l-Ebniye (see Map
2).46 The hamam had apparently achieved some fame by the time the nineteenth-century
writer R. Walsh introduced it in his book, which also included a pictorial representation of
a men’s “cooling room” or dressing room by Thomas Allom (1804-1872) (Fig. 33).47
Allom’s engraving is often taken for granted as a documentary image of the Yakub Agha
hamam’s interior as of the nineteenth century. However, as Semavi Eyice has noted, the
inconsistency between the depiction of the dressing room and the actual plan of the
building make it difficult to accept Allom’s picture as a straightforward representation of
this particular bath.48 The plan of the hamam’s women’s section drawn by Glück in 1917-
18, which is identical with the men’s section, features a simple rectangular dressing room
which lacks the colonnaded central pool that appears in Allom’s depiction.49 Therefore, it is
possible that Allom inserted dressed human figures into what looks like a hot chamber in
creating his image.
45 Selânikî Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Selânikî, ed. Mehmet Đpsirli (Istanbul: Đstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat
Fakültesi Yayınları, 1989), vol. 1, 38-39.
46 Semavi Eyice, “Ağa Hamamı,” DBĐA 1: 92.
47 Ibid. Allom’s engraving is in R. Walsh, Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches (London,
1838), 115.
48 Eyice, “Ağa Hamamı,” DBĐA 1: 92.
49 Ibid.
84
According to Sinan’s autobiographies, Yakub Agha is also the builder of another
hamam in Tophane, which might be the extensively rebuilt bath known as the “Ağa
Hamamı” in Beyoğlu.50 Given that these hamams must have been built for the upkeep of a
pious foundation, a likely candidate is the mescid and mekteb situated near the Divan Yolu,
which were possibly the works of this Yakub Agha. Ayvansarâyî also mentions a mosque
that the agha built in Harami Deresi.51 The agha’s other patronage activities are traceable in
several imperial orders by Süleyman the Magnificent. One dating from 23 March 1562 (15
Receb 969) gives permission for the agha’s construction of a lighthouse (fener) in Kalamıs
for the secure passage of vessels. Other fermans refer to his minor works of charity, such as
a water mill.52
Although the survey presented in this chapter possibly misses several unidentified
eunuchs who engaged in architectural patronage,53 the limited set of identifiable examples
does convey a more or less consistent picture concerning the characteristics of the
architectural patronage of eunuchs during the reign of Süleyman. A noticeable feature is
the popularity of small neighborhood mosques and elementary schools as favorite building
types among eunuch patrons. We have seen among the limited constructions in this period
at least four mescid-mekteb combinations and two separate mektebs standing on their own.
50 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 740. Tanman does not mention this possibility and writes that the construction date
and the builder of this sixteenth-century hamam are unknown; Baha Tanman, “Ağa Hamamı,” DBĐA 1: 91-92.
51 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 391.
52 Yüksel, Kānûnî Devri, 739.
53 I have excluded from this survey several “aghas” who built in the suburbs of Istanbul and in the provinces,
in the absence of further proof for their being eunuchs; see the list in ibid., 745-80.
85
In an age when lofty Friday mosques proliferated as privileged status symbols for the
highest-ranking members of the Ottoman elite, the eunuchs of the imperial court fitted into
the ranks of relatively lowly patrons who commissioned much less pretentious mescids,
often accompanied by elementary schools or fountains instead of all-encompassing
complexes.54
Apart from being cheaper and easier, constructing a mescid was a simpler process
compared to building a Friday mosque, which required the builder to obtain a royal
permit.55 A mescid was also a much more intimate structure central to the perpetuation of
communal ties within a neighborhood. Its imam would be a natural leader for the
neighborhood community, and the mahalle itself would often be named after the patron
who built the mescid.56 In considering what a neighborhood mosque meant in the midsixteenth-
century context, it should also be noted that, complementary to the boom of
monumental Friday mosques, the plethora of mescids constructed in this period by eunuch
and non-eunuch patrons were practical tools for the enforcement of congregational prayers
54 The mescid builders were from among a greater variety of office-holders compared to the Friday mosque
patrons, and they included “minor officers of the imperial council and the military establishment, members of
the ulema, wives and daughters of grandees, servants and aghas of the imperial palace (including the chief
architect himself), and chiefs of craft guilds;” Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan, 47.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
86
five times a day, which was part of the general imperial policy of promoting Sunni
orthodoxy against the Safavid threat.57
Thus, in contrast to the variety and flexibility of patronage possibilities in Bayezid’s
era, the architectural patronage of the court eunuchs of Süleyman seems to have taken a
more standardized form. The eunuchs’ constructions in this period rarely went beyond
square or rectangle-shaped domeless mosques with hipped roofs and simple minarets, small
elementary school units and generic pointed-arched fountains, which would be combined
as a package service to the neighborhood. The medrese of Cafer Agha, for instance, is
clearly an exception in this regard. While the only full-fledged mosque complex of the
period was constructed in a provincial town, neighborhood mosque-school-fountain
combinations became the common “town-planning devices” that eunuch patrons employed
in the imperial capital. Some of these were, indeed, situated at the outskirts of the city in
parallel to the urban development towards the periphery.
It is noteworthy that the inscriptions on the buildings of this period are either short
or altogether absent, presumably as a token of humility. Yet, the possibility that some of
these might have been lost in the subsequent centuries, like some of the endowment deeds
and original decorations, also need to be taken into account in assessing these structures. In
general, the reign of Süleyman featured a restriction upon the use of status symbols on the
57 Ibid., 48-49. Yet another impact of the religious policy under Süleyman was the unpopularity of dervish
convents as a building type among patrons of architecture; ibid., 54. Accordingly, no eunuchs endowed a
tekke in this period.
87
buildings of eunuch patrons: the extant remains suggest that domed baldachins, colonnaded
porticoes, ashlar masonry, and elaborate calligraphic inscriptions became more exceptional
and rarer for the works of eunuchs.
As noted above, while the allowed limits for the architectural patronage of eunuchs
were readjusted to fit to the non-written codes of decorum refined during chief architect
Sinan’s term of office, the hierarchical differences between the patronages of court eunuchs
of various ranks became less relevant or less striking compared to the differences between
the architectural works of palace aghas and the office-holders of higher ranks. In contrast to
the clear predominance of the kapı ağası and the hazinedarbası in the late fifteenth century,
during the reign of Süleyman the architectural patronage of two aghas employed in the
“private” sections of the imperial palace compounds, Yakub Agha of the Old Palace and
Behruz Agha of the Privy Chamber, equaled and sometimes even surpassed that of any
kapı ağası of the period. While these changes are significant in their own right, major
transformations in the hierarchy of court eunuchs in the second half of the sixteenth century
and the impact of these in the realm of architectural patronage will be examined in the next
chapter.
88
CHAPTER IV
HOW FAR CA THE LIMITS BE STRETCHED?
THE PATROAGE OF HABESÎ MEHMED AGHA
This chapter discusses the architectural repercussions of the sudden and magnificent
arrival of a new agent on the scene of court politics: the darüssaade ağası or—to put it in
the self-explanatory English rendition of the term—chief black eunuch.1 Having arisen
from among the same old circle of Ottoman court eunuchs, the chief black eunuch was the
product of a novel arrangement in the court structure, changing rulership and legitimization
practices, and a redefined image for the sultan as a sedentary and secluded sovereign. Even
though the name of the office had existed before,2 from the last quarter of the sixteenth
century onwards it acquired a new connotation: a very high-ranking officer who usually
was of African descent and who had close connections with the increasingly powerful
harem women and an influence almost matching that of grand viziers. Although his rise to
power and the architectural works he was capable of commissioning hark back to Hüseyin
Agha, the prolific and apparently powerful kapı ağası of Bayezid II, the first chief black
eunuch Habesî Mehmed Agha’s ascendancy was intimately related to the changing nature
1 I translate darüssaade ağası as “chief black eunuch,” specifically for the African eunuchs who held the
office in the post-1574/5 context. Given that there were also white eunuchs who held this office in this period,
the term is most accurately rendered as “chief harem eunuch.”
2 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, ed. Ahmet Nezihî Turan (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2000), 44.
89
of the court and the exercise of sovereignty in the post-Süleymanic environment.
Therefore, his emergence on the scene of politics—and architecture—was not just another
waxing period for the fortunes of court eunuchs; it was a different and unprecedented
phenomenon.
The demographic and architectural expansion of the imperial harem during the reign
of Murad III enhanced the role of the harem eunuchs and assigned them a key position
within the social world of the court. As the head servant of the harem institution, the chief
black eunuch began to oversee the education of young princes from 1574/5 onwards in the
black eunuchs’ courtyard, which was strategically located between the women’s apartments
and the second court of the Topkapı Palace, with connections to the spacious quarters
belonging to the sultan and the valide sultan, the sultan’s mother. The centralization of the
royal family and the rearrangement of the architectural space of the harem increased the
importance of the chief black eunuch and his eunuch corps as close domestic servants who
mediated between the royal family and the court.3
In his architectural undertakings, the generic chief black eunuch of the next two
centuries represented a sub-tradition within the tradition. Although he belonged to the
larger category of court eunuchs and was often restrained by the norms of decorum that
applied to these, his patronage was also informed by his distinct identity vis-à-vis other
3 For the changes in the imperial harem during the reign of Murad III, see Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture,
Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge, MA, and
London: The MIT Press, 1991), 164-81.
90
eunuchs: his proximity to the royal family as a close confidant and loyal servant, his role as
an educator of princes, his control over the revenues supporting the Two Holy Cities, and
his connection with Egypt became the facets of the public image that he sought to fashion
for himself through his patronage. In examining the output of Habesî Mehmed Agha as a
patron of architecture, this chapter points out the incipient manifestations of this newly
emerging chief black eunuch identity in the works he commissioned.
It is significant that Mehmed Agha’s appointment to the office in 1574/5 and his
climactic patronage activities which began a few years later were preceded by a period
when court eunuchs kept a low profile. After the consecutive demises of Süleyman the
Magnificent and his kapı ağası Yakub Agha in 1566 and the replacement of the late
sultan’s court with that of Selim II in the imperial palace, the building activities of court
eunuchs came to a halt, thus terminating the period of constructions between the late 1540s
and 1560s. The inactivity of court eunuchs in architecture continued, as public building
activity lost momentum during the eight-year reign of Selim II (1566-74).
The reigns of both Selim II and his successor Murad III (r. 1574-95) were
characterized by increasing royal retreat from public visibility, which was also connected to
their smaller number of architectural works compared to Süleyman’s era. Selim departed
from the custom of his predecessors when he built his sultanic mosque not in Istanbul but
in Edirne. As he had the Selimiye built in the “abode of the gazis” with the booty from the
conquest of Cyprus, which he did not personally lead, Selim presumably attempted to give
91
a warlike flavor to his unpopular image of a secluded and hedonistic sultan.4 His son
Murad III had an even worse image problem, which gave rise to acerbic remarks in the
writings of the period about his powerlessness vis-à-vis his confidants and boon
companions who constantly interfered in state affairs.5 An important patron of illustrated
manuscripts but a poor patron of architecture, Murad concentrated his architectural projects
in the provinces instead of the capital.6 The sedentary sultan’s failure to command the army
in a victorious war probably played a major role in his patronage choices.
An important factor in assessing the architectural patronage of court eunuchs is the
proportion between the constructions sponsored by sultans and their eunuchs. Also
important is the relation between the image of a sultan and the patronage of the eunuchs in
his household. During the age of Süleyman, which was idealized by later generations as a
period when everyone knew their assigned position and did not overstep their limits, it
must have been deemed legitimate for court eunuchs to keep a modest profile in
architectural patronage. Arguably, that would have been more problematic under Selim II,
when the patronage of eunuchs might even have been intentionally restrained in order not
to exacerbate the already deteriorating sultanic image. What is, however, truly striking is
4 It is Evliya Çelebi’s account that suggests that Edirne’s association with holy warfare was decisive in the
selection of this city for the mosque project; see Gülru Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in
the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 241-42. An alternative possibility is that
the sultan might have shied away from building in the capital, as he did not personally lead the army during
the conquest of Cyprus in 1570-71. The lack of adequate empty space in Istanbul could also have been a
factor that informed Selim’s decision to build in Edirne; ibid., 242.
5 See, for example, Selânikî Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Selânikî, ed. Mehmet Đpsirli (Istanbul: Đstanbul
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1989), vol. 2, 444-45.
6 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 257.
92
the contrast between Murad III’s invisibility to the public eye and the augmented visibility
of his principal eunuch Mehmed Agha. While the sultan sought legitimacy in royal
seclusion, the darüssaade ağası stepped into the picture as his trustworthy agent and
intermediary. As Emine Fetvacı has shown in her analysis of Mehmed Agha’s patronage of
illustrated manuscripts, the agha actively took part in the cultural front of the intra-elite
struggle, fashioning himself in the books as the indispensable agent and extension of the
sultan and the royal family, whose aloof and sedentary lifestyle was the raison d’être of his
powerful position.7 Nevertheless, this newly defined relationship between the ruler and his
court elite in the post-classical Ottoman world order was met with escalating public
discontent and a growing sense of degeneration and decline.
Mehmed Agha began commissioning architectural works not long after his status as
chief harem eunuch became equal to that of the chief white eunuch. Possibly emulating
Murad III, who focused his architectural patronage on remodeling the sanctuaries in the
Two Holy Cities, Mecca and Medina,8 Mehmed Agha initiated his construction activities
with a project in Medina. Two decrees issued in 986/1578 gave permission to the agha to
rebuild a water dispenser with an upper-storey library (sebil-küttab), an elementary school,
and a convent, structures dating from the Mamluk period.9
7 See Emine Fetvacı, Viziers to Eunuchs: Transitions in Ottoman Manuscript Patronage, 1566-1617, PhD
dissertation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, History of Art and Architecture Dep., 2005), 202-56.
8 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 257.
9 Ibid., 498 and 555, note 70.
93
About two years later, in 988/1580-81, the first product of Mehmed Agha’s
patronage in Istanbul appeared on the prestigious Divan Yolu. It is noteworthy that this
composite building that consisted of a water dispenser (sebil) and an elementary school
(mekteb) on top of it was the first building by a court eunuch patron on the main artery of
the Divan Yolu after the mosque constructed by Firuz Agha in the late fifteenth century
(see Map 1). Reminiscent of the Mamluk sebil-küttabs in Egypt, the water dispenser-cumlibrary
type of buildings, and more particularly the one that Mehmed Agha restored in
Medina,10 the sebil-mekteb seems to have been meant to allude to the agha’s connection
with Egypt, where he had a sojourn before he was sent to Selim II’s princely court.11 As
Mustafa Âlî implies in a treatise, Egypt, being recognized as the cradle of the eunuch
institution, was a place associated with eunuchs in the eyes of the Ottomans.12 This
10 Ibid., 498.
11 An account of how Mehmed Agha came to the imperial court in Istanbul is found in the marginalia of a
treatise written by the agha’s Abyssinian protégé Ali b. Abdurrauf in 1621, Râfâ‘ilü’l-Gubûs fî Fezâ‘ilü’l-
Hubûs, Süleymaniye Library, Fatih, nr. 4360, fol. 9b. According to this account, Mehmed Agha was initially
bought by a European man (Frenk) in Africa. After this owner lost him to Muslims in a sea battle, the agha
was brought to the governor of Egypt, who then sent him to Selim’s court. Mehmed Agha first came into the
possession of kapı ağası Hüseyin Agha, and after his decapitation, he was appropriated along with the late
agha’s other belongings by the imperial court; Fetvacı, Viziers to Eunuchs, 334; Yıldız Karakoç, Palace
Politics and the Rise of the Chief Black Eunuch in the Ottoman Empire, unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul:
Boğaziçi University, 2005), 91. The reference to a decapitated kapı ağası Hüseyin Agha is most interesting:
while the temporal gap would have made it impossible for Mehmed Agha to be acquainted with the patron of
the Küçük Ayasofya Complex, it might have been that the chief black eunuch or his circle wished to associate
him with this powerful white eunuch—unless another kapı ağası Hüseyin Agha was beheaded during the
reign of Selim II or the writer simply confused two different white eunuchs.
12 In an account of how Ottoman white eunuchs began to be sent to Egypt as provincial governors, Âlî
suggests: ‘Ale’l-husus ecdâd-ı ‘izâmun zamânında dahi böyle olagelmisdür; ya‘ni ki Mısr mahlûl oldukça
tavâsî zümresinden olana virilmisdür; Gelibolulu Mustafa ‘Âlî, Mustafa ‘Ālī’s Description of Cairo of 1599:
Text, Transliteration, Translation, Totes, ed. and tr. Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1975), 162.
94
association was strengthened by the white eunuchs who were sent to rule Egypt as
governors as well as by African eunuchs like Mehmed Agha who were received by the
imperial court after their training at the court of the governor of Egypt.13 Thus, bearing the
flavor of Mamluk architecture, the sebil-mekteb could have been read as a subtle allusion to
the builder’s connection with Egypt and his eunuch identity.
The now lost inscription of the sebil, which was noted by Ayvansarâyî, legitimized
the construction by giving credit to Murad III, during whose reign even the lowliest patrons
allegedly found the means and opportunity to occupy themselves with establishing
charitable works:14
During the reign of Murad Khan,
The world is prosperous and its inhabitants occupied with charity.
Mehmed Agha, that source of munificence,
Who is his favorite slave,
Built this lofty water dispenser in this place.
May he find the way to the pool of Kawthar in the afterlife!
They said that no charity could be above it;
The school building became an agreeable work of charity.
As it is agreed, the Unseen Voice
Expressed its date “agreeable work of charity,” 988 (1580-81).15
13 Before they were sent to the imperial or princely courts, African eunuchs would typically stay for a while at
the court of the Ottoman governor of Egypt, where they would learn about courtly manners; Jane Hathaway,
Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem (London: Oneworld Publications, 2005), 23.
14 Necipoğlu notes that the first couplet that referred to Murad III is repeated in the inscription on Kılıç Ali
Pasha’s mosque complex at Tophane, which was built in the same year as the sebil-mekteb; Necipoğlu, Sinan,
498.
15 Zamân-ı devletinde Hân Murâd’ın / Cihân ma‘mûr halkı hayra mesgûl
Mehemmed Ağa ol kân-ı mürüvvet / Ki anın bende-i makbûlüdür ol
Yerinde yapdı bu zîbâ sebîli / Bula ‘ukbâda havz-ı kevsere yol
Bunun fevkinde hayr olmaz dediler / Binâ-yı mekteb oldu hayr-ı makbûl
Kabûl olduğu için hâtıf-i gayb / Dedi târîhin anın “hayr-ı makbûl” 988 (1580);
95
In 990/1582-83, Mehmed Agha completed a small theological college (medrese)
behind the sebil-mekteb, thus producing a tiny complex that emphasized education as its
salient function. The medrese, which comprised ten cells, is listed in the Tezkiretü’l-Ebniye
among the works of Sinan.16 Later in the sixteenth century, the sebil, which functioned as
an icon of the power of the chief black eunuch on the city’s main ceremonial thoroughfare,
assumed a funeral function when two musahib aghas (the sultan’s confidants), Anber and
Abdullah, who were presumably eunuchs as well, were buried inside it.17 The character of
the sebil as a commemorative monument for (black) eunuchs was thus strengthened.
Imperial permits dating from 1579-81 reveal that the agha built another sebil on the
Divan Yolu axis, this time in Irgadpazarı near Constantine’s column. This water dispenser
and the accompanying fountain are also listed in the agha’s endowment deed dating from 5
February 1591.18 Clearly, by means of these constructions, Mehmed Agha increased his
symbolic presence on the city’s main ceremonial route.
In the same year as Mehmed Agha’s Divan Yolu projects, across the Bosphorus, the
chief white eunuch (kapı ağası) Ibrahim Agha constructed an unpretentious mosque
together with a dervish convent and a fountain in a meadow in Haydarpasa. Built in a royal
excursion spot, the mosque came to be known as “Đbrahim Ağa Çayırı Mescidi” (the
Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, ed. Fahri Ç. Derin and Vâhid Çabuk (Istanbul: Đstanbul
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1985), 385.
16 Zeynep Ahunbay, “Mehmed Ağa Medresesi,” DBĐA 5: 356.
17 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 111.
18 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 498.
96
Mosque of the Ibrahim Agha Meadow).19 Comparing this work with the simultaneously
built sebil-mekteb of Mehmed Agha reveals the two aghas’ changing places within the
power configuration. Unlike the works of Mehmed Agha, who was allowed to build on the
Divan Yolu and display his name on an inscription, Ibrahim Agha’s mosque on the much
less prestigious Asian side, which had a hipped roof and apparently no inscription, seemed
to be a continuation of the tradition of humble mescids built by white eunuchs in the
sixteenth century. Also, considered together with the similarly unpretentious mosque of
Tavâsî Hasan Agha, which was completed a few years later (995/1586-87) in Üsküdar,20
the Ibrahim Agha Mosque marks a new trend for court eunuchs to build on the Asian side
of the Bosphorus, an area featuring royal hunting grounds, summer palaces, and excursion
spots.
Arguably the most impressive monument of Ottoman court eunuch patronage was
the funerary mosque complex constructed by Habesî Mehmed Agha in the Beycügez
(Beyceğiz) or Çarsamba Pazarı quarter of Istanbul in the mid-1580s (see Map 2). It
included a Friday mosque, a double bath (çifte hamam), a mausoleum (türbe), and two
fountains, as well as a no longer extant Halvetî convent (tekke) and hadith college for ten
19 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 537.
20 Ibid., 511. Hasan Agha also built an elementary school near the mosque; Đbrahim Hakkı Konyalı, Âbideleri
ve Kitâbeleriyle Üsküdar Tarihi (Istanbul: Türkiye Yesilay Cemiyeti), vol. II, 333. The mosque was
renovated by a certain Hadice Hanım in the late nineteenth century; ibid., vol. I, 302.
97
students (darülhadis) (Figs. 34, 35, 37, and 39).21 The mosque and the mausoleum are
enclosed within an irregular-shaped precinct, which is given access by three gates (Fig. 34).
Fitted into an area carved within the web of narrow streets, the complex represented an
attempt to Islamize a non-Muslim neighborhood, as a multitude of properties belonging to
non-Muslim inhabitants were purchased for its construction. As such, it seemed to be
connected with Murad III’s conversion of the nearby Pammakaristos Monastery housing
the Orthodox Patriarchate in 1587-88, as well as with the conversion of other Christian
structures in the vicinity, including the church converted by Hıramî Ahmed Pasha.22
As the first full-fledged complex built by a eunuch patron within the walled city
since the Küçük Ayasofya, the Mehmed Agha Complex challenged the norms of decorum
by means of its elegant mosque which has an unusually complex domical structure (Figs.
35 and 36). Gülru Necipoğlu finds the mosque remarkable not only by virtue of its
monumentality, but also because of its emulation of the plan type employed in the mosques
of contemporary viziers—a sign of ambition, which seems to have been balanced by the
mosque’s smaller size and less costly masonry fabric.23 Like the mosques of the white
eunuch vizier Mesih Mehmed Pasha (1584-87) and the vizier Nisancı Mehmed Pasha
(1584/85-88/89), Mehmed Agha’s mosque features a protruding mihrab covered with a
21 The darülhadis had apparently fallen into disuse when it was occupied by immigrants in 1918; Mübahat S.
Kütükoğlu, XX. Asra Erisen Đstanbul Medreseleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2000), 245.
22 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 499; Wolfgang Müller-Wiener, Đstanbul'un Tarihsel Topografyası: 17. yüzyıl baslarına
kadar Byzantion-Konstantinopolis-Đstanbul, tr. Ülker Sayın (Istanbul: YKY, 2007), 133 and 144.
23 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 501.
98
half-dome and a central dome that rests on an octagonal baldachin and is supported by halfdomes
on the corners.24
The mosque also employs several other status symbols that court eunuchs had long
abstained from using. One of these is the cut stone portico with five domes and muqarnas
capitals; another is the muqarnas decoration used on the minaret (Fig. 38), the mihrab, and
the entrance of the prayer hall. Yet more striking are the expensive Iznik tiles on the mihrab
and the lunettes inside the prayer hall and on the wall of the portico. Coinciding with the
heyday of the Iznik tile industry, the mosque stands out as the first building by a eunuch
patron that displays tiles as decorative elements.
Long and elaborate, the mosque’s thuluth foundation inscription on the gate of the
precinct can also be counted among the status symbols that distinguish the building (Fig.
40):
The praying slave of the world [ruler] Murad Khan,
That virtuous Mehmed Agha,
Namely, the darüssaade ağası:
Expended such zeal on pious works!
He built this noble Friday mosque.
It became the sum of the mosques of mercy.
For its founder, may God make this pious work
A reason for the Paradise on the morrow!
God is his pardoner, the Prophet is his intercessor.
May the Sunna and the obligatory worship be carried out here!
Come what may, let prayers be accepted in it!
May it be that which fulfils the needs of the Muslims!
Its perfect architect was Davud.
24 See ibid., 404, illus. 404 and 410, illus. 413.
99
He built [it] by inscribing art with his soul.
O Âsârî! The Unseen Voice expressed the date:
“House of God and mosque of the Community,” 993 (1585).25
As was the case with the inscriptions on kapı ağası Hüseyin Agha’s buildings a
century earlier, the high-ranking eunuch is presented in this inscription as a loyal servant
who derives his authority and legitimacy from his master, the sultan. Yet, deviating from
the common practice, it also gives the name of the architect Davud, who undertook the
project while Sinan was still the chief royal architect. The patronage relationship between
Mehmed Agha and Davud, who was the water channel superintendent, probably developed
during the agha’s construction of his sebils and was reinforced when Davud was chosen to
build a new bath in the imperial harem in 1585.26 The inscription, thus, names three levels
25 This is a slightly modified version of the translation in Necipoğlu, Sinan, 500, which is also a slightly
changed version of Crane’s translation on Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 218. I have replaced “humble servant” on
the first line with “praying slave.” I believe “Asari, the Voice, expressed its date” (Didi Âsârî târîhin hâtif) on
the fifteenth line should either be “O Âsârî! The Unseen Voice expressed the date” or “The Unseen Voice
expressed the date of his works” (Didi âsârı târîhin Hâtif), where the “Unseen Voice” would be lending
anonymity to the chronogram composer. Âsârî, however, is acknowledged as the poet in Muzaffer Erdoğan,
“Mîmar Davud Ağa’nın Hayatı ve Eserleri,” Türkiyat Mecmuası 12 (1955): 188; and Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i
Tevârih, 120. He also seems to be the poet of the inscriptions on the agha’s fountains in Üsküdar; see
Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 66-67. The Turkish poem is as follows:
Abd-i dâ‘î-i Hân Murâd-ı cihân / Ol Mehemmed Ağa-yı hos-haslet
‘ni Dârü’s-sa‘âde ağası / Bunca hayrâta sarf edip himmet
Kıldı bu câmi‘-i serîfi binâ / Oldu mecmu‘a câmi‘-i rahmet
Sâhibine bu hayrı hazret-i Hakk / Ede yârın vesîle-i cennet
Gâfiri Hakk ânın sefî‘i Resûl / Kıla bunda ferâyiz ü sünnet
Müstecâb olsa n’ola bunda du’â / Ehl-i Đslâm’a kıble-i hâcet
Oldu mi‘mar-ı kâmili Dâvud / Yapdı câniyle derc idüb san‘at
Didi Âsârî târîhin hâtif / Beyt-i Hâdi vü câmi‘-i ümmet 993 (1585);
Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 120; I have slightly changed the orthography.
26 On the basis of such clues, Necipoğlu believes that Mehmed Agha’s favor must have been decisive in
Davud’s appointment as the chief architect after Sinan in 1588; Necipoğlu, Sinan, 500. Davud also signed the
endowment deed of the sebil-mekteb on the Divan Yolu as a witness. The building of the Çarsamba complex
coincides with the absence of Sinan from the capital in 1584-85; ibid.
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in a chain of patronage: the sultan, the eunuch, and the architect, all of whom were
involved to varying degrees in making the construction possible.
Mehmed Agha’s endowment deed dating to 999/159127 provides a relatively
lengthy list of constructions for a court eunuch.28 These include a small mosque known as
the Yeniçesme Mescidi and five fountains in Üsküdar,29 a fountain and open prayer space
near the gate of Edirnekapı, a fountain near Hagia Sophia, and another one in front of his
residence in the vicinity of the Old Palace. Particularly noteworthy is the ablution fountains
that he installed in the courtyard of the Mercan Agha Mosque, as this act suggests that the
agha aimed to link his image to the memory of a former eunuch servant of the Ottoman
court and to situate himself in a line of court eunuchs. As we will see, one of his own works
also became the object of a similar act of patronage by a later chief black eunuch who
wished to display the continuity in tradition.
Clues indicating that Mehmed Agha’s eunuch identity was an essential component
of the perception of his works by later generations are found in the account of the
seventeenth-century traveler Evliya Çelebi. This author, who praises the beauty of the
mosque in Çarsamba, mentions Mehmed Agha’s mosque immediately after that of Firuz
27 The vakfiye is now in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Emanet Hazinesi, no. 2023.
28 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 498-99.
29 For the mescid, see Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 504-5, and Kolağası Mehmed Râ’if, Mir’ât-ı Đstanbul, I. Cild
(Asya Yakası), ed. Günay Kut and Hatice Aynur (Istanbul: Çelik Gülersoy Vakfı Yayınları, 1996), 136. Two
Persian chronograms and one Turkish chronogram belonging to the multi-faceted Yeniçesme fountain are
recorded in Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 66-67. The dates of the chronograms are 1582 and 1587.
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Agha.30 Moreover, in his amusing list of hamams where he matches each one with its
appropriate group of users, Evliya Çelebi finds the bath of the Mehmed Agha Complex fit
for the use of eunuchs,31 thus underlining Mehmed Agha’s image as the “patron saint” of
this group.32
While we find no clue in the sources concerning the public reaction to Mehmed
Agha’s unusually monumental mosque in Çarsamba, the contemporary chronicler Selânikî
provides evidence for wide-spread discontent about the castle and town that he established
in Đsmail Geçidi on the bank of the Danube (today in Romania).33 In an entry where he
records Mehmed Agha’s death due to a stomach disease, his funeral in the mosque of
Mehmed II and the burial in his mausoleum in Çarsamba, Selânikî writes that all his
properties were appended to his waqf. The chronicler then adds that, as the agha’s
foundations in Đsmail Geçidi were a cause of grievance for the public, they expressed the
date of his death (999/1590-91) with the chronogram “That black calamity is gone from the
world.”34
30 Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, ed. Orhan Saik Gökyay (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları,
1996), vol. 1, 126. He describes the mosque as cāmi‘-i rūsen-binā bir cāmi‘-i zībādır.
31 Ibid., 137. In a more serious passage below, he describes it as a particularly clean and distinguished
hamam; ibid.
32 The expression is taken from Necipoğlu, Sinan, 501.
33 This town and the Çarsamba complex constitute the two most important acts of patronage by Mehmed
Agha, according to Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 45. Fetvacı writes that the town was endowed
for the Holy Cities; Fetvacı, Viziers to Eunuchs, 229.
34 Selânikî, Tarih, vol. 1, 229-30. Reft āz ‘ālem ān belā-yi siyāh; ibid., 230.; also cited in Ayvansarâyî,
Mecmuâ, 385.
102
The public resentment briefly noted by Selânikî is all the more significant when we
consider the reduced amount of constructions by the agha’s successors. As the initiator of
the ascendancy of black eunuchs at the Ottoman court, Mehmed Agha stood at the
beginning of a new line of tradition, the succession of chief black eunuchs who continued
to be influential at the court for a long time. Nevertheless, while he opened new
possibilities for later eunuch careers, his architectural patronage conversely seemed to have
served to suppress the patronage possibilities for his successors by denoting the topmost
limit that a eunuch was allowed to reach. I believe that the public disapproval of the
challenge he posed to the unwritten norms of decorum explains why later eunuchs never
attempted to surpass his constructions.
Without a doubt, this reaction was triggered not simply by the increased visibility of
the signs of a court servant’s power, but also by the sultan’s physical disappearance from
the public realm. While Murad III avoided building a royal mosque in his name in the
capital, other courtly patrons such as Mehmed Agha filled the vacuum by increasing their
patronage activities. A leading figure among these patrons, the valide sultan Nurbanu built
the massive Atik Valide Complex in Üsküdar, which she had begun while her husband
Selim II was alive. As an imperial permit copied by Ayvansarâyî shows, Mehmed Agha,
the overseer of her endowments, took an active role in the enlargement of the complex after
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her death 1583;35 it is quite probable that he was involved in the project already during her
lifetime.
Not only during the tenure of Mehmed Agha, but also during the time of his
successors, the chief black eunuch’s role as the extension of the royal family was most
apparent in his dealings with the royal waqfs. From 995/1586-87 onwards, he also
administered the endowments supporting Mecca and Medina in the name of the sultan. As
the first darüssaade ağası to act in this capacity, Mehmed Agha commemorated the
concentration of the waqfs in his hands by an inscription on the gate of the domed vestibule
that linked the harem with the second court of the Topkapı Palace. It was at this gate that
the agha was holding audiences every week concerning the administration of the royal
foundations. The inscription conveys that the “Audience Gate” was rebuilt upon Mehmed
Agha’s suggestion in a more impressive fashion in 996/1587-88.36
While Mehmed Agha in this manner reminded later generations of black eunuchs of
his pivotal role, he also made sure that future chief black eunuchs were to perpetuate his
memory. In an arrangement reminiscent of Hüseyin Agha’s assignment of later aghas of
the babüssaade as the overseers of his foundation, Mehmed Agha saw to it that his
endowments should benefit not only his manumitted slaves and their children, but also
future chief black eunuchs, who, according to his stipulation, were to oversee his waqf.37
35 Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 362-63.
36 Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power, 174.
37 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 499.
104
As he thus set himself as the illustrious “ancestor” of chief black eunuchs, Mehmed Agha
became instrumental in the shaping of a group identity among the holders of this office.
The agha’s significance was indeed acknowledged by the eighteenth-century biographical
compendium Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, which begins its series of chief harem eunuch
biographies with that of Mehmed Agha.38
As a patron of architecture, Mehmed Agha’s output also suggests to some extent a
discontinuity with earlier patterns of eunuch patronage. Yet, the bold standards that he set
forth as the founder of a new tradition failed to be emulated by later chief black eunuchs,
who avoided echoing the vizierial aspirations of his mosque complex in their undertakings.
Arguably, in spite of his uniqueness, the legacy he left as the first chief black eunuch had a
lasting impact on the generations of eunuchs to come, and his patronage became a criterion
against which the works of his successors were to be measured.
38 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 45.
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CHAPTER V
BUILDIG AFTER MEHMED AGHA:
COURT EUUCH PATROS I THE SEVETEETH CETURY
One indication that the scope and scale of a patron’s architectural works is not
always necessarily proportionate to the power s/he wields may be the buildings
commissioned by Ottoman chief black eunuchs during the long seventeenth century. In
contrast to their increased recognition as notable actors in court politics, the works
commissioned by the later chief black eunuchs never reached the monumentality of Habesî
Mehmed Agha’s Friday mosque in Çarsamba; likewise, apart from el-Hajj Beshir Agha in
the eighteenth century, none of the later eunuchs created as many structures as he did.
Moreover, in contrast to what may be expected, in terms of the frequency and scale of the
architectural projects commissioned by court eunuchs, the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries did not display any striking difference from the periods prior to 1574/5. Even
though the chief black eunuchs emerged as major patrons of architecture among court
eunuchs, most of these aghas did not build any structures at all in Istanbul. As in the earlier
periods dominated by white eunuchs, in this period too, architectural patronage was the
privilege of a select few who seem to have been authorized by their seniority or royal favor.
In an effort to understand the dynamics underlying the sporadic building activity in this
106
period, this chapter explores the subsequent development of court eunuch patronage after
Mehmed Agha’s ambitious and challenging undertakings. The focus of this chapter is on
the period from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, between the tenures of
Mehmed Agha and el-Hajj Beshir Agha, the two most prominent chief black eunuchs.
After Mehmed Agha’s death in 999/1590, an immediate turn of tide in the fortune
of court eunuchs denied his successors any chance to emulate his extravagant architectural
patronage. Mehmed Agha was succeeded by Server Agha (or Sünbül Agha1), the agha of
the Old Palace. As related by Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, due to his discordance with the
subordinate harem eunuchs, Server Agha was dismissed in 1000/1592, only nineteen
months after his appointment, before he had any opportunity to add a monument of his own
to the capital’s cityscape.2 The Bosnian saray ağası el-Hajj Mustafa Agha was appointed in
his place and ordered to enforce his authority over the unruly black eunuchs of the harem.3
1 Sünbül, meaning “hyacinth,” was a derogatory appellation implying eunuchism; see Baki Tezcan,
“Dispelling the Darkness: The politics of ‘race’ in the early seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire in the light
of the life and work of Mullah Ali,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 13 (2007): 82-85. According to
the “Dârüssaâde Ağaları Defteri,” a register of the chief black eunuchs dated 1898 (the original is in the Türk
Tarih Kurumu Library manuscript collection), published in Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 163-
75, Server Agha and Sünbül Agha were two different people who occupied the post between Rebîü’i-âhir
999/January-February 1591 and 1000/1591-92 and between 1000/1591-92 and 1001/1592-93 respectively. It
is also mentioned that Server Agha was buried in Egypt and Sünbül Agha in the Divan Yolu; ibid., 164.
2 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, ed. Ahmet Nezihî Turan (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2000), 45-46.
According to this source, Server Agha’s relations with his fellow harem eunuchs bordered on hostility as he
tried to curb their communication with outsiders. The term kapu gılmânı must be referring to the eunuch
guardians of the harem and not, as Karakoç assumes, to the white eunuchs of the Gate of Good Fortune, who
were not under his authority; see Yıldız Karakoç, Palace Politics and the Rise of the Chief Black Eunuch in
the Ottoman Empire, unpublished MA thesis (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University, 2005), 41.
3 Dârüssa‘âde Ağalığı Sarây-ı Âmiresi Ağası Hacı Mustafa Ağa’ya fermân olunup, kara-ağalara ak-ağa zecr
u kahr ile hâkim olmak buyruldı; Selânikî Mustafa Efendi, Tarih-i Selânikî, ed. Mehmet Đpsirli (Istanbul:
Đstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1989), vol. 1, 281.
107
Thus, around seventeen years after the establishment of the chief black eunuch’s office,
there seemed to be a reversal to the pre-1574/5 state of affairs and restoration of the white
eunuchs’ domination over the African eunuchs.
On the other hand, although he was a white eunuch, el-Hajj Mustafa Agha had
previously worked in Yemen, at the court of the Ottoman governor, which might account
for his selection to the harem service among African eunuchs. After he retired as an ailing
man with a generous allowance in 1004/1596, he was sent to Egypt just like an African
eunuch.4 While Mustafa Agha does not seem to have built anything as darüssaade ağası,
earlier in his career he possibly commissioned the Mustafa Ağa Medresesi and a fountain
in Eminönü, in a location very close to the outer walls of the Topkapı Palace (see Map 1).
These structures were constructed in 999/1590-91 by the chief treasurer (serhâzîn) Mustafa
Agha who later became saray ağası, a post that el-Hajj Mustafa Agha occupied before
becoming the chief harem eunuch.5 The inscription of the fountain stated that the chief
treasurer lavished a “treasure” in order to build it.6
The first chief harem eunuch appointed after Mehmed III’s accession in 1595 was
Osman Agha, an African eunuch servant of Safiye Sultan, who was now the valide.7 His
4 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 46.
5 Đ. H. Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1943), 46-48. Before it was torn down
in 1938, the medrese had the capacity for at least nineteen students; see M. S. Kütükoğlu, “1869’da Faal
Đstanbul Medreseleri,” Đ. Ü. Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 7-8 (1977): 294 and 345.
6 Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, ed. Fahri Ç. Derin and Vâhid Çabuk (Istanbul: Đstanbul
Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1985), 282; Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 1, 46. Ayvansarâyî
refers to him as babüssaade rather than darüssaade.
7 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 46.
108
appointment, thus, signaled and contributed to the increasing influence of the sultan’s
mother at the court. While Osman Agha seems to have continued his two predecessors’
abstinence from building in Istanbul, we encounter his name in the passages in Selânikî’s
chronicle that pertain to the construction of the Yeni Valide Mosque (Yeni Cami) in
Eminönü, the great architectural initiative of Safiye Sultan. Osman Agha’s involvement in
the project seemed to have been mainly through his steward kapıcı Kara Mehmed Agha,
who was appointed as the building supervisor (bina emini).8
In 1006/1598, early during the mosque’s preparation phase, Osman Agha became
the superintendent of the royal waqfs of Mehmed II, Bayezid II, Selim I, and Süleyman I.9
This was the second breakthrough after that of Mehmed Agha that raised the office of chief
black eunuch to extraordinary prominence in the empire’s financial matters. Probably, it
was made possible thanks to Safiye Sultan, who was noticeably influential in appointments
and promotions during the reign of her son and who presumably aimed to extend her grip
on these resources.10 Eventually, however, the Safiye Sultan-Osman Agha duo ran into
serious difficulties in the mosque project and the chief black eunuch’s steward Kara
Mehmed Agha was dismissed from his supervising duty upon his failures in the
expropriation process.11
8 Selânikî, Tarih, vol. 2, 723.
9 Ibid., 740. This was much lamented by Selânikî, who claims that the waqfs were neglected by their new
overseers who received the jobs through bribery; ibid., 740-42.
10 Karakoç, Rise of the Chief Black Eunuch, 44-45.
11 Selânikî, Tarih, vol. 2, 849-51.
109
While Osman Agha was instrumental in Safiye Sultan’s realization of her patronage
aspirations as a palace woman confined in the harem, he also had a posthumous
contribution when she appropriated his mosque project in Cairo. Apparently the only
architectural work that Osman Agha attempted to construct as a patron in his own right, the
mosque is said to have caused legal problems for a slave patron whose properties had to be
returned to his owner after his death. Therefore, after the agha’s execution following a
cavalry uprising in 1603, it became the property of Safiye Sultan, who transformed it into
the “Mosque of Malika Safiyya” by 1610 (Figs. 41 and 42), after the failure of the Yeni
Cami project to reach completion.12 While legal issues never seemed to have been a
problem for other projects by Ottoman court eunuchs, the story of this mosque illustrates
how the patronage of women and eunuchs could be intertwined.
The lack of a building in Istanbul that is attributed to the chief harem eunuch’s
patronage is all the more conspicuous when we consider that in this period new types of
lesser-ranking court eunuchs emerged as architectural patrons. One of these was Dilsiz
Süleyman Agha, a white eunuch affiliated with Safiye Sultan. Like the court dwarf
Mehmed Agha, who built a fountain in Kumkapı in 999/1590-91,13 the court mute
Süleyman Agha was one of the courtly patrons who gained visibility during the reign of
Murad III. The first product of his patronage was a fountain built in 995/1586-87 in
12 Doris, Behrens-Abouseif, Islamic Architecture in Cairo: An Introduction (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), 162.
13 Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 1, 46. Dwarf Mehmed Agha might also have been a eunuch.
110
Nisanca, Eyüp, near the mosque of saray ağası Davud Agha, an earlier white eunuch.14 In
1001/1592-93, he built another one in Etyemez, the enigmatic inscription of which stated
that “the mute named Süleyman Agha, being ashamed of his creation … built this
fountain.”15 Yet, the agha saved his most ambitious project for Djakovica (Yakova or
Yakoviçse) in Serbia, which is said to have been his hometown. In 1594, he constructed
there a mosque, which came to be known as the Hadum Mosque (the Eunuch’s Mosque), a
library, and an elementary school. Like other mosques by eunuch patrons built in provincial
towns, this mosque is also a domed square. It has a cut-stone minaret and a three-bay
portico with a dome over the middle bay. The library also has a dome.16
Yet another representative of new types of eunuch patrons that emerged in the late
sixteenth century was the chief agha of the Galata Palace Hüseyin Agha, who built the Ağa
Camii on Đstiklâl Caddesi in 1005/1596-97.17 Like the Edirne and the Ibrahim Pasha
Palaces, the Galata Palace was also assigned the function of training pages for the Topkapı
Palace and its chief agha would normally be a white eunuch.18 As the first among the
Galata aghas to become an architectural patron, Hüseyin Agha built his small single-domed
14 Ibid., 36. See Chapter III for Davud Agha’s mosque.
15 Süleyman Ağa nam dilsiz kim utanıb hulkundan / Revâdır imtizâc itse eğer ki âbıla âtes / Binâ itdikde bu
‘aynı Fedâî didi târîhin / “Zülâl-i selsebîl ü âb-ı pâk u çesme-i dilkes”; ibid. 48. The composer of inscription
is probably playing with the word dilsiz, “mute” (literally “tongue-less”), as he points out the paradox that a
“tongue-less” person built a fountain.
16 See Said Zulficar, “Mosques in the Balkans,” Cairo Times, 2001; and Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, Avrupa’da
Osmanlı Mimarî Eserleri: Yugoslavya, vol. 3, eds. Gürbüz Ertürk and Aydın Yüksel (Istanbul: Đstanbul Fetih
Derneği, 1981), 313-14. Ayverdi provides a plan of this mosque and writes that its builder is unknown, as
there is no inscription on the mosque.
17 The chronogram is noted in Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 333; see ibid., fn. 2546 for the date.
18 See Đ. Hakkı Uzunçarsılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teskilâtı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1945), 302-06.
111
cut-stone mosque not far from his workplace.19 We learn from Ayvansarâyî that, later in his
career, Hüseyin Agha became seyhülharem, i.e., the head of the eunuchs guarding the
Prophet’s tomb in Medina, and died in that city.20 This piece of information is given in the
entry on a neighborhood mosque built in Tophane by the agha’s secretary Kâtib Mustafa
Efendi near a fountain commissioned by Hüseyin Agha. Perhaps as a token of his
proximity to court eunuchs, this kâtib also constructed an elementary school opposite the
Firuz Ağa Camii in Beyoğlu—as we have seen above, this mosque was commissioned by a
saray ağası Firuz Agha at an unknown date.21 It is, thus, significant that Ayvansarâyî
makes note of such dialogues between patronages of eunuchs and their associates,
revealing a particular way in which these buildings were given meaning by their spectators.
In addition to these lesser-ranking white eunuch patrons of the late sixteenth
century, the lack of a construction by Mehmed Agha’s earliest successors in Istanbul needs
to be considered in comparison with the contemporary works of the famous kapı ağası
Gazanfer Agha as well. While his most important work was the medrese complex next to
the Valens Aqueduct, Gazanfer Agha, as noted in Chapter III, is credited for the completion
of the Soğukkuyu Medresesi commissioned by Cafer Agha, an earlier kapı ağası who is
probably erroneously identified as the former’s brother. Gazanfer Agha and his real brother
Cafer, on the other hand, are associated with the best-known case of voluntary castration in
19 Tarkan Okçuoğlu, “Ağa Camii,” DBĐA 1: 91; and Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 333, fn. 2546.
20 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 333 and 391. This later post brings to mind the possibility that the agha might have
been African.
21 Ibid., 391. The Firuz Agha Mosque in Beyoğlu is mentioned in Chapter II.
112
the Ottoman Empire. As related by the agha’s protégé Mustafa Âlî in his Künhü’l-aḫbār,
the two brothers were castrated at their own will in order to maintain their proximity to
Selim II after his accession to the throne. While Cafer died as a result of the operation,
Gazanfer survived to serve the royal house for many years, throughout the reigns of Selim
II, Murad III and Mehmed III.22 However, contrary evidence from the Venetian state
archives suggests that Gazanfer Agha not only had his brother serving as the head of the
Privy Chamber under his authority from 1577 to 1582, but also reunited with his mother
and sister, whom he introduced to the imperial harem. Particularly his sister Beatrice, who
converted to Islam, served as a link between the Venetians and the imperial court, while
Gazanfer Agha also made use of her marriage to create new alliances for himself.23
Therefore, Mustafa Âlî’s story may have been invented in order to disguise Gazanfer
Agha’s family connections extending to Europe and to convey the image of a loyal eunuch
who suffered the loss of not only his sexuality but also his brother in his quest to be closer
to the sultan.
Although he served as kapı ağası over the last three decades of the sixteenth century
and as the agha of the Privy Chamber after 1582,24 Gazanfer Agha built his major work, the
medrese complex, in a much later part of his career, during the reign of Mehmed III, when,
affiliated with the faction of Safiye Sultan, he achieved significant power. His relationship
22 Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 12.
23 Maria Pia Pedani, “Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy,” Turcica 32 (2000): 14 and 25-27.
24 Ibid., 14.
113
with the chief black eunuch Osman Agha, from whom he differed greatly as a patron, must
have been determined to a great extent by their common alliance with the valide sultan. In
fact, they shared a common fate when the power they enjoyed apparently in harmony with
each other came to an abrupt end when both were decapitated in 1603 in compliance with
the demands of the rebellious cavalry.25
Gazanfer Agha’s elaborate complex abutting the Valens Aqueduct comprises a
medrese, a sebil, the founder’s mausoleum (türbe), and a small graveyard (hazîre) (Fig. 43,
see Map 2).26 Probably completed by 1596,27 the complex is often attributed to Davud, the
chief imperial architect between 1588 and 1598, although this is not verified by any data
other than the evident mastery in its construction.28 Indeed, with its elegant design, ashlar
25 Emine Fetvacı, Viziers to Eunuchs: Transitions in Ottoman Manuscript Patronage, 1566-1617, PhD
dissertation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, History of Art and Architecture Department, 2005), 338-
39. In the biography of Osman Agha, the author of the Hamîletü’l-Küberâ uses an imagery of energetic race
horses to illustrate the two aghas’ power in their heyday: bir müddet kapu ağası Gazanfer Ağa ile feresân-ı
rihân gibi meydân-ı kâmrânîde mezîd ferr u hasmetle cünbüs ü cevelân üzereler iken; Ahmed Resmî Efendi,
Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 46-47.
26 The complex is located to the north of the Valens Aqueduct, on Atatürk Boulevard in the Fatih district of
Istanbul. The structure was given a new function as a museum hall from 1945 onwards. In that year, after a
controversial restoration, the structure began to be used as the new place of the Municipality Museum
(Belediye Müzesi), which operated there until 1988. During this period, many objects representing daily life in
Ottoman Istanbul as well as various works of art were displayed in the medrese halls. The complex currently
houses the Museum of Caricature and Humor (Karikatür ve Mizah Müzesi), which re-opened there in the late
1980s to offer a survey of the history of caricature in Turkey. For the afterlife of the Gazanfer Agha medrese
as a museum, see Yasar Çoruhlu, “Sehir Müzesi,” DBĐA 7: 143; and idem., “Türk Karikatür ve Mizah
Müzesi,” DBĐA 7: 314.
27 This is the date of the vakfiye; Necipoğlu, Sinan, 509.
28 Godfrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1971), 338. Judging
by the structure’s “soft and fluent” style as well as the fact that it is not cited among Sinan’s works, Ekrem
Hakkı Ayverdi is assured that the architect was Davud; E. H. Ayverdi, “Gazanfer Ağa Manzûmesi,” Đstanbul
Enstitüsü Mecmuası 3 (1957): 86.
114
masonry, and central location, the Gazanfer Agha Medrese Complex constitutes one of the
masterpieces among the entire architectural record of Ottoman court eunuchs.
Gazanfer Agha received imperial authorization to build his medrese complex in
1593, after a waiting period of two years. At the agha’s request, the permission was given
for this particular plot adjoining the aqueduct, where a church standing in the middle of a
Muslim neighborhood had recently been torn down. Thus, the construction of the medrese
served to accentuate the Islamic character of the area—a consideration which possibly gave
further legitimacy to the undertaking.29
As one of the earliest examples of the funerary medrese complexes built around the
Divan Yolu axis from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, the complex of
Gazanfer Agha recalls that of the grand vizier Koca Sinan Pasha, also dating from the
1590s, by virtue of its compactness as well as the form of its projecting sebil.30 Compared
to its vizierial counterpart, the agha’s medrese, overshadowed by the towering aqueduct, is
more peripheral to the Divan Yolu. Still, the agha’s domed mausoleum seems to echo the
vizier’s türbe in dominating an educational institution and a sebil packed in a tiny precinct.
Both complexes, as Goodwin notes, can be construed as part of a larger “trend towards
reducing the emphasis on the mosque in the capital, where there were now so many, and
29 Necipoğlu, Sinan, 508-9.
30 Goodwin, Architecture, 338; Maurice Cerasi, The Istanbul Divanyolu: A Case Study in Ottoman Urbanity
and Architecture (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag in Kommission, 2004), 59-60; Necipoğlu, Sinan, 508.
115
instead supplying educational centres and waterworks alongside the tomb of the potentate
who endowed the foundation.”31
In the history of Ottoman architecture, the Gazanfer Agha Complex represents an
allusion if not return to the Seljukid medrese-türbe combination, even though it diverges
from the Seljukid tradition because of the tomb’s detachment from the college and the
addition of a sebil.32 As such, the complex—together with its contemporary Sinan Pasha
Complex—constitutes an innovation in Ottoman architectural design. The novelty in the
arrangement of the complex and its refined aesthetics are recognized in the relevant vakfiye
by the reference to its “heart-catching novel design” (tarh-ı cedîd-i dil-firîbi) and
“beautifully arranged right style” (tarz-ı sedîd-i bedi‘ü’t-tertîbi).33 The endowment deed
also includes a couplet praising the high quality stonework on marble.34
In spite of the aesthetic achievements characterizing the complex and the evident
confidence in the introduction of an innovative design, it is noteworthy that there is no
inscription in any part of the complex to celebrate and give credit to the patron and the
architect. The lack of such an inscription is in contrast not only to Habesî Mehmed Agha’s
mosque complex in Çarsamba, where both the patron and the architect Davud are eulogized
in the foundation inscription, but also to the contemporary medrese complex of Sinan
31 Goodwin, Architecture, 351.
32 Ayverdi, “Gazanfer Ağa Manzûmesi,” 86.
33 Ibid., 85. The vakfiye is in Vakıflar Umum Müdürlüğü Arsivi, Kuyud-ı Kadime Đstanbul Sâni Defteri no.
571, 11-12.
34 Ibid.
116
Pasha, where the name of Davud is carved in stone together with that of the patron.35 One
wonders whether this anonymity was intended to exhibit an ethos of modesty and
disinterested service in the advancement of education and the Islamization of the urban
fabric—to display those qualities that may have been considered fit for the perfect eunuch
servant in the sultan’s service. As Fetvacı notes, an ethos of disinterested dedication to
educational, intellectual, and artistic activities was something that apparently characterized
Gazanfer Agha’s patronage of books as well.36
In contrast to his medrese complex, however, the sebil that Gazanfer Agha
constructed in Eyüp did bear an inscription. This sebil was beside the Otakçılar Mosque,
which was originally founded by Fethullah Efendi, son of an otakçı (an official in charge of
tents during a campaign), and rebuilt by Gazanfer Agha after it was ruined.37 What is
interesting is that, amidst the usual eulogy of the patron’s generosity and piety, the sebil’s
inscription praises the kapı ağası as the “pride of the warriors” (fahr-i ehl-i vegâ),38 or “the
pride of those who utter battle-cries.” Needless to say, this emphasis on martialness is
highly unusual for a court eunuch and makes the inscription unique. On the other hand, it
echoes similar expressions in Mustafa Âlî’s Hâlâtü’l-Kahire mine’l-‘âdâti’z-zâhire and
35 Their names are on the inscription of the sebil dated to 1002/1593-4; Necipoğlu, Sinan, 508. Tülay Artan
notes that, beginning with his appointment as chief architect, Davud “did not get to attach his name to the
major projects of the period,” including Cerrah Mehmed Pasha’s complex completed in 1593-4; T. Artan,
“Arts and Architecture,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, Volume 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-
1839, ed. Suraiya N. Faroqhi, 449 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
36 See Fetvacı, Viziers to Eunuchs, 257-96.
37 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 307.
38 Ibid.; and Ayvansarâyî Hüseyin Efendi, Alî Sâtı‘ Efendi, and Süleyman Besîm Efendi, Hadîkatü’l-
Cevâmi‘: Đstanbul Câmileri ve Diğer Dînî-Sivil Mi‘mârî Yapılar (Istanbul: Đsaret Yayınları, 2001), 369.
117
Nâdirî’s Dîvan that praise the prowess of Gazanfer Agha, who accompanied the sultan in
the major battles of the period.39 The use of such wording in reference to a chief white
eunuch brings to mind the possibility that the allocation of the male zone and the female
zone of the palace to the white and the black eunuchs respectively also entailed a gender
differentiation between these two eunuch identities. If they could be supported by
comparable data that related to other court eunuchs, these expressions can shed light on the
gender identities of the castrated officers of the Ottoman court.
Gazanfer Agha is also the builder of the well-known Ayrılık Çesmesi (the Fountain
of Departure) in Kadıköy. The fountain was thus named as it stood at the significant
location where the Sürre-i Hümâyûn and pilgrimage caravans would set out.40 The current
structure, however, dates from the eighteenth century, since it was rebuilt by Ahmed Agha,
39 Hâlâtü’l-Kahire mine’l-‘âdâti’z-zâhire is a book that Mustafa Âlî wrote during his sojourn in Cairo in 1599
and dedicated to his patron Gazanfer Agha. In a dedicatory passage, Mustafa Âlî describes the agha as “the
Ardashīr of our time, the male lion of the assemblies, the breaker of the necks of the treacherous, … the lion
of battle and warfare,” Gelibolulu Mustafa ‘Âlî, Mustafa ‘Ālī’s Description of Cairo of 1599: Text,
Transliteration, Translation, Totes, ed. and trans. Andreas Tietze (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1975), 28. He probably alludes to the fact that the chief white eunuch accompanied Mehmed
III in the Eger campaign as well as in the Battle of Haçova (Mezőkeresztes); see Zeren Tanındı, “Bibliophile
Aghas (Eunuchs) at Topkapı Saray,” Muqarnas 21 (2004): 336. This eulogy of the agha’s martial prowess is
followed by a statement that explains the presentation of the book to Gazanfer Agha with a clear sexual
allusion: “This novel work, a virgin in the veils of chastity, worthy of being praised, should have the veil
lifted from her perfect beauty—thus I found it best—by the hand of that angel-like person who, as his
generosity-promising reputation has it, is the best of all men;” ibid. Also see Numan Külekçi, ed., Ganî-zâde
Tâdirî ve Dîvânından Seçmeler (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1989), 262.
40 Affan Egemen, Đstanbul’un Çesme ve Sebilleri: Resimleri ve Kitabeleri ile 1165 Çesme ve Sebil (Istanbul:
Arıtan Yayınevi, [1993]), 54. Also see Semavi Eyice, “Đstanbul-Sam-Bağdad Yolu Üzerindeki Mimârî Eserler
I: Üsküdar-Bostancıbası Derbendi Güzergâhı,” Tarih Dergisi 9, no. 13 (1958): 81-110.
118
who was the kapı ağası under Mahmud I (Fig. 44). Its inscription pays homage to Gazanfer
Agha and identifies Ahmed Agha as a loyal successor.41
It was during the reign of Ahmed I (1603-17) that for the first time after Habesî
Mehmed Agha, a chief black eunuch built in the capital. El-Hajj Mustafa Agha was clearly
a well-reputed court official; he was appointed to the office as soon as he returned from
pilgrimage and retained his post during the accessions of Mustafa I and Osman II. He not
only had a long tenure that exceeded fourteen years—between 1014/1605 and 1029/1620—
but was also appointed for a second time during the reign of Murad IV and remained in the
office until his death a few months later in 1033/1624.42
In fact, el-Hajj Mustafa Agha’s case suggests that a relatively long length of tenure
may explain why certain eunuchs could become patrons of architecture while others could
not. Information on chief harem eunuchs’ lengths of tenure, which is available from Habesî
Mehmed Agha onwards, reveals that he and Mustafa Agha were among those who served
the longest as darüssaade ağası—for sixteen and more than fifteen years respectively.43
Both aghas became patrons of architecture apparently a few years after their appointment:
Mehmed Agha completed his earliest known work, the Divan Yolu sebil-mekteb, in his
sixth year in the office, while Mustafa Agha’s earliest dated construction was brought to
41 Çesme-i pâki Gazanfer Ağa’nın / Bulıcak dehrin mürûriyle fenâ / Kapu ağası kerim-i hayr-ı halef / Ahd-i
lûtfunda güzel kıldı binâ / Geldi bir hayr ehli tarihin didi / Pâk ihyâ eyledi Ahmed Ağa; Egemen, Çesme ve
Sebiller, 54.
42 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 48-49.
43 Habesî Mehmed Agha served as darüssaade ağası from the beginning of 1575 until the end of 1590.
119
completion in his eighth year as darüssaade ağası.44 This implies that, for many chief black
eunuchs whose term of office did not exceed a couple of years, lack of seniority in the
office was possibly a reason that prevented them from becoming patrons of architecture.
While, as will be seen, length of tenure does not always explain patronage behavior,
building in Istanbul in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century seems to have been a
privilege enjoyed by only those chief harem eunuchs who managed to have a longer and
stronger hold in their position.
Thus, a few years after his promotion and during the period when he was overseeing
the construction of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque,45 el-Hajj Mustafa Agha built his first known
fountain in the “Efrâziyye yokusu” in Fatih in 1022/1613-14.46 In 1225/1616-17, he built a
sebil and a fountain near the Mahmud Pasha Mosque.47 At unknown dates, though
presumably during his first term of office, Mustafa Agha extended his patronage to two
other structures dating from the reign of Mehmed II: he rebuilt the Tekneciler Mosque in
Eminönü and installed minbars both in this mosque and in the Akbıyık Mosque in Ahırkapı
(see Map 1).48 After the deposition of Mustafa I and the accession of Osman II, in which he
44 The Efrâziyye fountain; see below. Osman Agha’s abstinence from building in the capital city could also be
problematized in the light of this information, given that he served as darüssaade ağası almost for a full six
years; Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 46-47, and “Dârüssaâde Ağaları Defteri,” ibid., 164.
45 Ülkü Altındağ, “Dârüssaâde,” TDVĐA 9: 3.
46 Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 380-81.
47 Ey Hâsimî gören dedi târîhini anın / Dil-cû sebîl-i âb-ı hayât ola nûs-i cân 1025 (1616) in Ayvansarâyî,
Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 206 ; and Hâsimî dâ‘î dedi seyreyleyüb tarihini / Hak yoluna çesme zîbâ suyu ‘ayn-ı
selsebîl in Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 1, 64.
48 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 264-65 and 50.
120
played a role,49 the agha was identified in the inscription of another fountain he built in
Hasköy as the darüssaade ağası of “Osman the Just.”50 Again in 1028/1618-19, Mustafa
Agha built a sebil-küttab in Cairo,51 and sometime during the reign of Osman, a mosque in
the town of Lubin (Ljubinje) in Hersek.52 The last piece of his architectural heritage
appears to be the funerary sebil next to the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari in Eyüp, which
was his place of burial.53
In accordance with the shift in the relative positions of the two main eunuch groups
within the power configuration, the first half of the seventeenth century also saw some of
the last major works commissioned by chief white eunuch patrons. One of these was the
Osman Agha Mosque, built by the chief white eunuch Buhûrî Osman Agha in Kadıköy and
completed in 1021/1612-13 apparently after the founder’s death (Fig. 45).54 Located not far
from the fountain built by kapı ağası Mehmed Agha in 912/1506-07, the mosque was
constructed on a plot previously occupied by another mosque that was built by a kadı
during the reign of Mehmed II.55 Covered with a hipped roof and enclosed within a
precinct, the rectangular mosque is reminiscent of the neighborhood mosques constructed
by white eunuchs in earlier periods. Yet, it also displays certain status symbols on its qibla
49 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 48.
50 Egemen, Çesme ve Sebiller, 622.
51 André Raymond, “Les fontaines publiques (sabīl) du Caire à l’époque ottomane (1517-1798) I,” Annales
Islamologiques 15 (1979): 246.
52 Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, “Yugoslavya’da Türk Âbideleri ve Vakıfları,” Vakıflar Dergisi 3 (1956): 184.
53 Egemen, Çesme ve Sebiller, 622 and 625.
54 The foundation inscription reveals that the agha was dead by 1021/1612-13; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 542.
55 Hence the name Kadıköy; see ibid., 543.
121
wall such as a muqarnas-decorated mihrab and Kütahya tiles, which are rarely used in the
buildings of court eunuch patrons.56 Constructed simultaneously as the lofty royal mosque
of Ahmed I at the At Meydanı, the Osman Agha Mosque reinforced the relatively lowly
status of the Asian side of the Bosphorus as an area suitable for the constructions of eunuch
patrons, while at the same time it represented a slight enhancement in the norms of
decorum with its prestigious decorative elements. Its foundation inscription recorded by
Ayvansarâyî emphasizes the late Osman Agha’s status as “the most favored of imperial
slaves” of Ahmed I and states that this “Kaaba-resembling” mosque was constructed by the
sultan’s order.57
Within a decade, Osman Agha’s namesake and successor in the post of babüssaade,
Mısırlı Osman Agha paid homage to him by donating ablution fountains to his mosque in
Kadıköy as well as by building a fountain in its vicinity.58 Built in 1030/1620-21, during
the reign of Osman II (1618-22), the simple classical fountain bears a short inscription that
cites the builder’s epithet “Egyptian” (Mısırlı), differentiating him thus from the other
56 Deniz Çalısır, “Osman Ağa Camii,” DBĐA 6: 159.
57 See a transliteration of the inscription in Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 391, where Ayvansarâyî refers to
the mosque as câmi‘-i kebîr (the great mosque); an English translation is in Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 542.
Osman Agha might also have been the builder of the Karaağac Camii in Sütlüce; ibid., 319.
58 Kolağası Mehmed Râ’if, Mir’ât-ı Đstanbul, I. Cild (Asya Yakası), ed. Günay Kut and Hatice Aynur
(Istanbul: Çelik Gülersoy Vakfı Yayınları, 1996), 50; Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 543. Earlier in his career, in
1012/1603-04, Mısırlı Osman Agha had built another fountain in the kitchen of the Topkapı Palace; Tanısık,
Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 1, 56.
122
Osman Agha (Fig. 46).59 The mosque and the fountain of the two Osman Aghas who held
the office of kapı ağası in the first quarter of the seventeenth century still stand on opposite
sides of the avenue known as Söğütlüçesme Caddesi, in short distance from each other.
When considered together with the early-sixteenth-century kapı ağası Mehmed Agha’s
fountain near the intersection of this avenue with the one running parallel to the shore, the
buildings of eunuch patrons in this area constituted a chain of monuments that expended in
not only a territorial but also a chronological sequence towards inland. The last piece in this
sequence was the fountain built by the chief black eunuch Halid Agha in the late eighteenth
century to the east of the Mısırlı Osman Agha fountain.60 The road on which these
structures were located was a branch of the same web of roads as the Ayrılık Çesmesi that
linked the Asian shore of the Bosphorus to the main route running through Anatolia.61
Seen from a long term perspective, the commissions of the two Osman Aghas on
the Asian side of Istanbul seem to be part of a process whereby white eunuchs shifted the
locus of their patronage out of the more prestigious intra muros part of the city and limited
it to the outer areas. Unlike black eunuchs who continued to build in the historical
peninsula, the very last commissions of white eunuchs intra muros date from the first half
59 See Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 391-92; and Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 543. The inscription on a fountain
that Mısırlı Osman Agha built a year later near the medrese of Mahmud Pasha begins with citing the name of
the sultan Osman II; Egemen, Çesme ve Sebiller, 674.
60 For the Halid Agha fountain, see Mücteba Đlgürel, “Hâlid Ağa Çesmesi,” in Semavi Eyice Armağanı:
Đstanbul Yazıları, 299-306 (Istanbul: Türkiye Turing ve Otomobil Kurumu, 1992). In the twentieth century,
this fountain was removed to a nearby location; ibid., 300.
61 See the map no. 1 attached to Eyice, “Đstanbul-Sam-Bağdad Yolu.”
123
of the seventeenth century. Some of these were minor structures that included Mısırlı
Osman Agha’s fountain in the kitchen of the Topkapı Palace in 1012/1603-04 and the
fountain that he appears to have repaired or rebuilt in the Mahmud Pasha Complex in
Eminönü in 1031/1621-22.62 Another one is the fountain built by the kapı ağası Mehmed
Agha in 1041/1631-32, probably near the Firuz Agha Mosque in the Hippodrome.63 Yet the
last major work by a white eunuch intra muros was a dervish convent commissioned by
Malatyalı Ismail Agha near Hagia Sophia.
The sources provide conflicting information about Malatyalı Ismail Agha, who is
known as the last ak ağa to become chief harem eunuch. Both Ayvansarâyî’s Garden of the
Mosques and Sicill-i Osmânî identify Ismail Agha as a white eunuch who held the offices
of darüssaade and babüssaade simultaneously.64 Yet, he does not appear in the canonical
list of chief harem eunuchs in Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, presumably because he was regarded as
a chief white eunuch rather than an agha of darüssaade. For the seventeenth century, this
source provides an uninterrupted sequence of black eunuch biographies, omitting Ismail
Agha from the narrative. On the other hand, based on archival sources, Ülkü Altındağ dates
62 Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 1, 56 and 58. Dilsiz Ali Agha’s fountain dated to 1029/1619-20 might also
be added to this list, if this mute servant of the imperial palace was a eunuch. The fountain’s location is
unknown, yet it might be intra muros, as Tanısık found its inscription at the “Türk ve Đslam Eserleri Müzesi;”
ibid., 66.
63 According to Tanısık, Mehmed Agha served as kapı ağası during the reign of Ahmed I. Tanısık records
that he died in 1048/1638-39 and was buried in Sultanahmet; ibid., 72.
64 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 10 and 510. Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmânî, ed. Nuri Akbayar, tr. Seyit Ali
Kahraman (Istanbul: Kültür Bakanlığı and Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 1996), vol. 3, 811.
124
Ismail Agha’s tenure as darüssaade ağası to the years 1621-23,65 which corresponds to
Süleyman Agha’s term of office according to Hamîletü’l-Küberâ.66
Ismail Agha is associated with two groups of charitable works in Istanbul. One of
these is a complex in Üsküdar that comprised a mosque, a double bath, a dervish convent,
and a fountain. Ayvansarâyî writes that Ismail Agha built these when he was an agha of the
inner commissary (iç kilar ağası) and dates the completion of the mosque to 1045/1635-
36.67 This information is clearly in conflict with the abovementioned date of his
appointment as chief harem eunuch, which must have been posterior to his tenure at the
commissary. The alternative date 1018/1609-10 offered by the inscription above the
mosque entrance that commemorates the repair or rebuilding in 1902 is more congruous
with Ismail Agha’s appointment date given as 1621.68 This earlier date is also in
accordance with the date 1026/1617 given on the inscription of the fountain that Ismail
65 Ülkü Altındağ, “Dârüssaâde,” TDVĐA 9: 1. The sources that she cites are TSMA, nr. E 1725/1, 7364/77,
and 8395/1.
66 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 49. The “Dârüssaâde Ağaları Defteri” from the late nineteenth
century mentions two Süleyman Aghas in these years; ibid., 165. One of these is clearly the same Süleyman
Agha included in Hamîletü’l-Küberâ; he was appointed in 1029/1620-21 and martyred in 1031/1622-23. The
register adds that he was buried in his mosque in Kumkapı; ibid., 165. Given the fact that no such mosque is
known from that date, I believe that this note is due to a confusion with the sixteenth-century Süleyman Agha
who built a mosque in Kumkapı; see Chapter III. The second Süleyman in the list is identified as an ak ağa
who served between 1031 and 1032. It is added that he was in fact buried under the minaret of his mosque at
“Ağa Hamamı” in Üsküdar, even though his grave is known to be in Malatya. This information makes it clear
that “Ak Ağa Süleyman Ağa” refers to Malatyalı Ismail Agha.
67 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 510. The dervish convent is omitted in Ayvansarâyî’s text, but mentioned in Howard
Crane’s footnote; ibid., fn. 3543. According to Konyalı, the chronogram that Ayvansarâyî cites, in fact, gives
the date as 1040 instead of 1045; Konyalı, Üsküdar Tarihi, vol. I, 83.
68 Konyalı, Üsküdar Tarihi, vol. I, 83.
125
Agha built near the mosque and the bath.69 Thus, having been built at an early date in its
patron’s career, this small mosque complex indicated the kilârî Ismail Agha’s favored
position that ultimately led to his appointment as the chief of all the eunuchs at the imperial
palace. Also, in contrast to Ayvansarâyî’s claim that the agha’s grave is in his hometown
Malatya, he appears to be buried in this mosque’s cemetery, where Konyalı found his
tombstone bearing the date 1050/1640-41.70
The other work by Ismail Agha is a dervish convent that was originally adjacent to
Hagia Sophia (see Map 1). The construction date of this no longer extant tekke is unknown.
According to Ayvansarâyî, it was replaced in 1153/1740-41 by the imaret of the imperial
mosque, and moved to an opposite spot adjoining the outer wall of the Topkapı Palace and
to the west of the entrance to the first court (Bâb-ı Hümâyûn).71 Yet, the two buildings were
institutionally connected to each other, as the sheikh of the Ismail Agha tekke was also the
sheikh of the imaret.72
As the last white eunuch to become darüssaade ağası and to build in the central
part of Istanbul within the city walls, Malatyalı Ismail Agha was an important figure that
marked the closing of the age of prominent white eunuchs. Nevertheless, the fact that his
69 Çesme-i Peygamber oldu geldi bu kavme izzet / Hazretin yüzü suyiçün diledi âb-ı sıhhât
Bin yiğirmi altı oldu târîhi bu çesmenin / Mü’minînden kim içerse ola cânına rahmet 1026 (1617)
Ayvansarayî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 63. The fountain was repaired or rebuilt in the early eighteenth century ;
Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. II, 296.
70 Ibid., and Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 510.
71 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 10 and ibid., fn. 41.
72 Ibid., 10. A certain Ismail Efendi built a fountain adjacent to the convent in 1216/1801-02; Tanısık,
Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. I, 222.
126
constructions were followed by a relatively unproductive period suggests that chief black
eunuchs were slow in taking over the leadership in patronage from the hands of chief white
eunuchs. The patronage of eunuchs was no doubt adversely affected by the general
slowdown in the architectural commissions by elite patrons in the mid-seventeenth
century.73 Thus, from the 1620s until the constructions of Abbas Agha in the 1660s, the
only commission by a black eunuch in the capital city was the mosque built by the
darüssaade ağası Çuçu (or Çaçu) Ibrahim Agha in Üsküdar.
It is also important to note that length of tenure, which seems to be a significant
factor that determined patronage behavior in the earlier part of that century, fails to account
for the chief black eunuchs’ commissions or the lack thereof in this period. The cases of
Idris and Ibrahim Aghas in particular constitute counterevidence against the assumption
that architectural patronage was related to length of tenure. In spite of his lengthy service
for fifteen years and a half from July/August 1624 to January/February 1640 (Sevval 1033-
Sevval 1049),74 Idris Agha did not commission any socio-religious structures in Istanbul.
His successor Ibrahim Agha, on the other hand, served for only a few months in 1640
(from the Sevval of 1049 to the first months of 1050) and became the builder of the socalled
Harab (Ruined) Mosque in Üsküdar.75 In the absence of information on the earlier
part of Ibrahim Agha’s career, it is also not possible to assume that a lengthy service at the
73 Artan, “Arts and Architecture,” 457-59.
74 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 49.
75 Ibid., 50; and Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 520. According to Ayvansarâyî, Ibrahim Agha was appointed chief
black eunuch in 1048/1638-39 and succeeded by Sünbül Agha two years later.
127
imperial household enabled him to become a patron of architecture. Ibrahim Agha was
succeeded by a series of chief black eunuchs most of whom did not serve more than a
couple of years. While none of the aghas of darüssaade engaged in architectural patronage
in the 1640s and 50s, the only commission by a eunuch patron in this period was the chief
treasurer (and white eunuch) Ali Agha’s fountain built in 1064/1653-54 in Selimiye.76
During the reign of Mehmed IV, the imperial court’s prolonged sojourn in Edirne
did not lead to much building activity in this town, except for palatial constructions.77 This
development, nevertheless, did have an impact on the architectural patronage of court
eunuchs, albeit limited. In 1076/1665-66, the year before he constructed a fountain near the
Sultan Ahmed Mosque,78 the chief black eunuch Muslı Agha rebuilt an existing dervish
convent in Edirne as a Friday mosque. The mosque’s inscription begins by citing the name
of the patron, who is identified as a trustworthy man who “was for a long time Agha of the
Abode of Grandeur of the Sovereign of the Sea and the Land, the gazi king Mehmed.”79
The inscription thus attests to the favor Muslı Agha received from the sultan as a chief
black eunuch who was promoted to this rank from bas kapu oğlanı, a rather low rank for
76 Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. II, 270. Ali Agha was a native of Skopje (Üsküp). Prior to his
appointment as chief white eunuch in 1066/1655-56, he served as miftah gulamı, saray ağası, kilercibası,
hazinedar, and musahib; ibid., 272. His fountain was repaired in 1262/1845-46 by a royal consort; ibid., 270.
77 Artan, “Arts and Architecture,” 460.
78 Egemen, Çesme ve Sebiller, 621-22.
79 Pādisāh-ı bahr u berr gāzī Mehemmed serverin / Tice dem ağa-yı dārü’l-‘izzi oldu ol emīn; F. Th.
Dijkema, ed., The Ottoman Historical Monumental Inscriptions in Edirne (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 77. The
chronogram refers to the mosque as the “Friday mosque of Mesud,” naming it after the convent which was
associated with a certain sheikh Mesud who died during the reign of Mehmed II; ibid., 78.
128
this appointment.80 The reference to his long term service, on the other hand, probably
takes into account not only the two or three years that had elapsed after his appointment but
his entire career at the imperial court.81 In addition to leading the chief harem eunuch to
build in Edirne, the sultan’s presence in this town seems to have eventually brought the
agha of the Edirne Palace to significance: one holder of this office, Mustafa Agha built a
fountain in Karagümrük, Istanbul in 1092/1681-82.82
After the death of the much cherished Muslı Agha in 1078/1668, Abbas Agha
became the darüssaade ağası. The new chief black eunuch was previously the chief agha
of the valide sultan Hadice Turhan,83 who had been leading the building efforts of the royal
house with the fortresses she constructed on the Dardanelles as well as the Yeni Valide
mosque complex—the former valide Safiye Sultan’s abandoned project which Turhan
revived and brought to completion.84 The connection between Turhan Sultan and Abbas
Agha seems to have been a crucial factor in determining the agha’s patronage, as the
enhanced position of the valide sultan in this period must have had a positive impact on his
own standing within the power configuration.
80 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 58.
81 Muslı (or Muslu Mustafa) Agha became the chief black eunuch on 11 Zi’l-ka’de 1073/13 June 1663,
according to the “Dârüssaâde Ağaları Defteri” in Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 168. After his
death on 26 Sevvâl 1078/9 April 1668, the agha was buried in Edirne; ibid.
82 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 57. Tanısık records the chronogram verse in Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. I, 90. The
fountain appears as “Çesme-i Zincirli Kuyu” and its date as 1093 in Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 146.
83 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 58.
84 For Hadice Turhan Sultan’s architectural patronage, see Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Ottoman Women
Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006).
129
In fact, Abbas Agha’s best-known work, the Friday mosque which forms the
nucleus of the Abbasağa neighborhood in Besiktas, probably dates from the period when he
was at the service of the valide sultan. According to Ayvansarâyî, the construction was
completed in 1076/1665-66, around two years before the agha’s appointment as
darüssaade ağası.85 The Abbas Agha Mosque’s construction date also coincides with the
completion of the Yeni Valide Mosque.86 Significant as the first mosque ever
commissioned by an agha of the valide sultan, it, therefore, attests to her and her circle’s
boosted prominence at the court. The Kavak Đskelesi Mosque built by the harem treasurer
(hazinedar) Lala Beshir Agha in Üsküdar in 1077/1666-67, only one year later than Abbas
Agha’s mosque,87 could perhaps also be interpreted in the same manner, as part of the
synchronized building efforts of the people of the harem.
Either at this time or after he became the chief black eunuch, Abbas Agha
underlined his closeness to the royal family by adding an imperial tribune (mahfil-i
hümâyûn) to his Friday mosque.88 The rectangular mosque, the current state of which is at
least partly a product of Mahmud II’s rebuilding in 1834-35, must have been otherwise
unpretentious.89 Abbas Agha also expanded his foundation with an elementary school,
85 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 418.
86 Thys-Senocak, Ottoman Women Builders, 202.
87 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 520. The mosque was demolished in 1959; ibid., fn. 3617. Lala Beshir Agha died
around 1080/1669-70, according to Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmânî, vol. 2, 371.
88 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 418.
89 Tarkan Okçuoğlu, “Abbas Ağa Camii,” DBĐA 1: 7.
130
which has not survived, as well as a fountain.90 Added to the ensemble in 1080/1669-70,
i.e., after the agha’s promotion to the darüssaade office, the fountain attached to the high
walls surrounding the mosque bears a lengthy inscription composed in a rather unusual
manner (Fig. 47). Contrary to what would be expected from an inscription commemorating
a high-ranking eunuch, this one omits any mention of the reigning sultan. Instead of the
ruler, Abbas Agha seeks to derive legitimacy for his patronage directly from God, whom he
beseeches in the following manner:
The agha of the Abode of Good Fortune His Excellency Abbas Agha said, “O God!
“Thankfulness is due to Your beneficence, for You have shown [me] munificence.
“My entire endeavor day and night is for gratuitous service for the sake of
God.
“All about me is evident to You; You have the knowledge, the Eternal One!
“For the sake of Your Beloved [the Prophet], ignore my sins and disobediences!
“O God, manifest Your mercy, show Your grace[ful face]!
“I have come to Your abode for supplication, my gratitude is only to You!
“Accept [and appreciate] my charities, great and generous God!”
May there be mercy upon whoever recites the fâtihâ [for Abbas Agha];
May the one who rejoices his soul not be sad even a single moment.
I have composed this chronogram so that thirsty hearts find life:
May it be as if you drank life, drink the pure water of this fountain!91
The direct address of God in the first person singular is quite unusual and adds a
very personal tone to the undertaking. The same inscription also appears on Abbas Agha’s
90 Ibid., and Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 418.
91 Dedi Dârü’s-sa‘âde hazret-i Abbâs Ağa yâ Râb / Çok sükür ihsânına lûtf eyledin cûd u nevâl
Hasbeten-li’llah içindir hep bu sa‘yim rûz u seb / Cümle hâlim sana ma‘lûm sen bilirsin lâ-yezâl
Cürm ü isyânıma bakma ol habîbin hürmeti / Yâ ilâhî rahmetin izhâr edip göster cemâl
El açıp dergâhına geldim sanadır minnetim / Eyle hayrâtımı makbûl yâ kerîm-i Zü’l-celâl
Rahmet olsun cânına her kim okursa fâtihâ / Rûhunu sâd eyleyen hiç olmaya bir dem melâl
Söyledim bu târîhi dil-tesneler bulsun hayât / Tûs-ı cân olsun için bu çesmeden âb-ı zülâl
Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 201-2, with slight changes in orthography.
131
fountain near the mosque of Hayreddin Çavus in Üsküdar, built in the same year.92 The
inscriptions on the agha’s other fountains, however, do not follow suit; the ones on his
fountain near the Arakiyeci Mosque in Üsküdar and his other fountain near the Defterdar
Kapısı, both dated to 1080/1669-70, are of a much more ordinary composition. They too,
however, omit mentioning the sultan’s name.93
Abbas Agha is also the second patron of the Selçuk Hatun Mosque in Fatih,
Istanbul (see Map 2). As the chief eunuch in charge of the imperial harem, he made a
meaningful patronage choice in rebuilding the mosque of an earlier princess of the House
of Osman, Selçuk Hatun, daughter of Mehmed I (Çelebi). He revived the mosque, which
had burnt down, and apparently also raised its status to a Friday mosque by installing a
minbar.94
Although it lasted only around three years and three months from 26 Sevvâl 1078/9
April 1668 to 9 Rebîü’l-evvel 1082/16 July 1671,95 Abbas Agha’s tenure as the chief harem
eunuch proved to be astonishingly productive in terms of his architectural patronage.
According to Ayvansarâyî, he built twelve fountains in Istanbul proper and two in Üsküdar;
92 Đ. Hakkı Konyalı, Âbideleri ve Kitâbeleriyle Üsküdar Tarihi (Istanbul: Türkiye Yesilay Cemiyeti), vol. II,
3. According to Konyalı, the chronogram yields the date 1084, which is written on the fountain in Üsküdar.
93 The one near the Arakiyeci Mosque is reproduced in Arabic letters in ibid., 4, and in a shorter and slightly
different form in Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 62. For the other fountain’s inscription, see ibid., 233-34.
94 Emine Naza, “Selçuk Sultan Camii,” DBĐA 6: 497. The mosque was demolished during the enlargement of
Millet Caddesi in 1956 and rebuilt in 1964; see ibid., 497-98.
95 “Dârüssaâde Ağaları Defteri” in Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 168.
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most of these are no longer extant.96 Likewise, his double bath in Laleli, dated to
1080/1669-70 like his fountains, as well as his single bath, elementary school, and sebil in
Eminönü, all of which are mentioned by Ayvansarâyî, have been destroyed.97 Still, the list
is a very remarkable one, compared to the limited constructions of many other chief black
eunuchs of the seventeenth century, and seems to be very much a product of Abbas Agha’s
efforts to echo Turhan Sultan’s increased visibility through her architectural patronage.
His prolific patronage and career, nevertheless, were cut short by his dismissal and
exile to Egypt in 1082/1671.98 It is noteworthy that after Abbas Agha black eunuchs ceased
to engage in architectural patronage until the beginning of the next century. For instance,
Abbas Agha’s immediate successor Yusuf Agha, who remained in the office for sixteen
years from 1082/1671 to 1098/1687,99 built not in Istanbul but in Cairo. In 1088/1677-78,
in the sixth year of his tenure as darüssaade ağası, Yusuf Agha constructed a sebil-mekteb
in Cairo with the help of his agent Mustafa Agha.100
96 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 418. In addition to the ones cited above, Abbas Agha’s fountains include the one in
Đnadiye, Üsküdar, built in 1080/1669-70; ibid., fn. 3022. The fountain in Sehremini built in 1032/1622-23
attributed to Abbas Agha in ibid., however, probably belongs to another Abbas Agha.
97 The bath in Laleli was destroyed by fire in 1911 and the others in 1909; ibid., fns. 3023 and 3024.
98 In her study of the waqf that Abbas Agha endowed in Egypt, Jane Hathaway asks whether his religious and
mystic affiliations had any role in his dismissal, as these seem to be at odds with the puritanist Kadızadeli
movement on its heyday. Hathaway, “The Wealth and Influence of an Exiled Ottoman Eunuch in Egypt: The
Waqf Inventory of ‘Abbās Agha,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37 (1994): 316.
99 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 58.
100 Raymond, “Les fontaines publiques (sabīl) du Caire,”: 257. Also see idem., “The Sabil of Yusuf Agha Dar
al-Sa‘ada (1088/1677) According to Its Waqf Document,” in The Cairo Heritage: Essays in Honor of Laila
Ali Ibrahim, ed. Doris Behrens-Abouseif, 223-33 (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2000).
133
White eunuchs also built little in the last three decades of the seventeenth century.
Apart from the fountain built by the Edirne saray ağası noted above, the only product of
court eunuch patronage in Istanbul in this period is the large elementary school under the
auspices of the saray ağası Yakub Agha in 1089/1678-9 in a location close to the Atik
Valide Complex in Üsküdar.101 As a sign of the patron’s prestige, the building was
constructed of ashlar masonry and covered by a dome. It was accompanied by an adjoining
fountain on which a seven-couplet long inscription identified the patron and gave the date.
Yakub Agha is known to have become chief white eunuch within the next two years before
his death in 1091/1680-81. His tombstone, which referred to him as kapı ağası, was,
indeed, discovered by Đ. Hakkı Konyalı in the vicinity of the mekteb and the fountain.102
Three decades after Abbas Agha, chief black eunuchs resumed their engagement in
architectural patronage. The role of sultanic favor in determining the patronage of eunuchs
is evident in the case of Solak (Left-Handed) Nezir Agha, who was the darüssaade ağası
between 1112/1700 and 1115/1703. Hamîletü’l-Küberâ emphasizes the good relations he
had maintained with the sultan Mustafa II long before his appointment in the place of his
less successful predecessor Yapraksız Ali Agha.103 In 1114/1702-03, Nezir Agha undertook
the rebuilding of the Mercan Agha Mosque, which had been ruined by fire.104 The
inscription recording this event commemorates the reconstruction after the destructive fire
101 Konyalı, Üsküdar Tarihi, vol. II, 314-16.
102 Ibid., 82-84.
103 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 61 and “Dârüssaâde Ağaları Defteri,” ibid., 169.
104 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 221.
134
and cites the names of Mercan Agha, Nezir Agha, and Mustafa II.105 In the same year,
Nezir Agha also built a fountain in Kasımpasa, near the Đbâdullah Mosque. The
chronogram of this fountain composed by the poet Nedim points out the agha’s enviable
status and prays to God to prevent him from error.106 The Edirne Incident in 1703,
however, ended Nezir Agha’s brilliant career; he was exiled to Limni and then executed.107
The last chief black eunuch who commissioned a building in Istanbul before the
long tenure of el-Hajj Beshir Agha appears to be Uzun Süleyman Agha, who built a
mosque in Besiktas. Previously the chief agha of the valide sultan, Süleyman Agha,
together with el-Hajj Beshir, had served Ahmed III while he was a prince.108 The
inscription of the fountain next to his mosque gives the date of construction as 1116/1704-
05, the same year when the agha became darüssaade ağası. According to Ayvansarâyî,
there used to be a public bath and an elementary school in the vicinity of this small
105 Mefhâr-ı Dârü’s-sa‘âde menbâ‘-ı hayr u kerem / Zübde-i âlem Tezîr Ağa-yı Sultân Mustafa
Emr-i Hakk’la câmî‘-i Mercân Ağa ihrâk olub / Kıldı ol gülsen-sarây-ı dîni bî-berk ü nevâ
Seyr edip itmâmını bu kıble-gâhın Hâfızâ / Eyledim bu beyti ben de on yedi târîh ana
Dâr-ı Hakk vâlâ binâ bu câmî‘-i ehlü’s-salât / Mesken-i erbâb-ı takvâ melce‘-i ehl-i salât 1114 (1702-03)
Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, ed. Fahri Ç. Derin and Vâhid Çabuk (Istanbul: Đ. Ü. Edebiyat
Fakültesi Yayınları, 1985), 360. On ibid., 306, the builder’s name is wrongly given as Mustafa Agha.
106 Cenâb-ı Hazret-i Dârü’s-sa‘âde / Tezîr Ağa ki zâtı resk-i dârâb [sic]
Murâd u maksadı hayr olmağile / Du‘âcısıdır anın seyh ile sâb
Ahâli-i Đbâdullah’a dahi / Mücedded çesme yapıp etti sîrâb
Tedimâ hıfz ede dâ’im hatâdan / Ol ağa-yı celîlü’s-sânı Vehhâb
Dedim târîhini lûtf-i Ahad’la / Đbâdullah’a su rahmetdir iç âb 1114 /1702-03
Ayvansarâyî, Mecmuâ-i Tevârih, 363-64. The last verses are also in Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 2, 40.
107 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 61.
108 Ibid., 62.
135
mosque; these structures, however, are no longer extant.109 In 1124/1712-13, Süleyman
Agha built another fountain in Besiktas, this time near the Senlik Dede Mosque.110
The return of the court to Istanbul appears to have had a positive impact on the
patronage of court eunuchs, as the frequency of their commissions in the capital clearly
increased in the early eighteenth century. Two aghas whose ranks were lower than the
darüssaade ağası made modest contributions to the city’s architecture in this period. Eyüb
Agha, a hazine emini or hazinedar who was to become seyhülharem the following year,
built a fountain in 1118/1706-07 in Hasköy, adjoining the Keçeci Piri Mehmed Agha
Mosque.111 In 1124/1712-13, Nezir Agha, an agha of the Old Palace, revived the Sadrazam
Ali Pasha fountain in Kasımpasa.112 A shift to the northern outskirts of the central Istanbul
is also evident in these early eighteenth-century constructions.
To sum up this survey of the long seventeenth century, the period is characterized
by a decrease in the frequency of constructions in comparison to Habesî Mehmed Agha’s
prolific term of office. This may partly be explained by Mehmed Agha’s singularity as an
extraordinarily favored court officer and an atypical patron of architecture among his
fellow court eunuchs. His successors, on the other hand, seem to have been affected by a
general slowdown in the architectural patronage in the seventeenth century, when financial
problems and military setbacks prevented the continuance of the architectural efflorescence
109 Belgin Demirsar, “Süleyman Ağa Mescidi,” DBĐA 7: 92-93.
110 Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, vol. 2, 48.
111 Ibid., 44-46.
112 Ibid., 17. Nezir Agha was sent to Egypt in 1159/1746-47; ibid., 19.
136
of the sixteenth century. As a result, the general productivity of eunuch patrons seems to
have only slightly increased compared to the period before Habesî Mehmed Agha.
Still, in accordance with what may reasonably be expected, it was in this period that
chief black eunuchs replaced chief white eunuchs as the leading patrons of architecture
among court eunuchs. This development, nevertheless, occurred rather late and only from
Abbas Agha onwards did black eunuchs establish themselves as the prevailing eunuch
builders. In fact, of the thirty-five chief harem eunuchs who served in the period between
Habesî Mehmed Agha’s death and el-Hajj Beshir Agha’s appointment, only eight built in
Istanbul; and two of these were white eunuchs.113 Thus, as in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, only a minority of the highest-ranking eunuchs went beyond being the
intermediaries of royal projects and became patrons of architecture in their own right.
Given this situation, the most prolific eunuch patrons of the period, el-Hajj Mustafa
Agha, Malatyalı Ismail Agha, and Abbas Agha stand out as exceptional cases, rather than
the representative examples of a eunuch community that translated their power to
architectural patronage. Each of these aghas enjoyed royal favor in a special way: Mustafa
Agha by being appointed for a second time after an already long tenure; Ismail Agha by
combining the two highest offices of the eunuch hierarchy; and Abbas Agha probably by
the support of the valide sultan. In general, high rank, lengthy tenure, and close relations
with the royal family seem to be important factors that have an impact on architectural
113 The thirty-four aghas listed in Hamîletü’l-Küberâ plus Malatyalı Ismail Agha are the chief harem eunuchs
who served in this period.
137
patronage; however, none of these singularly guarantees that a given individual is going to
become a patron. The next chapter looks at the last of the extraordinary eunuch patrons,
whose patronage behavior was favorably affected by a combination of all these factors.
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CHAPTER VI
THE LAST OF THE GREAT EUUCH PATROS:
EL-HAJJ BESHIR AGHA
The focus of this chapter is on a single eunuch patron who dominated the first half
of the eighteenth century. El-Hajj Beshir Agha’s lengthy tenure allowed him to construct as
many buildings as several eunuch patrons could have managed to undertake. This chapter
particularly explores the agha’s mosque complex in Cağaloğlu and discusses the public
image that he was trying to build for himself through his patronage, by means of an
evaluation of the inscriptions, locations, and the architectural characteristics of his
buildings as well as an assessment of the patron’s identity and career.
VI.a. Beshir Agha’s Life and Patronage
El-Hajj Beshir Agha not only was the best-known and influential of the chief black
eunuchs in Ottoman history, but he also held this office for the longest period—almost
thirty years—from 1717 to 1746, during the reigns of Ahmed III (1703-30) and Mahmud I
(1730-54). Throughout his long career, his status proved to be remarkably unshakable in
the face of crises, the most catastrophic of which was the Patrona Halil Rebellion in 1730,
which brought about the abdication of Ahmed III and the execution of the grand vizier
139
Damat Ibrahim Pasha, while producing no effective result on the position of the chief black
eunuch. El-Hajj Beshir Agha, who apparently owed his invulnerability all these years to his
outstanding ability in managing court politics, emerged as an even more powerful figure in
the reign of Mahmud I, intervening in decision-making and in appointments to such high
offices as the grand vizierate.1
Born in Abyssinia probably around 1655, Beshir Agha was enslaved and castrated
in his boyhood.2 After serving in a grandee’s household in Egypt,3 Beshir entered the
Ottoman imperial court at an unknown date as a protégé of Yapraksız Ali Agha, the chief
black eunuch from 1694 to 1700. He managed to become a companion (musahib) of the
sultan Mustafa II (r. 1695-1703) apparently by the 1690s and retained this title through the
Edirne Incident in 1703, which caused the abdication of Mustafa II.4 He was appointed
harem treasurer (hazinedar) in 1707;5 however, in 1713 he was ordered to accompany the
chief black eunuch Uzun Süleyman Agha in his exile first to Cyprus and then to Egypt.
After joining the group of exiled Ottoman eunuchs during his sojourn in Cairo, Beshir
1 For the fullest modern bibliography of Beshir Agha, see Jane Hathaway, Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the
Ottoman Imperial Harem (London: Oneworld Publications, 2005). For a short, eighteenth-century
bibliography, see Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, ed. Ahmet Nezihî Turan (Istanbul: Kitabevi,
2000), 63-4.
2 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 17-19.
3 Little is known about his early years in Egypt except for an indication in an Arabic chronicle that he served
in the household of Ismail Bey, the chief financial official in this province. According to Hathaway, this may
partly account for Beshir Agha’s later inclination to favor the Faqari faction in the factional politics of Egypt,
as Ismail Bey was affiliated with the Faqaris; ibid., 25-26.
4 The title musahib, by that time, appears to have been monopolized by harem eunuchs. Beshir Agha
apparently owed the continuation of his office to the support of the valide sultan Gülnush Emetullah, who
was the mother of both Mustafa II and his successor Ahmed III; ibid., 29-35.
5 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 63 gives the date as 1705-06.
140
Agha was appointed chief of the eunuchs who guarded the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad
in Medina, becoming the only person who served in this post before being promoted to
chief black eunuch.6 Having received his epithet “el-Hajj” by doing his pilgrimage either
then or before,7 finally in 1717 he was called back to Istanbul on account of his promotion
as the new chief black eunuch. Being around sixty when he was appointed, Beshir Agha
remained in this office throughout the so-called “Tulip Era” (1718-30)8 and the first sixteen
years of Mahmud I’s reign, until he died on 3 June 1746, when he was around the age of
ninety. He was buried in the cemetery in the Eyüp district of Istanbul, his tomb being
prestigiously placed next to that of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari.9
Beshir Agha appears to have been acknowledged by his contemporaries as a prolific
patron of architecture.10 He started his building projects with the convent (zaviye) he built
during his stay in Medina.11 He also commissioned a sebil-küttab during his exile in
6 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 39-59.
7 Compare ibid., 59 with Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 63. According to Ahmed Resmî Efendi,
Beshir Agha accompanied the sultan’s nursemaid (daye kadın) on her pilgrimage to Mecca in 1704/5, on
account of which he seems to have received the sobriquet “El-Hajj,” which distinguished him from the other
eunuchs by the name of Beshir. Beshir seemed to be a particularly popular name for black eunuchs in this
period: the Sicill-i Osmânî records eleven eunuchs named Beshir in the period between the mid-seventeenth
century and the early nineteenth century, but probably there were more of them; Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i
Osmânî, ed. Nuri Akbayar, tr. Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Kültür Bakanlığı and Türkiye Ekonomik ve
Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 1996), vol. 2, 370-1.
8 One of the sources on his earliest years in this office is the 1720 surname, where he has several depictions
by Levni: Esin Atıl, Levni and the Surname: The Story of An Eighteenth Century Ottoman Festival (Istanbul:
Koçbank, 1999).
9 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 103-6.
10 Ahmed Resmî Efendi, Hamîletü’l-Küberâ, 64; this is also attested to by the references to his countless
pious works in the inscriptions of his mosque complex.
11 Hamza Abd al-Aziz Badr and Daniel Crecelius, “The Awqaf of al-Hajj Bashir Agha in Cairo,” Annales
Islamologiques 27 (1993): 303.
141
Cairo,12 and throughout his career as the chief black eunuch, he built numerous structures
including a hadith college (darülhadis) in Eyüp (see Map 2), a medrese and library in
Medina, a medrese and library in Zistovi (Svishtov), a han (market building) in Izmir,
another han in Damascus, a school in Chios, and at least thirteen fountains in Istanbul and
its suburbs, in addition to the mosque complex he built in Cağaloğlu, Istanbul, during the
last two years of his life.13 The “Beshir Agha mosque” in the second courtyard of the
Topkapı Palace is also attributed to him.14 In 1133/1720-21, he installed a minbar in the
former treasurer Lala Beshir Agha’s mosque in Üsküdar.15
Beshir Agha expended even more zeal on creating rich book collections, which
earned him a reputation as one of the most prominent bibliophiles of his time. In addition to
the various book collections he endowed in Eyüp, Medina, Baghdad, and Svishtov, and
apart from his personal library, one of his major collections was housed by the lavishly
decorated library of his mosque complex.16 Indeed, this room adjoining the prayer hall,
which served both as book depot and reading hall—as Beshir Agha had stipulated in his
12 For his waqfs in Cairo, see ibid., 291-311. This was completed in 1131/1718-19; André Raymond, “Les
fontaines publiques (sabīl) du Caire à l’époque ottomane (1517-1798) I,” Annales Islamologiques 15 (1979):
264. According to one source, the sebil-küttab was together with an elementary school; ibid., 265.
13 Munise Günal, Đstanbul’da Bir XVIII. Yüzyıl Osmanlı Mimarlık Eseri: Besir Ağa Külliyesi, unpublished
MA thesis (Istanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Đslam Tarihi ve Sanatları Anabilim
Dalı, 2003), 8-12 provides a comprehensive—though not exhaustive—list of his endowments.
14 Semavi Eyice, “Besir Ağa Camii.” TDVĐA, vol. 6: 1.
15 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 520.
16 For his book collections, see Đsmail E. Erünsal, Türk Kütüphaneleri Tarihi, vol. 2 (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür
Merkezi Yayınları, 1988), 85-7.
142
endowment deed that the books should not be taken out of the library but used inside17—
contained the richest among Beshir Agha’s library collections, with more than 700 works,
some of which had more than one volume or duplicate copies. As a result of a number of
losses and additions throughout the years, the collection ended up among the 660 works
which have been housed in the Süleymaniye Library since 1918.18
A consideration of his entire pious works suggests that Beshir Agha’s patronage
projects were very much shaped by both his role as the chief black eunuch and the trends of
his time. As a builder of many fountains, which outnumbered all his other works,19 Beshir
Agha participated in the great drive for building fountains in the eighteenth century.20 The
sebil and the two fountains which adorn the outer façade of his mosque complex were a
part of this endeavor. It is also true that especially the reign of Ahmed III was a time when
the enthusiasm at the Ottoman court regarding books was particularly great, and this may
have positively affected Beshir Agha’s interest in founding libraries.21
17 See the endowment deed, 107b-108a, in Günal, Besir Ağa, 100. The endowment deed of el-Hajj Beshir
Agha dated 1158/1745 is found in the same volume with three other vakfiyes pertaining to his works of
charity; the volume is found in the Süleymaniye Library, “Hacı Besir Ağa” Section, no. 682. The endowment
deed exists in another copy in the Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü in Ankara, which, according to Günal, contained
exactly the same information as the Süleymaniye copy; see ibid., 3-4.
18 See ibid., 40-1; Erünsal, Türk Kütüphaneleri, 87; Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 88.
19 He built fountains in the Covered Bazaar, Fındıklı, Kocamustafapasa, Eyüp, Fatih, the vicinity of Hagia
Sophia, Tophane, and Sarıyer; see Đbrahim Hilmi Tanısık, Đstanbul Çesmeleri, (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası,
1943-45), vol. 1: 132, 154, 156, 158, 160, 172, vol. 2: 72, 107-8, 332; Sebnem Akalın, “Hacı Besir Ağa
Çesmesi [Fındıklı],” DBĐA 3: 468; H. Örcün Barısta, “Hacı Besir Ağa Çesmesi [Kapalıçarsı],” DBĐA 3: 468;
idem., “Hacı Besir Ağa Sebili [Kapalıçarsı],” DBĐA 3: 473.
20 Shirine Hamadeh, “Splash and Spectacle: The Obsession with Fountains in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,”
Muqarnas 19 (2002): 123-4.
21 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 86-7.
143
Yet, as Jane Hathaway points out, what seems to have been a crucial agenda
informing his patronage was to promote Hanafism and Sunni values as a necessity of his
role as the chief black eunuch. As the overseer of the imperial foundations that supported
the holy cities of Mecca and Medina (nâzır-ı evkaf-ı haremeyn), as the organizer of the
important imperial rite of sending gifts with annual processions to the Holy Cities of Mecca
and Medina (surre-i hümayun), and as the supervisor of the early education of crown
princes in the imperial palace, the chief black eunuch was performing an essential religious
and educational role in the Ottoman Empire since the late sixteenth century when he rose to
prominence. It should not be a coincidence then that chief black eunuchs displayed such an
interest in creating book collections that centered on theological studies. Being the most
prominent among them, Beshir Agha apparently saw it fit for his role and image to found
libraries, theological colleges, and schools in different parts of the empire in order to
enforce the Ottoman brand of Islam; it was even more significant to do this in provinces
such as Egypt where Hanafism was not the dominant rite.22 In the case of the rich library
located in his mosque complex in the vicinity of the Topkapı Palace, however, Beshir Agha
may have had slightly different concerns. Considering the proximity of the complex to the
imperial court and elite households (as will be explained below), his aim seems to lie in
promoting his position within the ruling class as a major authority who left his mark on the
intellectual formation of the elite, in associating his name with a collection of knowledge
22 Ibid., xiii-xv.
144
on religious matters, and in displaying his wealth by means of this treasure of precious
books.
Just as he seems to have surpassed other eunuchs as a book collector, Beshir Agha
also left many of his eunuch predecessors behind as a patron of architecture. In this respect,
it is worth comparing Beshir Agha’s architectural patronage with that of Habesî Mehmed
Agha, the starter of the tradition of chief black eunuchs and a major patron among eunuchs,
to whom Beshir Agha paid homage by donating the minbar of his Yeniçesme mescid.23 As
noted in Chapter IV, Mehmed Agha’s mosque complex in Çarsamba strikes the viewer not
only with its monumentality but also with its ambitious emulation of the plans of the
contemporary vizierial mosques. The mosque’s smaller scale and less precious building
material moderate this impression. In the case of Beshir Agha’s mosque complex, it is also
possible to speak of the interplay of ambition—which was manifest this time in the novelty
of design, in accordance with the changing architectural discourse24—and a similar
prudence that did not allow him to build structures equally monumental to those of grand
viziers, even though in terms of power and wealth, the chief black eunuch did rival those
people of rank.
Mehmed Agha’s architectural patronage was also marked by a self-confidence that
was apparent in his attempts at transforming urban spaces: Islamizing a non-Muslim
23 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 505; Kolağası Mehmed Râ’if, Mir’ât-ı Đstanbul, I. Cild (Asya Yakası), ed. Günay
Kut and Hatice Aynur (Istanbul: Çelik Gülersoy Vakfı Yayınları, 1996), 136.
24 See Hamadeh, “Ottoman Expressions,” 32-51.
145
neighborhood by means of his mosque complex and founding a town bearing his name in
the Balkans. One suspects that this boldness was pushed back by the discontent among
some segments of the elite regarding the activities and influence of Murad III’s confidants,
and never really repeated. Beshir Agha’s mosque complex, on the other hand, belonging to
a different era, represents a different sort of urban conquest, which is more directly related
to the intra-elite struggles in which he was involved and his grip on the grand viziers. At
the same time, his ambitions to shape the religious affiliations of the elite were manifest in
his allocation of his tekke to the Naqshbandis and in his installation of this brotherhood in
such proximity to the empire’s administrative center.25
VI.b. The El-Hajj Beshir Agha Mosque Complex in Cağaloğlu
A short walk from the Pavilion of Processions (Alay Köskü) of the Topkapı Palace
towards the Cağaloğlu district of Istanbul, right behind the building complex which was
once the Sublime Porte (Bâb-ı Âli), is the mosque complex built in 1744-46 under the
patronage of el-Hajj Beshir Agha (Fig. 48, see Map 1). A structure of modest proportions,
the complex combines classical forms with incipient elements of the “Ottoman baroque” in
its remarkably compact architecture. Giving the impression to have been designed in order
to fit as much as possible into a limited space, the Beshir Agha complex consists of a
mosque, a theological college (medrese), a library, an elementary school (sıbyan mektebi),
25 It was explicitly stated in his endowment deed that the convent should be used by the Naqshbandis; 109a
and 112a, in Günal, Besir Ağa, 101-2.
146
a water dispenser (sebil), and two fountains. All of these are packed into a rectangular
walled precinct separated by a narrow passage from the convent (tekke) which stands
behind and forms part of the complex (Fig. 49). Due to the slope on which the complex was
built, the mosque, the library, and the school rest on a lower storey where the shops that
provided income for the waqf were located.
The economy of space which characterizes this edifice was achieved by means of
some unusual solutions (Fig. 50): the only entrance to the library is located inside the
prayer hall of the mosque; the porticoes of the mosque and the medrese are juxtaposed in
such a way that each can be seen through from the other; the relatively small minaret stands
independent of the mosque, being placed rather oddly at the intersection of the mosque’s
portico (son cemaat yeri) and the medrese, and therefore, narrowing the space in front of
the latter’s entrance (Fig. 52).
Never examined to date from the perspective of eunuch patronage, the mosque
complex of el-Hajj Beshir Agha has received some scholarly attention from architectural
historians, mostly in the form of passing remarks, and is usually evaluated in terms of its
relation to the so-called “Ottoman baroque,” a hybrid architectural style mixing Western
decorative vocabulary with the classical forms of Ottoman architecture.26 The complex as a
whole is often in traditional Ottoman architectural history referred to as one of those
26 For the Ottoman baroque, see Stefanos Yerasimos, Đstanbul: Đmparatorluklar Baskenti, tr. Ela Güntekin
and Aysegül Sönmezay (Istanbul: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı, 2000), 338-47; and Mustafa
Cezar, Osmanlı Baskenti Đstanbul (Istanbul: Erol Kerim Aksoy Kültür, Eğitim, Spor ve Sağlık Vakfı, 2002),
266-74.
147
examples which best represents the transition from the old to the new style of
architecture,27 the latter reaching its peak in the Nuruosmaniye Mosque, completed in 1755,
about ten years after the Beshir Agha complex. Of particular interest for historians of art
and architecture are the sebil, the decorations on the ceiling and walls of the library, and the
oval window which linked the library with the mosque, all of which are identified as
“baroque” elements.28 Particularly the sebil, the most spectacular part of the exterior of the
complex, with its five concave bays that constitute five facets of an octagon, its multifoil
arches and foliated capitals, has been the single most noted structure in the complex (Figs.
53 and 57).29 Among the other novelties of the Beshir Agha complex, which do not
necessarily have to be associated with the baroque, are its “free organization,”30 its
octagonal minaret,31 the extension of the son cemaat yeri with a second portico, the capitals
which divert from the classical form, the placement of the entrance gate at an angle on the
27 See, for example, Godfrey Goodwin, A History of Ottoman Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson,
1971), 377-9.
28 Semavi Eyice, “Besir Ağa Külliyesi,” TDVĐA, vol. 6: 1-3. Eyice notes that probably the mosque’s interior
was also originally covered by a baroque decorative program similar to the one in the library.
29 The sebil is assessed by Godfrey Goodwin as falling only slightly short of the “baroqueness” of the Hacı
Mehmed Emin Ağa sebil built in Dolmabahçe in 1740: Goodwin, Ottoman Architecture, 379. Ayda Arel, on
the other hand, finds it very much in the spirit of the period, the tone of which was set by the Hacı Mehmed
Emin Ağa sebil, though she notes the Beshir Agha sebil’s peculiarity in its sense of movement and in the
contrast between its horizontal and vertical elements: Ayda Arel, Onsekizinci Yüzyıl Đstanbul Mimarisinde
Batılılasma Süreci (Istanbul: Đstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi, 1975), 52-3. Also see Doğan
Kuban, Türk Barok Mimarisi Hakkında Bir Deneme (Istanbul: [Đstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi] Pulhan
Matbaası, 1954), 106.
30 Goodwin, Ottoman Architecture, 379.
31 Semavi Eyice, Đstanbul Minareleri I (Istanbul: Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi, Türk San’atı Tarihi Enstitüsü,
1962) 42.
148
corner and the conical eave covering it.32 Clearly, the complex is characterized to some
extent by a spirit of experimentation, which was allowed—and, indeed, cherished—by the
architectural culture of the eighteenth century.33 As scholarship on Ottoman architectural
history—like Ottoman history in general—is moving more and more away from the
“decline” paradigm, which has long led to the understanding of the increasing
incorporation of western vocabulary in the Ottoman visual repertoire in the eighteenth
century as an indication of subordination to the dominant culture of the West and thus as a
sign of decline, there is a necessity to re-evaluate monuments such as the Beshir Agha
complex in the context of the changing system of hierarchies in the Ottoman Empire, the
reformulation of elite identity, and the search for legitimization.34
Today, the complex is located in the Alemdar quarter of the Eminönü district, at the
corner where the avenue called Hükümet Konağı Caddesi intersects with the Alay Köskü
Caddesi (Fig. 49). Walking down Hükümet Konağı Caddesi, one notices that the Beshir
Agha complex on the right corner is eclipsed by the gigantic vista of Hagia Sophia in the
background; descending from Alay Köskü Caddesi, one has a view of the Imperial Wall
surrounding the Topkapı Palace.
While the location of the complex follows a pattern among eunuch patrons to build
in the vicinity of the palace where they worked, it also had the advantage of proximity to
32 Arel, Batılılasma Süreci, 53.
33 See Shirine Hamadeh, “Ottoman Expressions of Early Modernity and the ‘Inevitable’ Question of
Westernization,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63, no. 1 (2004): 32-51.
34 See ibid., 33-4.
149
vizierial palaces and processional routes. One of the most important monuments in the
vicinity is the Pavilion of Processions (Alay Köskü) (Fig. 51). Being the only building of
the Topkapı Palace that had direct contact with the city, it was a pavilion from where the
sultan used to watch the processions through the avenue below it.35 Also, from the
seventeenth century onwards, the sources begin to speak of the existence of grand-vizierial
palaces in this area, and it became known as the Pasa Kapısı (the Porte of Pasha) after the
residences of pashas.36 Particularly from 1740 onwards the palace opposite the pavilion had
a fixed function as the office of the grand vizier; and despite being burnt and rebuilt many
times, it developed into a complex housing the increasingly more sophisticated Ottoman
bureaucracy and expanding towards Cağaloğlu along the Hükümet Konağı Caddesi.37
Beshir Agha’s endowment deed indicates that he had begun to acquire properties in
this area prior to the construction of the complex. By the time he finished the construction,
he owned six houses located in the vicinity, the revenues of which he assigned to his
mosque complex. Five of these were next to the grand vizier’s palace (sadr-ı âli sarayı),
and two neighbored the residence earmarked for the imam of Beshir Agha’s mosque,38
35 The structure, rebuilt several times after Mehmed II, was given its present shape during the reign of
Mahmud II, probably in 1819-20. After the transferal of the court to the Dolmabahçe Palace, the avenue in
front of it lost its significance as a processional route; Semavi Eyice, “Alay Köskü,” TDVĐA, vol. 2: 349-350.
36 Among the viziers who had their palaces in the vicinity were Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, Halil Pasha (d.
1629), and Kemankes Mustafa Pasha; Uğur Tanyeli, “Bâbıâli: Mimari,” DBĐA 1: 520-1. Haskan and Gülersoy
convincingly argue that the Halil Pasha palace used to stand where the Beshir Agha complex is located today;
Mehmet Nermi Haskan and Çelik Gülersoy, Bâb-ı Âli: Hükümet Kapısı (Istanbul: Çelik Gülersoy Vakfı
Yayınları, 2000), 19-20.
37 Tanyeli, “Bâbıâli: Mimari,” 521-2.
38 The endowment deed, 103b-104b, Günal, Besir Ağa, 98-99.
150
which no longer exists. Therefore, Beshir Agha assigned some importance to his presence
in this area, which was perhaps related to his wish to expand his control over the office of
the grand vizier. At the same time, by situating his mosque complex in such proximity to
the Pavilion of Processions and the Bâb-ı Âli, which represented the sultan and the grand
vizier respectively, he might have wished to claim his position as one of the three most
powerful men in the empire.39
A consideration of the inscriptions of the complex, their location and their content
may provide clues as to the major concerns behind Beshir Agha’s patronage and
management of his public image. Arguably the most significant among the nine
inscriptions of the complex—comprising seven poems and two Qur’anic quotations—are
those placed on the outer façade of the walled precinct, along the Hükümet Konağı Caddesi
(Fig. 48). Here a poetic inscription is displayed on each of the following: the entrance gate,
the two fountains, and the sebil (Figs. 53, 54, and 56). This façade, therefore, epitomizes
two eighteenth-century phenomena: the popularity of poetic epigraphy on exterior walls of
buildings, and the proliferation of fountains and sebils.40 As a public monument
representing its patron’s wealth and status, this façade not only constitutes the public “face”
39 Along the slope that constitutes Hükümet Konağı Caddesi are situated the Department of Revenues of
Istanbul (Đstanbul Defterdarlığı), which is adjacent to the Beshir Agha complex on the north, and also the
Istanbul Governorate and the Police Department of Eminönü, which are on the other side of the road. The
area, thus, retains the administrative and bureaucratic significance it had acquired during the Ottoman period,
beginning with the vizierial palaces that were traditionally located there.
40 For both phenomena, see Hamadeh, “Splash,” 123-48.
151
of the complex but also, positioned to face the vizierial and the imperial palaces, it
presumably reveals the chief black eunuch’s message most explicitly.
To start with, the inscription above the entrance of the courtyard41 begins with
praise of the sultan and then describes Beshir Agha as “the only favorite and truly
appreciated slave” of Mahmud I (yegâne bende-i mergub hassü’l-hass makbûli)—a proud,
but as far as our knowledge of Beshir Agha is concerned, more or less truthful designation.
The agha’s subordinate position under the sultan is emphasized repeatedly in the
inscriptions on the sebil, the mosque, the medrese, and the two fountains. As usual, the
eunuch’s encomium always comes after that of the sultan, thus implying a crucial bond
between the two. The inscription on the fountain next to the sebil42 (Fig. 54) suggests that
Beshir Agha built this structure for the sake of Mahmud I: “He made this pure spring gush
in his heyday / The illustrious Agha [made it] for the sake of that shah of shahs”
(Devletinde itdi bu ‘ayn-ı musaffâyı revân / hazret-i ağa-yı zîsân ol sehinsâh ‘askına). The
one on the sebil,43 on the other hand, draws a parallel between the pious works of the two
patrons and claims that in building this structure Beshir Agha followed Mahmud I’s
example of creating generous foundations (anın de’b-i serîf ü mesleğin der-pîs idüb).
Expressions of a similar nature are found also in the inscriptions on Beshir Agha’s
fountains in various parts of Istanbul. These portray Beshir Agha as a loyal servant who
41 See Günal, Besir Ağa, 28-9.
42 See ibid., 38.
43 See ibid., 36-7; Ömer Faruk Serifoğlu, Su Güzeli: Đstanbul Sebilleri (Istanbul: Đstanbul Büyüksehir
Belediyesi Yayınları, 1995), 64.
152
follows in the footsteps of his master, the sultan, and who is as lavish as the sultan with his
pious works; the inscriptions proclaim Beshir Agha’s aim to “provoke prayers” for the
sultan through his own munificence.44
It is noteworthy that the praise of the sultan occupies a greater place in these
inscriptions than in those found on the structures of earlier chief black eunuchs. In fact, the
ornate praise of the sultan that appears on the most visible inscriptions of the complex may
have been due to some sort of attention to propriety on the part of Beshir Agha, who
perhaps wished to mask his exceeding power in state affairs with a display of loyalty and
subordination.45 Yet, at the same time, the constant appearance of Beshir Agha’s name next
to the sultan’s in these inscriptions publicly acknowledges the agha’s exalted status, which
was clearly more elevated than that of any other eunuch. It is also interesting to note that
this manner of exaltation is markedly different from the content of the inscription employed
by the poet Nedim in his ode to the agha’s waterfront palace at Bahariye in Eyüp. The
inscriptions of the mosque complex contain none of the “the symbolic implications of
universal sovereignty and world dominion” that Shirine Hamadeh has recognized in
44 See Nedim’s poem for a fountain built in 1140/1727-8 in Hatice Aynur and Hakan T. Karateke, III. Ahmed
Devri Đstanbul Çesmeleri: 1703-1730 (Istanbul: Đstanbul Büyüksehir Belediyesi, 1995), 173, footnote 197;
also see two poems by Sâkir for a fountain built in 1141/1728-9 in ibid., 198; and the inscriptions of the
fountains Beshir Agha built in 1142/1729-30, 1145/1732-3, and 1157/1744-5 in Affan Egemen, Đstanbul’un
Çesme ve Sebilleri: Resimleri ve Kitabeleri ile 1165 Çesme ve Sebil (Istanbul: Arıtan Yayınevi, [1993]), 192-
5, and 199.
45 The inscription of the tekke, which was rather concealed from the public eye, does not mention Mahmud I
at all.
153
Nedim’s poem.46 The different architectural types and purposes of the mosque complex and
the residence may be part of the explanation.
In addition to the clichéd emphasis on his generosity as a patron, the inscription on
the entrance to the complex also presents Beshir Agha as a “most perfect and wise person”
(zât-ı ekmel ü dânâ). This designation finds an echo in the inscription of the sebil, where
the chief eunuch is described as “knowledgeable and aware” (ârif ü âgâh),47 and in the
description on his now ruined fountain in Fındıklı (1145/1732-3), where Beshir Agha is
described as a wise man (dânâ) who “adorns the highest degrees of cultivation with his
generosity” (o zât-ı mekremet-pîrây-ı vâlâ-kadri ‘irfânın).48 It also resonates with a fuller
depiction of Beshir Agha found in a poem that Nedim wrote for the eunuch’s fountain in
the Covered Bazaar (1140/1727-8): “Rightly guided, capable, and able-minded! A
possessor of dignity! / A cultivator of virtues, a distinguisher of the perfect! Clever and
wise!”49 All these accolades serve to evoke an image of the builder of these works as a wise
and respectable man—a quality which, along with being an “appreciated and worthy
slave,” seems to be a major part of the persona that Beshir Agha was trying to build for
himself.
46 Hamadeh, “Splash,” 125.
47 See the transcription in Günal, Besir Ağa, 36-7.
48 Egemen, Çesme ve Sebiller, 192.
49 Resîd ü kârdân u hûs-merd [this must be hûs-mend] ü sâhib-i temkîn / Fezâ’il-perver ü kâmil-pesend ü ‘âkil
ü dânâ, Aynur and Karateke, III. Ahmed Devri, 173, footnote 197.
154
Proceeding from the sultan/master to the slave/eunuch, and then to the complex
itself, the inscription above the entrance of the complex continues:
The most certain proof of his pure and sincere nature
Is this ornamented work of new design, this distinguished one among the newly
appearing works:
The exalted medrese, the capturing sebil, the new convent,
The illuminated school, and the library—truly matchless indeed!
Nothing similar has ever appeared [before] in the mirror of the world,
As each of them is without a parallel.
In short, it became a peerless, pure work of piety in its place.
May God give its builder uncountable rewards in the afterlife!
Sparing this generous person from calamities,
May He keep him firmly in his high office!50
Thus, in these lines, there is a notable emphasis on the novelty of this complex, which is
congruent with Shirine Hamadeh’s observation that the celebration of novelty was a
prominent leitmotif in the architectural discourse of this century.51 Beshir Agha no doubt
wished to claim among his accomplishments the building of a religious complex with an
innovative design, a complex which—as the phrase nev tertîb suggests—had a novel
arrangement and new decorative elements.52
An important lacuna in this inscription is its conspicuous omission of the mosque in
its list of the components of the complex. This seems strange at first, given the mosque’s
50 O zâtın âyet-i ihlâsına burhân-ı kātı‘dır / Bu nev tertîb-i zîba bu bihîn-i âsâr-ı nev-peydâ
Muallâ medrese dil-cû sebil ü tekyegâh-ı nev / Münevver mekteb ve dârü’l-küttâb bî-bedel hakkâ
Tümû-dar olmamıs emsâli mir’ât-ı cihân içre / Ki esbâh-ı nezâirden mugarrâ herbiri zîrâ
Mahallinde hülâsa hayr-i pâk-ı bî-nazîr oldu / Vire bânisine Feyyâz-ı Mutlak ecr-i lâ yuhsâ
Vikaye eyleyüb âfâtdan zât-ı keremkârın / Müeyyed eyleye sadr-ı ref‘inde anı Mevlâ
A slightly modified version of the transcription in Günal, Besir Ağa, 28-29. Translation mine.
51 Hamadeh, “Ottoman Expressions,” 32-33.
52 Nevertheless, compared to the poems composed later in that century for other buildings, this poem is rather
reticent about the specific features of the complex which were found new and original; see ibid.
155
centrality to the külliye. However, considering the fact that the chronogram gives the date
for the completion of the complex as 1157 (1744/45),53 whereas the chronogram on the
entrance to the mosque (Fig. 55) gives the year 1158 (1745/46),54 it turns out that the
mosque was a later addition to the complex, after the completion of the other structures.
The absence of the mosque in the initial plan also explains the unusual way in which the
mosque, the library, and the medrese were assembled: apparently, the mosque was inserted
into a once more spacious medrese-centered complex as the result of a later decision, and
the construction of the mosque in the largest possible dimensions resulted in the peculiar
arrangement that is seen today.
This information sheds light on the contrast between the spatial limitations in one
half of the rectangular precinct and the spaciousness of the medrese, which occupies almost
all the remaining area. This medrese, the spaciousness and size of which are indeed
acknowledged in its inscription,55 was built on a plot which initially belonged to the waqf
of the Holy Cities. This fact most certainly facilitated Beshir Agha’s access to it. Archival
53 Günal, Besir Ağa, 29: Bu dârü’l-ilm-i bâlâ tarhı lillâh eyleyüb bünyâd / Hele bu bâbda ihyâ-i ‘ulûm itdi
Besir Ağa. All the other chronograms in different parts of the complex, except for that of the mosque, give the
date 1157.
54 Ibid., 24: Eser bir câmiü’l-envâr yapdırdı Besir Ağa.
55 Burûc-ı çarh ile yeksân semân hücreleri / Zevi’l-maârif-i ilm-i hisâb kavlince / Müferrih oldu hele hey’et-i
dil-ârâsı / Mühendisân-ı hazâkat-menât kavlince; ibid., 33.
156
records reveal that he wished to exchange this plot with a house he owned in Üsküdar; for
this he was given permission in October 1745.56
While Beshir Agha’s intention to commission a medrese-centered complex in the
beginning was to “bring the sciences to life” (ihyâ-i ‘ulûm) by “constructing this abode of
science made of a lofty design” (bu dârü’l-ilm-i bâlâ tarhı lillâh eyleyüb bünyâd), his
decision to build a mosque inside the complex related to his desire to restore a previous
building—probably a mosque—which had existed on the site but fallen into disrepair. The
patron’s intention is suggested by the statement in the original foundation inscription of the
mosque that Beshir Agha “brought to life anew this pure place of worship.”57 One may
56 The document dated 17-26 October 1745, in Ahmet Tabakoğlu, Salih Aynural, Ahmet Kal’a, Đsmail Kara,
and Eyüp Sabri Kal’a, Đstanbul Ahkâm Defterleri: Đstanbul Vakıf Tarihi I (1742-1764), Đstanbul Külliyatı V
(Istanbul: Đstanbul Büyüksehir Belediyesi Kültür A.S., 1998), 66-7. It does not mention the mosque.
57 Yeniden bu ibādetgāh-ı pāki eyledi ihyā; Hâfız Hüseyin Ayvansarâyî, The Garden of the Mosques: Hafiz
Hüseyin al-Ayvansarayî’s Guide to the Muslim Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul, ed. and tr. Howard Crane
(Leiden: Brill, 2000), 55. This sentence is not seen anymore in the inscription, because in the first half of the
nineteenth century, when Mahmud II was making renovations in the building, he also had this inscription rewritten.
Five lines of it were cut—even a sentence was cut in the middle—and five new lines acknowledging
Mahmud II as the renovator of the complex, were inserted into the poem:
Muvaffak oldu Hân Mahmud-ı Sânî simdi tecdîde / O sâhın vasfına Hıfzî bu târihi dimis gûyâ
Değildir bu tesâdüf mahz-ı tevfîk u kerâmetdir / Çırağ-ı nâmdâsın kıldı kendi abdi-ves ihyâ
Besir Ağa’nın Allah eyledikçe rahmetin müzdâd
(A modified version of the transcription in Günal, Besir Ağa, 24). The omitted lines included the reference to
an earlier structure which stood on the site of the mosque, as explained above. Apart from omitting this
information, the new inscription acknowledges Mahmud II, instead of Beshir Agha, as the restorer of the
mosque, thus replacing the information regarding one act of restoration (i.e., Beshir Agha’s rebuilding of this
place of worship) with the information regarding another (i.e., Mahmud II’s renovation of the mosque),
though, for sure, these acts were not identical in nature or scope. The inserted verses also refer in a puzzling
manner to a certain miraculous coincidence and to somebody’s namesake, which might suggest that a
namesake of Beshir Agha, who was a contemporary of Mahmud II, was somehow involved in this nineteenthcentury
renovation. In this way, the work of el-Hajj Beshir Agha under the authority of Mahmud I might have
been restored by another Beshir Agha under the authority of Mahmud II, producing thus a miraculous
coincidence of namesakes. There indeed was a Küçük (“Small” or “Young”) Beshir Agha at the court of
Mahmud II (Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmânî, vol. 2, 371); nevertheless, the meaning of the poem is very
157
conjecture that Beshir Agha perhaps had whatever remained of the previous building
removed before he had his medrese, library, and sebil built on the site, but then came to be
convinced that it would be appropriate to erect a new mosque in its place. Whatever the
case, Beshir Agha’s building project clearly involved some rebuilding on the site, as it is
indicated not only by the mosque’s chronogram but also by the chronogram on the fountain
next to the entrance gate, which suggests that the fountain was an older one repaired by
Beshir: “While this fountain was in ruins just like the lover’s heart / By repairing it, he
made every thirsty lip rejoice.”58
This classical-style fountain (Fig. 56) is also significant in terms of Beshir Agha’s
patronage of other black eunuchs, since its thuluth inscription—just like that of the medrese
—was written by Moralı Beshir Agha, the successor of el-Hajj Beshir Agha and a
renowned calligrapher who excelled in thuluth.59 By that time, Moralı had been appointed
by el-Hajj Beshir Agha himself to the post of harem treasurer—an office which implied
future promotion to the rank of chief black eunuch. The elder eunuch was probably led to
do so by the intimacy that his younger namesake had developed with Mahmud I since the
latter’s princehood.60 It is possible that both Beshir Aghas saw some benefit in the
unclear, and this hypothesis is far from being established with certainty given the lack of any other document
that might support it.
58 Dil-i ‘âsık gibi bu çesme harâb olmus iken / Đtdi ta‘mir ile her tesne lebânı sâdân. This is a slightly
modified version of the transcription in Günal, Besir Ağa, 40.
59 The signature on the fountain reads El-Fakîr Besir, and the on the madrasa Ketebehû’l-fakîr ilâ rahmeti
Rabbihi’l-Kadîr / Besir hâzin-i sehriyârî; ibid., 40 and 33 respectively. See Necdet Sakaoğlu, “Besir Ağa,”
DBĐA 2: 174.
60 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 36-37.
158
conflation of patronage of the elder with the younger as we see a second architectural
manifestation of the bond between the two eunuchs in 1750-1, when Moralı had a sebilküttab
built in Cairo directly across from the one built by his predecessor el-Hajj Beshir
Agha.61
Inside the mosque, there are two inscriptions, which were probably placed there in
Beshir Agha’s time. Both of these are quotations from the Qur’an. One of them is in a
cartouche above the entrance to the library and quotes a phrase from sura 98:3: Kale’l-lâhu
Teâlâ: “Fīhā kutubun ḳayyimatun.”62 Taken literally, Fīhā kutubun ḳayyimatun means
“there are books inside it,”63 and therefore, it indicated that there was a library behind the
door. Yet, considered within its Qur’anic context, the phrase also refers to what is inside
the Qur’an, suggesting that “there are ordinances of ever-true soundness and clarity [in it].”
Therefore, the inscription draws a parallel between the contents of the room and the
contents of the Qur’an, and implies that just as the Qur’an encapsulates ordinances of evertrue
soundness and clarity, the mosque encapsulates this valuable core, i.e., the book
collection, which is equated with the essence of the Qur’an. Therefore, it appears that this
phrase is actually a statement underlining the religious value of Beshir Agha’s book
collection, affirming that they are religiously correct books and represent something of the
essence of the Qur’an.
61 Ibid., 100.
62 Günal, Besir Ağa, 42.
63 Hathaway, Beshir Agha, 96.
159
The other inscription inside the mosque, the one above the prayer niche, quotes a
phrase from the sura of the House of ‘Imran, a part of the verse 3:37: Kullimā dahala
‘alayhā Zakariyyā al-mihrāba (“Whenever Zachariah visited her in the sanctuary”). In its
entirety, the verse is about the placement of Maryam in the care of Zachariah, who in each
of his regular visits in a sanctuary—which is what mihrāb means here—finds out that God
has provided the girl with food. This verse is a quite common Qur’anic quotation found in
various Ottoman and non-Ottoman mosques,64 obviously due to its inclusion of the word
mihrāb, which makes the verse appropriate for prayer niche inscriptions. Placed in the
mosque of a eunuch, however, this commonplace quotation, which recalled the grievances
of Zachariah as an ancient man without progeny, might have served to remind the
worshippers of the similar grievances of the childless ninety-year-old eunuch Beshir Agha,
who, just like the Qur’anic figure, was a guardian of secluded women.65
In the light of the discussion so far, it is possible to conclude that the mosque
complex may have represented, above all, the old agha’s claim to an honorable place for
himself—and perhaps also for his symbolic “progeny”: all his protégés including the black
eunuchs whom he patronized—within the ruling elite. This claim was manifested by the
64 For a list of some earlier Ottoman mosques with this quotation, see the index of Necipoğlu, Sinan, 586. It
also appears, for example, around the mihrabs of the mausoleum of al-Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir Faraj in Cairo
(1405) and the Muradiye Mosque in Edirne (1435); see Erica Cruikshank Dodd and Shereen Khairallah, The
Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic Architecture, Vol. 2, (Beirut: American University
of Beirut, 1981), 28. These, however, do not single out this phrase but give it together with the verses that
come before or after.
65 For Zachariah and the verses of this sura which revolve around crises and miracles of reproduction, see
Loren D. Lybarger, “Gender and Prophetic Authority in the Qur’anic story of Maryam: A Literary
Approach,” The Journal of Religion 80, no. 2 (2000): 240-70.
160
symbolic occupation of a plot in the heart of an area traditionally identified with vizierial
palaces. There is an apparent boldness in undertaking a construction which surpassed the
works of many earlier eunuchs in such a politically meaningful site. Beshir Agha’s desire
to use this site as efficiently as possible resulted in the unique arrangement and
compactness of the complex, which, together with its non-commanding position in the
cityscape, gives the impression of modesty to the modern viewer in the midst of the
monumental structures that mark the neighborhood.
Further, the inscriptions of the agha’s architectural works provide several clues
about his self-fashioned image, which also resonate with the cases of other court eunuchs.
The major themes which are relevant for the public image that Beshir Agha was trying to
construct for himself include, in the first place, his subordination to his master, the sultan,
as a loyal and worthy servant, and that his devotion is appreciated by this master. This
aspect of the agha’s image was intended to convey the desired appearance of a modest
person who knew his limits, and to assert, at the same time, Beshir Agha’s privileged
proximity to the sultan. The chief black eunuch also wished to project an image of himself
as a respectable and wise man, and a person who could give appropriate advice.
Additionally, the important place of the medrese and the library in the complex may have
served to convey an image of Beshir Agha as a promoter of education and religious studies
as well as a champion of the Sunna. The favor he showed towards the Naqshbandis also
underlines his orthodoxy. The composite picture that emerges from these various choices
161
that he made as a patron of his mosque complex helped el-Hajj Beshir Agha to establish
and promote his image as a grandee of power and prestige.
162
COCLUSIO
Tracing the history of Ottoman court eunuch patrons from their first architectural
projects in the fifteenth century to the last great eunuch patron el-Hajj Beshir Agha in the
eighteenth, this thesis has provided a general overview over the architectural patronage of this
peculiar elite group in the early modern era. Having its own ups and downs, periods of intense
construction and periods of inactivity, this history differs from the traditional paradigm of
Ottoman architectural history that centers on royal patronage. By not complying with any
simple explanation that neatly connects the patronage of eunuchs to the patronage of sultans,
it forces us to understand it in its own terms, for which the present study provides only
tentative suggestions. At the same time, it calls us to appreciate the diversity both within
Ottoman architectural history and within the history of eunuch patrons.
In this thesis, I suggest to construe the history of Ottoman court eunuchs and of their
patronage on the basis of two broad categories of eunuch identity. One of these, traced back to
the beginning of Ottoman history and possibly related to a Byzantine precedent, had its focus
on the eunuchs working in the male zone of the palace, who had the prospects of entering a
military-administrative career. Dominated by white eunuchs and headed primarily by the kapı
ağası, the vein of patronage associated with this category of eunuchs extends throughout the
early modern era. The second one, which emerged after the annexation of the vast Arab lands,
including the Holy Cities and Egypt, centers on African eunuchs, who were transported to the
Ottoman lands through the age-old slave trade routes extending from sub-Saharan Africa to
Muslim territories. The office of darüssaade ağası, being redefined as chief black eunuch in
the late sixteenth century and linked to the waqfs supporting the Holy Cities, had associations
163
with Egypt, the Hijaz, and quite possibly the earlier Islamic eunuch institution refined by the
Mamluks. The patronage of this category of eunuchs naturally began from the late sixteenth
century onwards. It is, however, important to emphasize that these two eunuch identities that
flourished at the Ottoman court did not differ from one another simply on the basis of race;
they were also differentiated on the basis of their cultural affinity with the rest of the elite,
employment patterns, career prospects, and probably gender identities. Compared to the
eunuchs of African origin, white eunuchs had a less clear ethnic distinction from the Ottoman
ruling elite. Even if they were not recruited as devsirme, it is likely that at least some of them
had the same ethnocultural identity with the palace pages that they trained and monitored.
Until the seventeenth century, white eunuchs enjoyed the possibility of being promoted to
military-administrative posts, which provided them with another common ground with the
devsirme. Their affinity with and proximity to the bulk of the ruling elite arguably ascribed to
the white eunuch identity a relatively more pronounced masculine overtone, which is hinted at
by rare references in written sources.1 The emergence of a distinct black eunuch identity, on
the other hand, took shape within the segregated space of the imperial harem and was
inextricably linked to the concentration and establishment of the royal family within these
quarters. From the late sixteenth century onwards if not from the very beginning, careers of
African eunuchs remained invariably courtly and associated with the female zone of the
palace. Having been radically uprooted from their native lands beyond the Ottoman
boundaries, black eunuchs arguably had less opportunity to maintain contact with their
families, compared to white eunuchs, and therefore, probably conformed more easily with the
image of an ideal slave who had no bond other than that to his master. This set of differences
between the two eunuch groups suggests the existence of at least two distinct identities within
1 See Chapter V, fn. 39.
164
the Ottoman eunuch institution that were distinguished from one another on the basis of a
number of factors including, but not limited to, race.
Proceeding from this view of Ottoman eunuchs, in the present study the patronage
activities of different eunuch groups have been considered in comparison with one another. A
major area of focus has been the white eunuch patrons who dominated the period before
institutional change in the late sixteenth century allowed the chief black eunuch to emerge as
an important figure in court politics. The reign of Bayezid is particularly emphasized as a
prolific period for eunuch patronage. Indeed, the scale and scope of the constructions of such
eunuch patrons as Hüseyin Agha and Firuz Agha in this period in Istanbul, Amasya, and other
provincial centers are quite comparable to those of various chief black eunuchs of the post-
1574/5 era. The period is also worth comparison with the late sixteenth century for the variety
of office-holders within the eunuch hierarchy who participated in patronage activities. This
hitherto poorly studied part of the history of Ottoman court eunuchs, therefore, deserves
further investigation.
The building efforts of court eunuchs during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent,
when there was a second wave of eunuch patronage, seem to have decreased in volume
compared to the age of Bayezid II and begun to concentrate in Istanbul rather than in the
provinces. By the time Habesî Mehmed Agha began his lavish constructions in the late
sixteenth century, the norms that had been established for court eunuch patrons of all sorts
allowed only for humble neighborhood mosques, elementary schools, and fountains. While
Mehmed Agha’s enhanced position in the power configuration marked a new period for court
eunuchs, his extraordinary licence as an architectural patron was echoed by few among them.
The patronage of chief black eunuchs varied greatly in scope in the seventeenth century due to
their different lengths of tenure and personal relations with the royal family. In fact, it was
165
only from the mid-seventeenth century onwards that the number of the architectural works
commissioned by black eunuchs began to surpass those of the white eunuchs, even though the
individual buildings of both groups adhered very much to the same norms of decorum. This
trend culminated in the prolific patronage of el-Hajj Beshir Agha in the eighteenth century. A
closer look into the mosque complex constructed by this prominent darüssaade ağası
suggests that the agha’s relationship with the sultan, his power struggle with other members of
the ruling elite, and his need to fashion a public image of himself as a learned, wise, and loyal
servant of the sultan informed his patronage activities.
The often discontinuous and sporadic nature of eunuchs’ building activity throughout
the early modern period calls for a consideration of the relation of a given individual’s
patronage to his actual place within the power configuration. While the architecture-related
norms of decorum generally had a restricting effect on eunuchs’ building projects, the
extraordinary scope of commissions by patrons such as Habesî Mehmed Agha, Abbas Agha,
and el-Hajj Beshir Agha are indicative of their immensely powerful position among the ruling
elite. Even though these individuals acquired an iconic status in historiography as
representatives of the power of chief black eunuchs at its apex, in terms of architectural output
they stand out as exceptions among their peers. If we assume that political power is the
foremost determinant of patronage, the discrepancy among the patronage activities of eunuchs
of any given rank over time implies that the holders of an office varied greatly in terms of
power and influence. However, as patronage behavior is dependent on a number of other
factors, such as the patron’s personal preferences and the general patronage activities of the
elite at the time, it is hard to regard patronage performance as a sensitive measure of power.
Being a court eunuch, on the other hand, seems to have allowed for a different sort of
patronage as well. The role of eunuchs in the realization of royal projects, such as the Atik
166
Valide, Yeni Cami, and Sultanahmed mosque complexes, is in need of further clarification
and acknowledgement. To the extent that they were involved in various patronage decisions,
it may perhaps be possible to speak of a “hidden” or “embedded” sort of patronage on the part
of the eunuchs who actively participated in such projects. I believe that eunuchs’ relationship
with architecture should also be assessed by taking this notion of patronage into
consideration.
It is important to note that not only their role in royal projects but also some of the
patronage choices that eunuchs made in their own undertakings were directly related to their
being court eunuchs. It is not accidental that many of the socio-religious foundations built by
eunuchs were in the vicinity of the palaces where their patrons worked; that the first sebilmekteb
of Istanbul was built by a chief black eunuch; or that Cairo became the site where
various black eunuchs commissioned buildings long before their dismissal from the imperial
court. Also, by repairing, rebuilding, and upgrading buildings constructed by other eunuchs,
by building their own works in the vicinity of these, or by assigning the task of overseeing
their endowments to the future holders of their office, the castrated servants of the imperial
household cherished an ethos of solidarity within their (sub)group. Perhaps it was in this way
that, as members of a non-hereditary elite, they were able to make themselves part of a
eunuch “genealogy”—a line of illustrious servants who served the House of Osman with
loyalty throughout generations.
167
MAPS
The maps are adapted from fragments of the map in W. Müller-Wiener, Đstanbul'un Tarihsel
Topografyası: 17. yüzyıl baslarına kadar Byzantion-Konstantinopolis-Đstanbul, tr. Ülker Sayın (Istanbul: Yapı
Kredi Yayınları, 2007). In the legend of each map, the numbers in brackets refer to the location in the Müller-
Wiener map.
Map 1. 1. The Mercan Agha Mosque [F6
24]
2. The Firuz Agha Mosque [F7 18]
3. The Küçük Ayasofya Mosque
[F8 10]
4. The Çardaklı Hamam [F8 9]
5. Hüseyin Agha’s mosque [F7 7]
6. The Sinan Agha Mosque
7. Mustafa Agha’s tekke (uncertain
location)
8. Mahmud Agha’s mosque in
Ahırkapı [F8 12]
9. The Cafer Agha Medrese [G7 8]
10. Habesî Mehmed Agha’s sebilmekteb
and medrese complex
[F7 14]
11. Chief Treasurer Mustafa Agha’s
medrese [F6 15]
12. The Akbıyık Mosque [G8 2]
13. Malatyalı Ismail Agha’s tekke
14. The Beshir Agha Mosque
Complex [F6 34]
15. The Acem Ağa Mosque [G7 10]
168
A
B C
Map 2. A.
1. Davud Agha’s mosque [B1 7]
2. Habesî Mehmed Agha’s mosque [C3 19]
3. El-Hajj Beshir Agha’s darülhadis [B1 2]
B.
1. Odabası Behruz Agha’s mosque [B6 6]
2. Yakub Agha’s bath [B8 3]
3. Selçuk H./Abbas Agha Mosque [C6 5]
C.
1. The Âsık Pasha Mosque [D4 3]
2. The Süleyman Agha Mosque [E8 5]
3. The Yakub Agha Mosque [E6 22]
4. The Gazanfer Agha Medrese [D5 15]
169
FIGURES
Fig. 1. The west side of the
Hüseyin Agha bedestan in
Amasya. The main portal and
the foundation inscription are
seen in the middle. One third
of the bedestan, corresponding
to its northern side, fell victim
to destruction attempts.
Fig. 2. Satellite image of Amasya showing (1) the Hüseyin
Agha bedestan, (2) the Kilârî Süleyman Agha Mosque, (3)
the socio-religious complex of Bayezid II.
Fig. 3. (left) The Kilârî
Süleyman Agha Mosque
Fig. 4. (above) The
inscription and
Fig. 5. (right) the plan of
the Kilârî Süleyman
Agha Mosque
Fig. 6. The still standing architectural
projects of eunuchs in Amasya: (a)
the bedestan and (b) the medrese
Hüseyin Agha; (c) the complex and
(d) the Komacık hamam of Ayas
Agha; (e) the mosque of Kilârî
Süleyman Agha
Fig. 9. Detail from Matrakçı Nasuh’s miniature of Istanbul (1537
Agha Mosque, (2) the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque, (3) the royal menagerie, (4) a votive column,
(5) the obelisk of Theodosius II, (6) the serpent column, (7) the built obelisk, (
column, (9) the Sphendone, (10) a commercial building, (11) the Atik Ali Pasha Mosque, (12)
the column of Constantine, (13) the Ibrahim Pasha Palace, (14) the namazgâh (open air prayer
platform) of Irakizade Hasan Efendi, and (15) a fountain.
of
Fig. 7. The foundation inscription of Hüseyin Agha’s
bedestan in Amasya
Fig. 8. Perspectival drawing of the Kapu Ağası Medresesi
in Amasya
1537-38) showing (1) the Firuz
8) a votive
171
Fig. 10a. (above) Procession of
Süleyman the Magnificent
through the Hippodrome
(1533), engraving by Pieter
Coeck van Aelst
Fig. 10b. (left) Flipped version
of the “Procession of
Süleyman” by Pieter Coeck van
Aelst. The mosque appearing in
the middle-left is presumably
the Firuz Agha Mosque.
Fig. 11. The Firuz Agha Mosque
Fig. 12. The foundation inscription of the Firuz
Agha Mosque
172
Fig. 14. (above) The Küçük Ayasofya
Mosque
Fig. 13. (left) Plan of the Ayas Agha
Complex in Amasya
Fig. 15. Plan
showing the
Küçük
Ayasofya
Mosque
together with
the Çardaklı
Hamam. The
Byzantine
remains are
black colored;
the shaded
parts are
Ottoman
additions.
173
Fig. 16. (above) Interior of the
Küçük Ayasofya Mosque
Fig. 17. (left) The portico (son
cemaat yeri) of the Küçük
Ayasofya Mosque and the
passage dividing the complex
174
Fig. 18. (left) The Çardaklı
Hamam
Fig. 19. (below left) The main
entrance to the Küçük Ayasofya
precinct
Fig. 20. (below right) The hadith
inscription on the main entrance to
the precinct
Fig. 21. The remodeled northern gate and the
portico of the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque
Fig. 22. The hadith inscription on the
northern gate of the Küçük Ayasofya
Mosque
175
Fig. 23. The foundation inscription (left) and the hadith inscription (right) on the main portal
of the Küçük Ayasofya Mosque
Fig. 24. The western entrance to the Küçük
Ayasofya zâviye/medrese, look from the west
Fig. 25. The mausoleum (türbe) of Hüseyin
Agha in the cemetery next to the Küçük
Ayasofya Mosque
Fig. 26. Kapı ağası Mahmud Agha’s mosque in Ahırkapı
Fig. 27. Plan and crosssection
of kapı ağası
Mahmud Agha’s mosque in
Ahırkapı
176
Fig. 28. Plan of the Cafer Agha medrese Fig. 29. South-north section of the Cafer Agha
medrese
Fig. 30. The Cafer Agha medrese (Soğukkuyu
Medresesi), view from the Alemdar street
Fig. 31. (right) The three inscriptions on the entrance
of the classroom at the Cafer Agha medrese
Fig. 33. Thomas Allom’s engraving of the Samatya bath of Yakub Agha
Fig. 32. (left) Plan and elevation of Odabası Behruz Agha’s mosque
177
Fig. 34. Plan of the Habesî
Mehmed Agha Complex. (1)
Mosque, (2) mausoleum, (3)
sheikh’s house, (4) ablution
fountains, (5) latrines, (6) double
bath.
Fig. 36. Elevation of the Habesî
Mehmed Agha Mosque
Fig. 35. The Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque, view from
the south
Fig. 37. The mausoleum of Habesî Mehmed Agha next
to his mosque
178
Fig. 38. The muqarnas-galleried stone
minaret of the Habesî Mehmed Agha
Mosque
Fig. 39. The fountain next to the entrance of
the Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque precinct
Fig. 40. The foundation inscription of the Habesî Mehmed Agha Mosque above the entrance
of the precinct
179
Fig. 41. Plan of the Malika
Safiyya Mosque in Cairo
Fig. 42. Interior of the Malika Safiyya Mosque in Cairo
Fig. 43. Plan of the Gazanfer Agha
Medrese Complex
Fig. 44. The Fountain of Departure (Ayrılık Çesmesi)
Fig. 45. The Osman Agha Mosque in Kadıköy
Fig. 46. The Mısırlı Osman Agha
fountain in Kadıköy
180
Fig. 47. The inscription of the fountain next to the Abbas Agha Mosque
Fig. 48. Entrance of the Beshir Agha mosque complex and the view from the slope of
Hükümet Konağı Caddesi towards Hagia Sophia
Fig. 49. Plan of the Beshir Agha mosque complex
Fig. 50. Plan of the Beshir Agha complex with
the exception of the tekke. Key: A
of the mosque, B – medrese, C
elementary school, E – sebil
fountains, H – courtyard, I – son cemaat yeri
minaret.
. – prayer hall
, – library, D –
sebil, F and G –
yeri, J –
Fig. 51. The Beshir Agha mosque
complex and its vicinity. Key: A
Pavilion of Processions, B
Approximate location of Pasa Kapısı
grand vizierial complex, C—
Agha complex, D—Approximate location
of the Ibrahim Pasha palace, E
Sophia, i—the Sengül Bath, ii
Cağaloğlu Bath.
A—The
B—
Kapısı, the
—the Beshir
E—Hagia
ii—the
182
Fig. 52. The minaret and the
entrance of the medrese
Fig. 53. The Beshir Agha sebil Fig. 54. The fountain next
to the sebil
Fig. 55. The foundation inscription of the mosque, which was altered after the renovations of
Mahmud II in the nineteenth century.
Fig. 56. The fountain and entrance gate
Fig. 57. Detail from the sebil
183
APPEDIX: LIST OF THE OTTOMA COURT EUUCHS WHO COMMISSIOED BUILDIGS I ISTABUL FROM
THE MID-FIFTEETH TO THE MID-EIGHTEETH CETURY
ame of the
eunuch
Title(s)* Reigning
sultan*
Act of patronage (date) Location
(*) at the time of the act of patronage
1 Mercan Agha darüssaade ağası (?) Mehmed
II
mosque
(before 868/1463-64)
Mercan, Beyazıt; near the Old Palace
(today: Istanbul University)
2 Firuz Agha
(d. 918/1512-3)
hazinedarbası Bayezid II [Friday] mosque (896/1490-
91)
elementary school
At the intersection of the Divan Yolu
with the At Meydanı
3 Hüseyin Agha Eski Saray ağası Bayezid II mosque [rebuilt?] (898/1492) The Âsık Pasha Mosque
4 Hüseyin Agha kapı ağası Bayezid II Converted the Friday mosque
of Küçük Ayasofya
(between 1506 and 1513)
dervish convent
elementary school
soup kitchen
double bath
mausoleum
To the south-west of the Sphendone
" " " mosque To south of the Covered Bazaar
5 Mehmed Agha kapı ağası (?) Bayezid II fountain (912/1506-07) Near the Đskele Camii in Kadıköy
6 Selman Agha [also
known as Süleyman
Agha] (d.
914/1508-09)
darüssaade ağası Bayezid II mosque (912/1506) Üsküdar
7 Sinan Agha kapı ağası Mehmed
II or
Bayezid II
mosque (before 918/1512) Near the Binbirdirek Cistern
8 Mustafa Agha kapı ağası Selim I dervish convent (926/1519-20) Near Hagia Sophia
9 Süleyman Agha unknown Süleyman
I
mosque
elementary school
han (endowed in 937/1531)
Kumkapı (han in At Pazarı, Fatih)
184
10 Süleyman Agha
(same as above?)
unknown Süleyman
I
elementary school (endowed in
948/1541)
Near the Old Palace
11 Yakub Agha
(d. 954/1547-8)
Eski Saray ağası Süleyman
I
mosque
fountain
Across the gate of the Old Palace
(Mercan, Beyazıt)
" " " mosque
elementary school
Beyazıt; near the Divan Yolu
" " " elementary school Otakçılar, Eyüp
12 Mahmud Agha kapı ağası Süleyman
I
mosque (961/1553-54)
[later: Friday mosque]
elementary school
fountain
theological college
Ahırkapı
13 Davud Agha
(d. 962/1554-55)
saray ağası Süleyman
I
mosque (962/1554-55)
elementary school (near the
mosque?)
Nisanca, Eyüp
14 Cafer Agha
(d. 964/1557)
kapı ağası Süleyman
I
theological college (967/1559-
60) [allegedly completed by
his brother Gazanfer Agha]
On Alemdar Caddesi in Eminönü; near
Haghia Sophia
15 Behruz Agha Has Oda bası
(eunuch?)
Süleyman
I
Friday mosque (970/1562-63)
elementary school
fountain
Sehremini
16 [Atik] Yakub Agha
(d. 974/1566)
kapı ağası Süleyman
I
bath Samatya, Sulu Manastır
" " " bath Tophane
" " " mosque Harami Deresi
17 Habesî (or Hacı)
Mehmed Agha
(d. 999/1590-91)
darüssaade ağası Murad III elementary school [upper
storey]
sebil [lower storey]
(988/1580-81)
theological college
(990/1582-3)
fountain
On the Divan Yolu
185
" " " sebil (appr. 1581)
fountain
Irgadpazarı; near Constantine’s column
" " " fountain (989/1581-82) Üsküdar
" " " Friday mosque (993/1585)
hadith college
dervish convent
theological college
double bath
fountain
mausoleum
Çarsamba
" " " mosque (before 1591)
(Yeniçesme Mescidi)
Üsküdar
" " " fountain (before 1591) Near Hagia Sophia
" " " ablution fountains for the
Mercan Agha mosque
See #1
" " " fountain Near the Old Palace
" " " fountain
open prayer space
Near the Edirnekapı gate
" " " fountain (995/1586-87) Debbağlar (Tabaklar), Üsküdar
" " " three other fountains Üsküdar
18 Ibrahim Agha kapı ağası Murad III mosque (988/1580-81) Near Haydarpasa
19 Tavâsî Hasan Agha unknown Murad III mosque
elementary school
(995/1586-87)
Đnadiye, Üsküdar
20 Dilsiz Süleyman
Agha
mute agha (of Safiye
Sultan)
Murad III fountain (995/1586-87) Nisanca, Eyüp; near the Davud Agha
Mosque
" " " fountain (1001/1592-93) Etyemez
21 Cüce Mehmed
Agha
court dwarf
(eunuch?)
Murad III fountain (999/1590-91) Kumkapı
22 Mustafa Agha serhâzin (later: saray
ağası and probably
Murad III theological college
fountain (999/1590-91)
Sirkeci
186
darüssaade ağası)
23 Hüseyin Agha Galatasaray ağası
(later: seyhülharem)
Murad III mosque (1005/1596-97) Đstiklâl Caddesi
" " " (?) fountain Tophane
24 Gazanfer Agha (d.
1011/1603)
kapı ağası Murad III
Mehmed
III
fountain (Ayrılık Çesmesi) Haydarpasa
" " " theological college (1593-96)
türbe
sebil
Fatih; next to the Valens Aqueduct
" " " Rebuilt the Otakçılar Mosque Eyüp
" " " sebil (1008/1599-1600) Otakçılar, Eyüp
25 El-Hajj Mustafa
Agha (d.
1033/1624)
darüssaade ağası Ahmed I,
Mustafa I,
Osman II,
or Murad
IV
minbar The Akbıyık Mosque [built during the
reign of Mehmed II] in Ahırkapı
" " " minbar The Haceği Mosque, Fatih
" (?) " " rebuilt the mosque and
installed its minbar
The Tekneciler Mosque, Eminönü
" " Ahmed I fountain (1022/1613-14) Efrâziyye yokusu, Fatih
" " " fountain
sebil (1025/1616-17)
Near the Mahmud Pasha Mosque
" " Osman II fountain (1028/1618-19) Hasköy
" " Osman II funerary sebil (1033/1624) Next to the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-
Ansari, Eyüp
26 Osman Agha kapı ağası Ahmed I mosque (1021/1612-13) Kadıköy
27 Mısırlı Osman
Agha
? Ahmed I fountain (1012/1603-04) In the kitchen of the Topkapı Palace
" ? Ahmed I
or
repaired(?) the fountain of
Mahmud Pasha (1031/1621-
Opposite the medrese of Mahmud
Pasha, in Eminönü
187
Osman II 22)
" kapı ağası (?) Probably
Osman II
ablution fountains of the
Osman Agha Mosque
See #24
" kapı ağası Osman II fountain (1030/1620-21) Kadıköy; near the Osman Agha Mosque
28 Dilsiz Ali Agha mute agha (eunuch?) Osman II fountain (1029/1619-20) unknown
29 Mehmed Agha (d.
1048/1638-39)
kapı ağası (under
Ahmed I?)
Murad IV fountain (1041/1631-32) Probably near the Firuz Agha Mosque in
Sultanahmet
30 Malatyalı Ismail
Agha (d.
1050/1640-41)
agha of the inner
larder
Ahmed I mosque (1018/1609-10)
double bath
dervish convent
fountain (1026/1617)
Üsküdar
" kapı ağası and
darüssaade ağası (?)
? dervish convent
Near Hagia Sophia
31 Çuçu Ibrahim Ağa darüssaade ağası Murad IV The Harab Mosque Near the Kavak Đskelesi
32 Ali Agha (d. ca.
1068/1657-58)
hazinedarbası and
musahib
Mehmed
IV
fountain (1064/1653-54) Selimiye
33 Muslı Agha darüssaade ağası Mehmed
IV
fountain (1077/1666-67) Near the Sultan Ahmed Mosque
34 Abbas Agha agha of the valide
sultan, then
darüssaade ağası
Mehmed
IV
mosque (1665-66)
elementary school
fountain (1084/1673-74)
Besiktas
" darüssaade ağası " fountain (1080/1669-70) Üsküdar; near the mosque of Arakiyeci
Cafer Agha/Çelebi
" " " fountain (1080/1669-70) Üsküdar; near the mosque of Hayreddin
Çavus
" " " fountain (1080/1669-70) Near the Defterdar Kapısı
" " " double bath (1080/1669-70) Laleli
" " " rebuilt the Selçuk Hatun
Mosque
Molla Gürani, Taskasap
" " " bath
elementary school
Hocapasa, Eminönü
188
sebil
35 Lala Beshir Agha
(d. 1080/1669-70)
hazinedar Mehmed
IV
Mosque (The Kavak Đskelesi
Mosque) (1077/1666-67)
Üsküdar
36 Yakub Agha saray ağası
(later: kapı ağası)
Mehmed
IV
fountain
library
elementary school
(1089/1678-9)
Near the Atik Valide Complex, Üsküdar
37 Mustafa Agha agha of the Edirne
Palace
Mehmed
IV
fountain (1092/1681-82) Karagümrük
38 Solak Nezir Agha darüssaade ağası Mustafa II rebuilt the Mercan Agha
Mosque (1114/1702-03)
See #1
" " " fountain (1114 /1702-03) Kasımpasa; near the Đbâdullah Mosque
39 Eyüp Agha hazine emini or
hazinedar
Ahmed III fountain (1118/1706-07) Hasköy, next to the Keçeci Piri Mehmed
Agha Mosque
40 Uzun Süleyman
Agha
darüssaade ağası Ahmed III mosque (1116/1704-05;
repaired by darüssaade
ağası Anber Agha in
1277/1860)
bath
elementary school
fountain
Besiktas
" " " fountain (1124/1712-13) Besiktas; near the Senlik Dede Mosque
41 Nezir Agha (d. after
1159/1746-47)
agha of the Old
Palace
Ahmed III repaired the Sadrazam Ali
Pasha fountain (1124/1712-
13)
Kasımpasa
42 El-Hajj (or Koca)
Beshir Agha (d.
1159/1746)
darüssaade ağası Ahmed III
minbar and fountain The Yeniçesme Mosque of Mehmed
Agha
" " " minbar (1133/1720-21) The Kavak Đskelesi Mosque built by
Lala Beshir Agha (see #33)
" " " fountain (1140/1727-28) In the Covered Bazaar
189
" " " fountain (1141/1728-29) Atpazarı
" " " fountain (1141/1728-29) Near the mosque of Mehmed Agha
" " " fountain (1141/1729-30) Üsküdar
" " Mahmud I fountain (1145/1732-33) Fındıklı; near the Hacı Receb Mosque
" " " hadith college
library
elementary school
(1147/1734-35)
Eyüp
" " " fountain (1150/1737-38) Kocamustafapasa, near the Ali Fakih
Mosque
" " " fountain (1150/1737-38) Kocamustafapasa
" " " fountain (1150/1737-38) In the courtyard of the Kocamustafapasa
Mosque
" " " fountain (1151/1738-39) Eyüp
" " " fountain (1151/1738-39)
namazgâh
sebil
In the Covered Bazaar
" " " fountain (1157/1744-45) Near Hagia Sophia
" " " mosque
theological college
library
elementary school
dervish convent
sebil
two fountains
(1157/1744 – 1159/1746)
Near the Alay Köskü
" " " fountain (1158/1745-46) In Fatih, between the Hafızpasa and
Kumrulumescit Mosques
" " " fountain (1158/1745-46) Besiktas; near the Sinan Pasha Mosque
" " " fountain (1153/1740-41) Beyoğlu
43 Firuz Agha saray ağası unknown mosque Firuzağa, Beyoğlu
190
44 Hacı Ferhad Agha kilârî unknown elementary school Beyoğlu1
45 Mehmed Agha kilârî unknown minbar The Saraçhanebası Mosque of the
architect Ayas (892/1486-87), Fatih2
46 Ahmed Agha acemi ağası (agha of
the janissary
recruits), later: kapı
ağası
unknown eczâ-i serîf3 The Acem Ağa Mosque converted from
a church by the barley commissioner
(emin-i cev) Lala Hayreddin4 (see Map
1)
47 Hüsrev Agha kapı ağası unknown mosque
elementary school
Üsküdar5
1 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 391.
2 Ibid., 136.
3 Even though it is not an example of architectural patronage, this endowment is added to the list as it led to the renaming of the mosque after Ahmed Agha.
4 Ayvansarâyî, Garden, 165.
5 Ibid., 504.
191
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