The Women who Built the Ottoman World (Library of Ottoman Studies) by Ozgules Muzaffer

Author:Ozgules Muzaffer
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Ottoman sultans, Sultan, Ottoman Empire, lnu&#x015F, Ottoman women, G&#x00FC, history of women
ISBN: 9781786722089
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2017-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

The History of Üsküdar Yeni Valide Complex

Why did Gülnuş Sultan choose Üsküdar for her mosque complex? We can begin to answer this question only be speculating: perhaps one answer to this question could be the lack of available space for building a substantial mosque complex on the Historic Peninsula, where previous imperial mosques had already filled up the hilltops and shoreline. Üsküdar, too, was growing in significance as an important adjunct of the imperial city: French traveller Olivier, for example, who visited Istanbul in 1790, describes the neighbourhood thus: ‘Üsküdar, sitting on an inclined terrain on the opposite shore of Bosphorus like an amphitheatre, serves as a storehouse for Asian caravans, forms a meeting and transfer point, and has an extensive commerce network with Anatolia and Constantinople.’1 Moreover, it was anything but bereft of its own impressive architecture, many examples of which had their own connection to royal women. Again, we might conjecture that precisely because there were several other mosque complexes built by previous Ottoman royal women, and Gülnuş Sultan wanted to pursue a tradition from old, and prosperous, times.

Indeed, it can easily be argued that Üsküdar had become the headquarters of Ottoman sultanas' mosque complexes with constructions in the name of Gülfem Hatun (1539–40), Mihrimah Sultan (1543–8), Nurbanu Sultan (1570–83) and Kösem Sultan (1640–2). A lesser-known wife of Süleyman the Magnificient's, Gülfem, and his daughter Mihrimah, who was also the daughter of his favourite wife, Hürrem, had adorned the shoreline with two precious complexes close to Üsküdar pier, which welcomed passengers approaching the town by sea. Later, Selim II's wife Nurbanu, Murat III's mother, extended the borders of Üsküdar eastwards with her vast complex on the hill behind the town. This monumental structure became the last stop for travellers passing through Istanbul and the first stop for those venturing into Anatolia. Finally, Kösem, mother of Murad IV and İbrahim I, gave her name to a modest mosque further east, and gave the final shape to the town.

In fact, the question of location is answered within Gülnuş Sultan's own testimony. Composed in AH 1119 (1707/8), approximately a year before the start of construction, Gülnuş Sultan states:

Let my resting place be in Üsküdar, close to Divitçizade, and let there be a tomb upon it, a reticulated one with an open top. Let there be a madrasa for reciting Qur'an on one side of my tomb and a soup kitchen for distributing free meals on the other side. Every Friday and Monday evening rice and zerde [a rice desert] should be distributed in the soup kitchen, and every Friday and Monday evening the whole of the Qur'an should be recited and bestowed to my soul […]2

Divitçizade, the son of Divitçi (the inkwell-maker) Sheikh Mustafa Çelebi, was otherwise known as Tâlib Mehmed Efendi, and he was a famed follower of Aziz Mahmud Hüdâî. He was the sheikh of the Hüdâî dervish lodge of the Celvetî order between AH 1078 and AH 1090 (1667/8 and 1679)3 and had been buried in a tomb in his father's mosque, that of Şeyh Mustafa Devâtî Efendi.

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