Gebze Mustafa Paşa Külliyesi: Mısır Kaynaklı Taş Bezemeli Memlûk Sanatı

Year 2018, Issue: 21, 3 - 28, 24.11.2018

Sinan Öngen , Kadriye Figen Vardar

Abstract

As a district center in the Marmara Region, Gebze played an important role throughout history due to its

location on the natural transit zone that connects Istanbul with Anatolia. The known history of the region is

descending to the time of the Kingdom of Bithynia and later it is seen to be the scene of Roman, Byzantine,

Arabian, Anatolian Seljuk, Crusader, Latin and finally Ottoman occupations and civilizations.

Second governor of Egypt under Ottomans, Mustafa Pasha who originated from Bosnia, was in charge of

important state duties at the time of Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim) (1512-1520) and Suleiman I (Kanuni Sultan

Süleyman) (1520-1566).

Michael Meinecke, in his examinations of the Mamluk style ornaments in the Ottoman period, cited that

Yavuz Sultan Selim liked and wanted to have a similar stone wall decorations in Istanbul as he saw Mamluk

buildings in Cairo. When he returned from the Egyptian expedition, a group of various masters for this art

and a headmaster named Ahmed was sent to Istanbul for the decoration of Holy Chamber (Hırka-i Saadet)

in Topkapı Palace. However, upon the death of Sultan Selim in 1520, the construction of his Egyptian style

building was not realized. Evliya Çelebi, the famous traveler, told us that Mustafa Pasha ruled as Ottoman

governor in Egypt during the years of 1522-1523 and from Evliya’s works we learn that he sent many stony

items from Egypt to the Darıca marina and from there to his külliye (complex) in Gebze.

Although some publications mention that the stones used in the mosque and in Topkapı Palace are brought

from Egypt, our comparative petrographic studies have revealed that only some of them are of Egyptian

origin. Especially the big rectangle stone slabs are from different rock formations in Egypt’s Eastern Desert

region. Other stone materials used in decoration were provided from different antique Roman quarries

around the Marmara Sea; it was also understood that the serpentine breccia, a very different type of stones,

belongs to Greece’s Thessaly region. However, it is also clear that all these stone materials were built at the

time of construction. There are minor spolia throughout the ages.

Keywords

Mustafa Paşa Külliyesi, Mısır, Taş Bezeme, Memlûk Sanatı

References

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