Ishak Pasha Palace
Coordinates: 39 ° 31 ′ 14.1 ″ N , 44 ° 7 ′ 44.1 ″ E The Ishak Pasha Palace ( Turkish İshak Paşa Sarayı ) is a castle-like palace of the Ottoman emir of Doğubeyazıt Çolak Abdi Paşa, built between 1685 and 1784and his son İshak Paşa II. It is located in the far east of Turkey about six kilometers southeast of the city of Doğubeyazıt. The unusual architecture and ornamentation of the palace combines influences from 500 years older Seljuk mosques, Armenian churches and the contemporary Ottoman style . Its planning principle follows the structure of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul .
location
The plain at the foot of the Ararat is traversed by the Sarısu in a south-westerly direction. South of the river, the E 80 runs parallel via Doğubeyazıt to the border town of Bazargan and into Iran . The edges of the flat Ararat plain are ragged by rugged, rocky mountain ridges. The palace is located on the ledge of one of these ridges at an altitude of about 2200 meters, about four kilometers south of the expressway. The old trade route, part of the Silk Road , led to Tabriz in Iran past the former urban settlement below the palace .
On three sides the outer walls of the complex rise directly above the steep slope. Access is from above over the ridge, and the driveway ends there. A few 100 meters north of the palace in a side valley you can see an Ottoman domed mosque from the 16th century. Above the mosque and beyond the hollow, the city's medieval fortress sits enthroned on a steep rock ridge near a Urartean rock tomb. In the valley a stream flows from east to west. It was used to supply the palace residents with drinking water, which was collected in a basin north of the palace. Furthermore, there used to be a water source near the village of Kivi, two kilometers to the southeast. The Doğubeyazıt plateau is otherwise arid, almost treeless and unsuitable for arable farming because of the thin layer of soil.
history
To the west of the fortress, stone finds show that there must have been a settlement here as early as the Urartian times. The earliest settlement remains are dated to around 800 BC. Dated. To the northeast of the palace you can see an Urartian rock tomb, the entrance of which is framed by larger-than-life relief figures.
A well-fortified city complex must have existed since the 4th century AD at the latest. In 1374 the Mongol Jalairids under Şehzade Bayazıt Han had the fortress expanded. In the Middle Ages there was probably a small town named after Bayazit on the plain south of the palace hill. It seems between the 14./15. Century and the Russo-Turkish War of 1828/29 experienced a heyday and to have spread to the steep slope in the east of the fortress. From 1514 the place belonged to the Ottoman Empire. In the early Ottoman period, the city fortifications were abandoned and torn down, very likely in favor of the now rebuilt fortress. When the Ishak Pasha Palace was built in the 18th century, the city had expanded in the plain around the palace hill.
At the head of the Sanjak of Bayazıt was a Mütesarrıf, whose office had been hereditary since the middle of the 17th century. It is possible that construction of the palace began in 1685 under the provincial governor Çolak Abdi Pasha. A member of the Kurdish family dynasty Çıldıroğulları, which ruled from this time, was called İshak Paşa. In 1723 he was appointed vizier and the following year governor ( pasha ) of Tbilisi . His grandson Hasan became governor of Çıldır in 1760/61 . Another İshak, who was Pasha of Çıldır from 1790–1791, had the palace completed. The only inscribed dating of the palace comprises eight lines, it is located above the portal to the harem and names the year of completion 1199 AH , corresponding to 1784 AD.
Probably the last pasha of this dynasty to inhabit the entire palace was Mahmut († 1805) at the beginning of the 19th century. He is the only ruler whose grave is in the burial chamber under the palace courtyard. When the Russians conquered the city in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1828/29 in 1828, Mahmut's successor Behlül ruled, who had moved his residence from the palace to the fortress. Much of the palace's wooden structure was destroyed during the war. In the wake of the war, the Russian conquerors forced the majority of the population to leave the city and emigrate to Russia. An earthquake in 1840 caused severe damage to the palace and the fortress. The palace residents had to move to a house in the city. Around 1860, some rooms were restored to such an extent that the ruling family could use them. During the next Russo-Ottoman War of 1877/78 the palace served as soldiers' quarters. The palace suffered further damage from gunfire during World War I , when the city was fought over by Russian and Turkish troops because of its strategic location.
In the young Turkish Republic , the palace was the administrative center for the province of Ağrı and the district ( Kaza ) of Bayazıt until 1926 . After that, the provincial administration was moved to the city of Ağrı and the administration for the Bayazıt district five kilometers further on the plain, where today's city was established under the name changed to Doğubeyazıt from the early 1930s. The residents gave up the old, today Eski Beyazıt ("Old Beyazıt") settlement below the palace, with the exception of a few houses on the eastern slope of the fortress hill.
Research history
The first customer of the palace brought Pierre Amédée Jaubert to Europe. The French orientalist traveled through Bayazıt on the way to Persia on behalf of Napoleon , where he was captured. He got to know the dungeon of the palace for half a year until he was released in 1805 after the death of Mahmut Pasha. On the basis of Jaubert's travel description, the date of Mahmut's death could be determined, which is illegible on the tombstone of this last ruler of the Çıldır dynasty. The work, first published in 1821, also includes an etching of the palace.
Aleksandr Kleonokovic Ushakov describes the war of 1828/29 from a Russian perspective in his book History of the Campaigns of General Paskewitch in Asian Turkey, which was published in Leipzig in 1838 in a German translation . He describes the social and economic conditions in the region in detail, but only mentions the palace in passing.
The French explorer Charles Texier , who was a guest in the palace in 1830, reports in more detail and full of admiration about the second courtyard and especially about the furnishings in the reception room there. Further European travel reports followed, including in 1838 that of the then British consul in Erzurum . The knowledge gained from travel reports up to 1840, which were often only imprecise impressions, was summarized by the geographer Carl Ritter in his Asian Turkey. Geography of Asia X together.
The essays by Turkish authors published in the first half of the 20th century are more detailed. The first report to be published in Turkish was by Yusuf Mazhar Bey in 1928. It contains three photographs and a few sketches. It can be seen that the buildings were in poor condition. Mazhar Bey deciphered several inscriptions and compared the palace with the Topkapı Sarayı . In 1934 essays by İ followed. Zühü and Ali-Salm Ülgen, the latter also found parallels to Edirne Sarayı, who has now disappeared .
In 1956 the regional monument protection authority ( Anıtlar ve Müzeler Genel Müdürlüğü ) started an initial investigation. They measured the system for a few months and made drawings. Its director Mahmut Akok published a detailed report on this in 1960. Clean-up work began around 1963. In 1966, the restoration work on the eastern and southern perimeter walls was completed. Most of the palace's masonry was restored by the 1980s. The monograph on the palace by Yüksel Bingöl, published in 1982, is based on field research in 1978/79.
In 1992, the Ministry of Culture initiated extensive restoration work. The sections of the wall that had been supplemented with concrete in previous years were removed and replaced with more appropriate lime mortar and hewn field stones. In 2004 it was discovered during static investigations that incorrectly installed steel anchors led to damage to the outer walls. Cracks in the mosque walls had to be closed. In 2009, the rooms, which were temporarily covered with flat inclined corrugated iron roofs during the restoration, and the other parts of the building that had remained open in the 1980s, were given an elaborate covering with a barrel-vaulted wooden beam and glass construction. The glass keeps rain and snow out and protects against overheating in summer with a built-in UV filter.
architecture
The sequence of rooms in the entire complex is roughly oriented in an east-west direction. It follows the scheme of the traditional tripartite division of Ottoman palaces into a forecourt ( biderun or birun ) and an inner courtyard ( enderun ) behind it , from which the private women's living area ( harem ) is separated as the third building group. The northern outer wall stands from the east corner to the end of the rock nose in the west at an increasing height above the rock slope. The once built-over area was about 120 meters lengthways and about 65 meters at the widest point. In order to enlarge the level on the west and south sides, a high outer wall made of rectangular blocks was built and the area behind it was filled. According to a description from 1956, the palace originally had 366 rooms on 7600 m² and two floors, they were accessed via the two courtyards lying one behind the other and through corridors. On both sides of the outer courtyard were side rooms, from the second courtyard the living and common rooms of the men ( selamlık ) and the mosque were accessible, the women's living area with the salon and the functional rooms formed the rear western part.
The rooms were small enough to be heated by an open fireplace ( ocak ) in winter . Air shafts running along the walls show that many rooms were also connected to a central heating system. There was running water and a sewage system.
Six types of stone from the surrounding area were used for the masonry made of uncut field stones or neatly joined blocks. Wood was used as roof beams, lintels, for free-standing animal figures and in some places as tension beams in walls. According to a chemical analysis, it is Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L. ), which occurs in the Black Sea region and in northeastern Anatolia up to an altitude of over 2500 meters. The old gilded gates were removed under Russian rule at the beginning of the 20th century and are now in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg .
East portal, outer courtyard
The east gate leads into the first forecourt, 35.1 meters long and 28.6 meters wide. As is characteristic of Seljuk architecture, the portal dominates the entire facade. Similar to the north portal of the Divriği Mosque , built in 1228/29 , the mighty structure protruding from the wall protrudes far beyond the surrounding wall. It is the only entrance to the palace, on the inside there was a small room above the archway with a window to the courtyard, which was reached via a staircase in the 2.3 meter wide protective wall in the south. Of the other guard rooms on the east side, there are three more on the ground floor to the south of the portal. One of these rooms measures 2.1 × 3.1 meters and has a window and a door to the courtyard. The other two rooms with two windows are slightly larger. Three small rooms in the wall on the north side of the portal were probably toilets. When walking through the portal, a niche in the outer wall can be seen on the northern (right) side, in which there was a fountain ( çeşme ). In the elongated buildings on the north and south sides there were rooms for the servants and stables, the building on the south wall has disappeared. The storage rooms on the north side are said to have been two-story with a flat roof. In old etchings it can be seen that the perimeter walls used to have loopholes made of stone blocks. At their height there was a gallery that was roofed with a wooden structure.
The outer shape of the east portal is emphasized laterally by wide pilaster strips , which are divided into two pilasters in the lower area and divided horizontally by capitals and friezes . Two half-columns on each inside support the high keel arch , the inner field of which is filled in by muqarnas according to old tradition . The portal reveals extend over diagonal wall surfaces to the outer wall, which seems to be a simplistic takeover of the Divriği north portal. The arched triangle with the coarse muqarnas appears flat due to its relative excess width, especially since there is no ornamental wall structure between the arched area and the doorway. The portal is not entirely symmetrical, because on the south side the surrounding wall is much further outside and so the portal structure only protrudes in the width of a pilaster. Typical narrow recesses are embedded in the wall surfaces between the pilasters; on the upper floor these are designed as blind arches . The outer diagonal arch is decorated with baroque plant motifs.
The function of the outer courtyard probably corresponded to that of the same courtyard in Topkapı Palace. Everyday business was carried out here, the merchants and local rulers ( Beys ) rode in on horses. The rooms in the north of the courtyard served as storage for wood, grain, horse-drawn carts and cannons. The large number of guard rooms suggests that many guard posts were posted. The portal gate was opened at the first call to prayer of the day and closed at midnight at the last.
Inner courtyard, Kümbet and Selamlık
The path leads through a second large, but simply designed portal on the opposite side, which is not on the same axis with the east portal, further through a 12-meter-long corridor with a barrel vault in the 34.8-meter-long and 19.8-meter-wide inner one Yard ( enderun ). In the area of the second courtyard, the southern perimeter wall runs outwards in a sloping line and widens the palace area. The buildings formerly south of the courtyard with a series of long rectangular rooms have disappeared.
On its north side, the second courtyard is bordered by the wide display facade of the Selamlık and the mosque. The men's area, which was well preserved except for the lost original roof, included several rooms that were used for the men's stay, administration and the reception of guests. The library of the mosque's imam was housed in one room. Access to the Selamlık is through a portal in an iwan-like niche, which is bordered on the outside by a single thick bead. The flanking, 2.10 meter high double columns of the portal carry a pointed arched muqarnas vault. The side walls contain flat blind windows. The door opening forms a 2.18 × 1.06 meter rectangle, which is surrounded by lush vegetal wickerwork. The overall shape of the portal could have been modeled on the Armenian Apostle Church in Ani .
The path leads through the Selamlık portal up a seven-step staircase to an anteroom with a barrel vault and further to the right (east) into the largest room, called the “Courtyard of Welcome”, in which the ruler spoke rightly and received guests. The mosque and ancillary rooms are accessible from a corridor on the left side of the anteroom.
The reception room (divan room) measures 19.10 × 8.24 meters. According to Charles Texier's description of the Diwansaal, the ceiling was painted brightly with fantasy birds and glass plates painted with floral patterns are said to have been installed in the rectangular wall niches. The ceiling collapsed later in a Russian shell fire, only the vaulted ceiling of the corridors remained. The floor consists of basalt blocks. On the western front side next to the entrance door there is a 2.36 meter wide buffet niche ( şerbetlik ), of which further small niches are sunk 0.4 meters into the wall.
One of the narrow rooms north of the Diwansaal had a wooden balcony that protruded 1.4 meters above the outer wall. Some wooden beams of the balcony construction, sculpted as animal figures, are still preserved. To the left of the entrance, a corridor leads past smaller rooms to the adjacent mosque.
On both sides of the portal, a row of windows in high keel-arched wall depressions structure the courtyard facade. The tympanum above each window contains a different braided pattern in high relief. The five windows east of the portal light up the reception room; Two, slightly larger windows belong to the two rooms on the other side. The outer frame of these four windows forms a double bulge.
In the courtyard close to the north wall, between the mosque (left) and Selamlık (right), there is a slender octagonal tower with a conical roof ( kümbet ) based on the Persian model. The corners are formed by triple columns in the continuation of the triple pilasters of the lower zone. The lower wall panels contain a pineapple in the middle as a high relief in an artificial frame. In the wall panels above, a plant with many-leaved, curved branches climbs up from a round pot. At the top, the columns end at capitals crowned by miniature gable roofs. These are related to the 16-fold roof structure. The detailed decoration mixes neo- classical with Turkish-Seljuk style elements. What looks like a typical Persian tomb from the outside contains a twelve-step staircase inside that leads down from the door on the east side to a vaulted room measuring 4.88 x 2.66 meters and 2.6 meters high under the courtyard in front of the mosque , in which the members of the ruling family were buried. The courtyard above the burial chamber, including the tower, used to be surrounded by a stone balustrade and the location in front of the south entrance of the mosque was chosen so that the parishioners gathered in the mosque for prayer turned their gaze towards the qibla and thus also towards the burial site. Today two stone houses, which look like dog houses, are still preserved in the courtyard, which serve as ventilation and light openings for the burial chamber.
mosque
The mosque in the second courtyard takes up the entire area between the open space in the middle and the northern perimeter wall, laterally bounded by Selamlık in the east and Harem in the west. The square prayer room in the south is vaulted by a high dome over a circular drum . Its inner diameter is 8.22 meters and its height is 2.12 meters. Remains of ornamental painting have been preserved in the dome. The dome and minaret are visible from afar and towering over everything. In front of the north wall of the prayer room is a pillar-supported gallery halfway up the room for the women. The building was restored before 1980 with carefully assembled light pink stone blocks. Eight windows in the drum and others in the walls evenly illuminate the prayer room. The stone minbar hangs as if it were a pool of water, in a semicircle on the wall between the mihrab and the western of the two entrances on the courtyard side. From this western entrance a staircase leads to the side of the wide south wall up to the minbar. The enormous wall thickness also enables a mihrab niche to be deepened accordingly. Its vault formed by Muqarnas is similar to that of the east portal.
The space behind the north wall and gallery of the prayer room and connected to it by three wide doors is called son cemaat yeri , it was probably the extended prayer room (for those who came too late). In Ottoman mosques, this function is usually not fulfilled by a rear room, but by an open vestibule at the main entrance. It also served as a dersane , classroom and medrese , place for higher education. The roof of this rear, 8.3 × 7.8 meter room is supported by four symmetrically arranged pillars. This results in nine flat vaulted ceiling fields inside, the middle one is a star vault in the same curve radius. The star dome rests on four trumpets in the corners of the belt arches. The ceiling construction is taken from the Armenian church vestibules ( shamatun ) in the area of Ani, especially the star vault comes from the shamatun of St. John's Church of the Horomos Monastery, built in 1038. The children of the palace residents and probably also the respected residents of the city who had a relationship with the palace were taught here.
The walls of the prayer room are divided into two floors, one above the other, with high blind windows with round arches, which are bordered by bulging edges. The lower row of blind windows on the west and east walls contain deep niches in the middle, which are obviously intended to be related to the mihrab niche in the south wall. A similar wall design can also be found in Armenian churches. The south facing windows of the side walls are filled in the lower row with a rectangular niche below and above with another, at this point ogival niche. The latter contains five elongated fields with tree-shaped ornaments. The exit opening to the minbar fits in with these pointed arch niches. On the side walls of the son cemaat yeri , three blind windows continue the structural principle, the outer ones in turn with pointed arches in the upper niches.
The shape of the dome that rises above a drum on the flat roof is of Persian origin. At the four corners there are mushroom-shaped turrets that have no function. The round minaret is structured by alternating layers of red and light stone. With its octagonal base, which protrudes beyond the drum, the minaret looks as if it were erected directly on the roof.
Utility area, harem
A tall portal on the central west side of the second courtyard leads into a long straight corridor that ends at the wall of the hammam . A wide, concave ornament band with a serpentine plant tendril follows within the bead frame. Each semicircular bend is filled with a thick fruit, from which flowers grow up and down. The areas in between contain even more plant motifs. The door frame is surrounded by tendrils similar to the one on the portal to the second courtyard.
The spacious, two-story kitchen ( darüzziyafe ) to the south of the corridor had a wall opening in the west next to the entrance through which the food was served in a north-south running corridor so that the door would not have to be opened. Two round arches over mighty pillars support the flat roof of the kitchen, in the middle of which an octagonal lantern with a pyramid roof protrudes; an ancient-looking construction on a flat roof, which goes back to Seljuk models. From the outside, the kitchen dominates the entire building wing, originally the adjoining rooms had an upper floor that ended at the same height. The relatively small hammam, which only consisted of a bath and a changing room, was accessible via the corridor to the kitchen. His stove was stoked from the corridor. The rooms for the service personnel in the southern part are badly damaged and their appearance can no longer be ascertained because no contemporary etchings have survived.
The largest room in the harem was the salon ( muayede salonu ) in the middle, accessible through portals from the east and west . Of all the rooms in the palace, it received the most elaborate design. In front of the two narrow sides of the east-west oriented room, an octagonal pair of pillars supported three pressed pointed arches and the wall section above. These half-open room dividers were probably statically incorporated into the lost roof structure; in addition, they were supposed to increase the spatial impression and give the ornamental design of the two transverse walls a spatial depth. The roof probably consisted of iron girders and glass. The walls take on the three-part arch arrangement, but the middle portal frame of the east wall is wider and higher, the portal frame on the west wall is rectangular and to the side of it arched blind arcades with thick bulges on presented pillars overhang the double recessed rectangular wall niches. The archivolts (ornamented arches) have palmette- like patterns based on medieval Turkish models.
To the west a staircase led down to the private garden ( hasbahçe ). The pasha usually entered the room through the west entrance. Its door frame is surrounded by a rectangular braided band with plant tendrils, and in the tympanum above a central plant motif made up of symmetrical circular arcs can be seen. All four walls are loosened up by alternating black and white stone blocks up to the parapet height. The parapet delimits the cuboid pattern below from the high blind windows above; the double pillars supporting the blind arcades act as a vertical structure between them.
Surroundings
The medieval fortress on the lower rocky slope on the other side of the valley was difficult to defend as a whole, as it was possible to climb down from the mountain ridge. The long south wall with two towers, visible from afar, probably dates from the early Ottoman period.
To the west of it there is a Urartian burial chamber on the south side of a rock spike. A corresponding rock relief has been preserved on both sides of the entrance. It shows the ritual sacrifice of a stag. Above the grave opening, the animal is offered to an invisible god, a figure on the right can be recognized as ruler by her helmet. A second figure in a long robe to the right is smaller and more corpulent. The area in front of the burial chamber should have been leveled as a sacrificial site. The grave consists of a rectangular upper room with side niches and the lower, actual burial chamber behind it.
The Ottoman mosque below the citadel was built shortly after 1578 during the reign of Murat III. built. The domed prayer room stands on a platform above a rocky slope. The base of the minaret on the northwest corner extends over the mosque wall.
To the east of the palace further up in the valley is the Türbe of the Kurdish poet Ehmedê Xanî (* around 1651; † 1707), who wrote the Kurdish national epic Mem û Zîn in the 17th century .
literature
- Yüksel Bingöl: The Ishak Pascha Palace in Doğubayazıt on Mount Ararat: a contribution to the architectural history of a Turkish palace in the 18th century . (Writings on literature, art and social history Volume 2) Edition Orient, Berlin 1982, ISBN 9783922825081
- Elke and Hans-Dieter Kaspar: Urartu - A world empire of antiquity. A travel guide. Korient-Verlag Elke Kaspar, Hausen 1986
- Thomas Alexander Sinclair: Eastern Turkey: An Architectural and Archaeological Survey. Vol. I. The Pindar Press, London 1987, pp. 386-397, 454
- B. Yıldırım: Transformation of Ishak Pasha Palace . In: CA Brebbia, L. Binda (Ed.): Structural Studies, Repairs and Maintenance of Heritage Architecture XII. WIT-Press, Ashurst (Southampton) 2011, pp. 73–85, ISBN 978-1845645267 ( on Google Books )
Web links
- Ishak Pasa Palace. ArchNet
- Nurgün Erdin, Kamile Tırak: Identification of Wooden Objects in Ishak Pasha Palace. Istanbul University, 2009, pp. 124-137
Individual evidence
- ↑ The dating goes back to an article by Ziya Ünal in the magazine Hayat Tarih Mecmuasih , Istanbul 1956. On the other hand, Bingöl, p. 42: “... was created in a short time at the end of the 18th century.” On the other hand, even earlier, Yıldırım, p. 74: Foundation stone laid by Çolak Abdi Pascha during the reign of Murad IV, who ruled 1623–1640.
- ↑ Sinclair, S. 386f
- ^ Bingöl, pp. 9-13
- ↑ 3.bp.blogspot.com (photo from 2010 with the new roofs)
- ↑ Yıldırım, pp. 81–83
- ↑ Sinclair, p. 388: according to plan
- ↑ Bingöl, p. 12
- ↑ Erdin, Tırak, p. 129
- ↑ Bingöl, p. 46
- ^ Church of the Holy Apostels (Surp Arak'elots). virtualani.org
- ↑ Bingöl, pp. 51, 57-59
- ↑ Erdin, Tırak, p. 127 (photo of the bars)
- ↑ Bingöl, pp. 68f
- ^ Bingöl, p. 86
- ↑ Sinclair, pp 388-394
- ↑ Sinclair, pp. 394-396
