Gebze Mustafa Paşa Külliyesi: Mısır Kaynaklı Taş Bezemeli Memlûk Sanatı

Özet

As a district center in the Marmara Region, Gebze played an important role throughout history due to itslocation on the natural transit zone that connects Istanbul with Anatolia. The known history of the region isdescending 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 ofimportant state duties at the time of Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim) (1512-1520) and Suleiman I (Kanuni SultanSüleyman) (1520-1566).Michael Meinecke, in his examinations of the Mamluk style ornaments in the Ottoman period, cited thatYavuz Sultan Selim liked and wanted to have a similar stone wall decorations in Istanbul as he saw Mamlukbuildings in Cairo. When he returned from the Egyptian expedition, a group of various masters for this artand 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 stylebuilding was not realized. Evliya Çelebi, the famous traveler, told us that Mustafa Pasha ruled as Ottomangovernor in Egypt during the years of 1522-1523 and from Evliya’s works we learn that he sent many stonyitems 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 broughtfrom Egypt, our comparative petrographic studies have revealed that only some of them are of Egyptianorigin. Especially the big rectangle stone slabs are from different rock formations in Egypt’s Eastern Desertregion. Other stone materials used in decoration were provided from different antique Roman quarriesaround 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 thetime of construction. There are minor spolia throughout the ages.