In the midst of the turbulent years following the Battle of Vienna, Gülnuş Valide Sultan’s Galata New Mosque replaced the San Francesco Convent, which had been the principal Catholic shrine of Galata in Istanbul. This mosque was intentionally built on the site of the church in 1696 in order to reshape the religious and demographic character of Galata, and was probably a compensation for the recent disastrous Ottoman military defeats. It appears that economic and social constraints shaped the architecture of the mosque, which was extraordinarily modest despite being a royal mosque. The Galata New Mosque later fell into ruin, and was finally replaced by a hardware market in mid-twentieth century. Drawing on hitherto unused Ottoman archival documents, rare photographs, and other primary sources, this article sheds new light on the history and architecture of a long forgotten royal mosque. I investigate reasons for the unusual architecture of the Galata New Mosque, compare it with contemporary structures, and discuss possible factors that motivated the appropriation of a Catholic space.
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Otto Seeck, ed., Notitia dignitatum: Accedunt Notitia urbis Constantinopolitanae et Laterculi prouinciarum (Berolini: apud Weidmannos, 1876), 240.
François Alphonse Belin, Histoire de la Latinité de Constantinople (Paris: A. Picard, 1894), 187–212; Dünden Bugüne İstanbul Ansiklopedisi, s.v. “Galata,” by Semavi Eyice; Louis Mitler, “The Genoese in Galata,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10, no. 1 (1979): 71–91; Rinaldo Marmara, Bizans’tan Günümüze İstanbul Latin Cemaati ve Kilisesi (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2006), 11–44. According to Rinaldo Marmara, the San Francesco Convent must have been built before 1227 and was first devoted to the Virgin Mary. Soon after the founder of the Franciscan order was canonized in 1230, the church was named after Saint Francis of Assisi (ibid., 32–33).
Eric R. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 142–44.
Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 72, 79, 314.
Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane (London and New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 50–51. After this brief description of the building, Clavijo details the relics he was shown in the Monastery of San Francesco and gives the names of those buried in the church, but he does not mention any architectural features of the church.
Paolo Girardelli, “Between Rome and Istanbul: Architecture and Material Culture of a Franciscan Convent in the Ottoman Capital,” Mediterranean Studies 19 (2010): 162–88, at 105.
Madeline C. Zilfi, “The Kadızadelis: Discordant Revivalism in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 45, no. 4 (1986): 251–69.
VGMA, register no. 1640, 22–23.
Necdet Sakaoğlu, “Emetullah Gülnuş Sultan,” in Yaşamları ve Yapıtlarıyla Osmanlılar Ansiklopedisi, ed. Ekrem Çakıroğlu, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1999), 1:399; Necdet Sakaoğlu, Bu Mülkün Kadın Sultanları: Vâlide Sultanlar, Hâtunlar, Hasekiler, Kadınefendiler, Sultanefendiler(Istanbul: Oğlak Yayınları, 2008), 266–67.
A. D. Alderson, The Structure of the Ottoman Dynasty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), table 38 (cited in M. Çağatay Uluçay, Padişahların Kadınları ve Kızları [Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1980], 65–66); Paul Rycaut, The History of the Turks Beginning with the Year 1679 (London: Robert Clavell and Abel Roper, 1700), 522.
Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 108.
Halime Doğru, Lehistan’da Bir Osmanlı Sultanı: IV. Mehmed’in Kamaniçe-Hotin Seferleri ve Bir Masraf Defteri (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2006), 53.
Alexandros M. Blastos, A History of the Island of Chios, A.D. 70–1822 (London: Privately printed by J. Davy and Sons at the Dryden Press, 1913), 91.
VGMA, register no. 1640, 1–14, 21.
Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, Ottoman Women Builders: The Architectural Patronage of Hadice Turhan Sultan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 9–14; Peirce, Imperial Harem, 198–209. On Hürrem Sultan and Nurbanu Sultan, see Gülru Necipoğlu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 268–92; on the patronage of other royal women, see ibid., 293–76.
Lucienne Thys-Şenocak, “The Yeni Valide Mosque Complex at Eminönü,” Muqarnas 15 (1998): 58–70, at 59.
BOA İE.EV. 26 3019.
Doğan Kuban, Osmanlı Mimarisi (Istanbul: YEM Yayın, 2007), 385–92. However, during the reconstruction of the minaret after its destruction in 1700, tiles (kāşī) were used in its gallery (TSMA E. 79/3).
Silahdar, Nusretnâme, 1:27. Silahdar does not mention Gülnuş Sultan’s participation in Friday prayer or her presence in the royal tribune at the Galata New Mosque. But he does address the pious activities of Gülnuş Sultan within the Üsküdar New Mosque: On the following day [March 6, 1711], Ahmed III inaugurated the complex with the Friday prayer, and the public flooded into the interior and exterior of the mosque and out into the streets around it. After the prayer, Grand Vizier Baltacı Mehmed Paşa, Sheikh-al-Islam Seyyid Ali Efendi, the court viziers and Gülnuş Sultan’s chamberlain Kethüda Mehmed Efendi were given gifts, along with the overseer of the construction Abdülvahap Ağa. The next day, the roads and the houses between Ayazma Garden Palace and the mosque were closed and the mosque was cleansed with incense, and on Sunday [March 8, 1711], Gülnuş Sultan went to her mosque and spent two hours there, praying and reciting the Quran within the walls of her masterpiece (Silahdar, Nusretnâme, 2:269). In the case of the Galata New Mosque, we might therefore assume that Gülnuş Sultan did not attend the Friday prayer with the men, but in all likelihood visited her mosque separately, after the necessary privacy precautions were taken.
VGMA, register no. 1640, 19; and VGMA, register no. 1640, 22–23.
VGMA, register no. 1640, 24–25.
BOA İ. DH. 148 7663. This repair cost 6,522 ġuruş.
BOA ŞD 121 41, BOA BEO 47 3493, BOA İ EV 1 5. These documents date from 1892, when the restoration was already underway. They state that the proposed budget of 49,000 ġuruş was not satisfactory, since the lead roofing of the mosque and minaret’s cone needed repair; therefore, a further 14,953 ġuruş was demanded.
Halil Edhem, Camilerimiz (Istanbul: Kanaat Kütüphanesi, 1932), 90; Semavi Eyice, Galata ve Kulesi (Istanbul: Türkiye Turing ve Otomobil Kurumu, 1969), 16.
Semavi Eyice, Eski İstanbul’dan Notlar (Istanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2006), 16–17.
Zeynep Nayır, Osmanlı Mimarlığında Sultan Ahmet Külliyesi ve Sonrası (1609–1690) (Istanbul: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi Baskı Atölyesi, 1975), 170–94.
Cornelius Gurlitt, İstanbul’un Mimari Sanatı (Ankara: Enformasyon ve Dokümantasyon Hizmetleri Vakfı, 1999), 75–76. Gurlitt, who compares the Galata New Mosque with the Hacı Evhad Mosque in Samatya due to their similar articulation, drew this plan during his stay in Istanbul in the first decade of the twentieth century (Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, s.v. “Gurlitt, Cornelius,” by Semavi Eyice).
Thys-Şenocak, “The Yeni Valide Mosque Complex at Eminönü,” 58–70.
Thys-Şenocak, “The Yeni Valide Mosque Complex at Eminönü,” 63–64, 67.
Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 65.
Thys-Şenocak, “The Yeni Valide Mosque Complex at Eminönü,” 66–67.
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In the midst of the turbulent years following the Battle of Vienna, Gülnuş Valide Sultan’s Galata New Mosque replaced the San Francesco Convent, which had been the principal Catholic shrine of Galata in Istanbul. This mosque was intentionally built on the site of the church in 1696 in order to reshape the religious and demographic character of Galata, and was probably a compensation for the recent disastrous Ottoman military defeats. It appears that economic and social constraints shaped the architecture of the mosque, which was extraordinarily modest despite being a royal mosque. The Galata New Mosque later fell into ruin, and was finally replaced by a hardware market in mid-twentieth century. Drawing on hitherto unused Ottoman archival documents, rare photographs, and other primary sources, this article sheds new light on the history and architecture of a long forgotten royal mosque. I investigate reasons for the unusual architecture of the Galata New Mosque, compare it with contemporary structures, and discuss possible factors that motivated the appropriation of a Catholic space.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1228 | 136 | 22 |
Full Text Views | 202 | 4 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 104 | 14 | 1 |