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rebuilding anatolia after the mongol conquest
This book is a study of Islamic architecture in Anatolia following the Mongol conquest in 1243. Complex shifts in rule, movements of population, and cultural transformations took place that affected architecture on multiple levels. Beginning with the Mongol conquest of Anatolia, and ending with the demise of the Ilkhanid Empire, centred in Iran, in the 1330s, this book considers how the integration of Anatolia into the Mongol world system transformed architecture and patronage in the region.
Traditionally, this period has been studied within the larger narrative of a progression from Seljuk to Ottoman rule and architecture, in a historiography that privileges Turkish national identity. Once Anatolia is studied within the framework of the Mongol Empire, however, the region no longer appears as an isolated case; rather it is integrated into a broader context beyond the modern borders of Turkey, Iran, and the Caucasus republics.
The monuments built during this period served a number of purposes: mosques were places of prayer and congregation, madrasas were used to teach Islamic law and theology, and caravanserais secured trade routes for merchants and travelers. This study analyzes architecture on multiple, overlapping levels, based on a detailed observation of the monuments. The layers of information extracted from the monuments themselves, from written sources in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and from historical photographs, shape an image of Islamic architecture in medieval Anatolia that reflects the complexities of this frontier region.
New patrons emerged, craftsmen migrated between neighboring regions, and the use of locally available materials fostered the transformation of designs in ways that are closely tied to specific places. Starting from these sources, this book untangles the intertwined narratives of architecture, history, and religion to provide a broader understanding of frontier culture in the medieval Middle East, with its complex interaction of local, regional, and trans-regional identities. Patricia Blessing is a staff member at the Stanford Humanities Center and Lecturer, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University, USA.
Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to thank my teachers whose dedication and insights made it possible for me to accomplish the work in this book, and the studies leading up to it. I thank my doctoral adviser, Thomas Leisten for his support and enthusiasm during my years as a graduate student at Princeton University, and for the opportunity to work on his excavation in Balis, Syria. Nino Zchomelidse has fostered my interest in all things medieval, and pushed me to look beyond the divisions between medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Islam in my research and writing.
Michael Koortbojian joined my dissertation committee towards the end of writing, supplying challenging questions that proved their value, even more so as revision of the text progressed. Gülru Necipoğlu graciously commented on my project with her expertise on Anatolia and her critical approach to the historiography of medieval Islamic art and architecture.
During a semester spent at Harvard University, she and Cemal Kafadar provided platforms for my forays into medieval Anatolia. Scott Redford carefully read my dissertation, and his comments inspired many of the revisions that are reflected in this book. To Slobodan Ćurčić I am greatly indebted; he opened the doors of Byzantium for me, and gave crucial advice and encouragement. Sadly, the late Oleg Grabar did not see the final result of his comments and criticisms; many of them led me to new roads in my research, and opened my mind to unexpected conclusions. For funding to support my work, I am grateful to the Graduate School at Princeton for a four-year graduate fellowship and for the Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship.
My research was supported by a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship in the History of Art, and a dissertation grant from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton. The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton provided a Stanley J. Seeger summer fellowship, and its executive director Dimitri Gondicas was a supportive and cheerful presence throughout my time as a graduate student. I also thank the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis, particularly Jeffrey Ruda and Heghnar Watenpaugh for giving me the opportunity to teach in their summer school.
At Stanford University, the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Department of History, and the Department of Art and Art History provided much-needed resources. Support for the publication of this book came from an International Center of Medieval Art-Samuel H. Kress Foundation Research Award, and from the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.
Many institutions provided access to their archives without which I would not have been able to complete this project. Lorenz Korn (Otto-Friedrich Universität, Bamberg) allowed me to use images from the Erdmann slide collection. Jens Kröger at the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin gave me access to the photographic archive and pointed me to Kurt Erdmann’s diaries. Filiz Çakır-Philip and ClausPeter Haase at the same institution answered questions on objects from Konya in the museum’s collections. At the Pontificio Istituto Orientale in Rome, Vincenzo Ruggieri S.J. allowed me to work on Guillaume de Jerphanion’s early twentiethcentury photographs of Anatolia, even when the archive was officially closed. At the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, I was able to view Ernst Diez’s papers at short notice.
In Ankara, I thank the director and staff of the Vakıflar Arşivi and Emine Altıntaş for their help. At the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Istanbul, Nuran Özgenler provided images from the extensive photographic archive. I thank the staff of the İsmail Hakkı Konyalı Library in Istanbul for giving me access to the collection and adjusting their schedule to my needs. At the Fine Arts Library of Harvard University, Dr Andraś Riedlmayer and Joanne Bloom Toplyn opened the treasuries of their collections. In Princeton, the staff of Marquand Library were always ready to provide out-of-the way books, and Diane Schulte and Susan Lehre in the Art and Archaeology Department office guided me through administrative vagaries.
At Stanford University, many colleagues and friends have created an environment that allowed me to thrive. I particularly thank Shahzad Bashir, Joel Beinin, Robert Crews, Julia Erwin-Weiner, Paula Findlen, Marisa Galvez, Burcu Karahan, Burçak Keskin-Kozat, Alexander Key, Beatrice Kitzinger, Nancy Kollmann, Peter O’Connell, Bissera Pentcheva, Richard Roberts, Kathryn Starkey, Nancy Troy, Monica Wheeler, and Kären Wigen. For their support, I also thank my colleagues at the Stanford Humanities Center, particularly former director Aron Rodrigue, current director Caroline Winterer, former associate director Katja Zelljadt, and current associate director Roland Hsu.
Deniz Beyazit, Suna Çağaptay, Howard Crane, Antony Eastmond, Rachel Goshgarian, Gary Leiser, Judith Pfeiffer, Luca Pizzoccheri, Scott Redford, Nicolas Trépanier, Suzan Yalman, and Sara Nur Yıldız generously shared their work on related topics with me. At various times during the writing of my dissertation and of the book it became, Fr. Gerald Blaszczak S.J., Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, Dominic Brookshaw, Merthan Dündar, John Haldon, Renata Holod, Ömür Harmanşah, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Amity Law, Maria Mavroudi, Robert G. Morrison, Stephennie Mulder, Oya Pancaroğlu, Oktay Özel, Leonard Schmieding, Heghnar Watenpaugh, and Sibel Zandi-Sayek provided advice. My thanks are due to all of them. At the OttoFriedrich Universität in Bamberg, I am indebted to Lorenz Korn for first introducing me to the history of Islamic art, and to Professor emerita Rotraudt Wielandt for her rigorous teaching of classical Arabic. My colleagues at the International Journal of Islamic Architecture have provided wonderful team spirit and welcome distractions from the business of writing and revising.
I could not have written this book without my friends and family. My friendship with Konstantin Klein and Philipp Wirtz, reaching back to our days as undergraduates, has lasted through travels to Syria and getting our PhDs in different corners of the world. Mika Natif shared scholarly debates, a class on Islamic painting, and lots of laughs. My fellow medievalists and Islamicists at Princeton, Marius Hauknes, Francesca Leoni, Yumna Masarwa, Matthew Milliner, Mira Schwerda, Jaqueline Sturm and Nabojša Stanković shared many seminars and rare leisure time. Christina Papadimitriou and Mark Britz; Tuna and Betül Artun; Senem Arslan, and Alexander Balistreri invited me to stay at their places. Maria Andrioti, Nika Elder, Lorenz Enderlein, Giovanni Freni, Haim Goldfus, Johanna Heinrichs, Seth Hindin, and Erik Thunø were library and office companions at various times. Alessandra Ricci hosted me in Istanbul, and encouraged my early ventures into Anatolia.
At Harvard, Meredith Quinn, Deniz Türker, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, Ezgi Dikici, Melis Taner, Hilal Akçal Uğurlu, Ömer Ziyal and Aleksandar Šopov shared long hours of deciphering Ottoman documents. Katherine Marsengill has become a great friend, reading many of my early dissertation drafts and providing a place to stay in New York. Maria Cristina Carile has shared many academic debates, laughs, walks through Ravenna and Istanbul, and escapes to the beach. Deniz Coşkun provided the drawings of all the floor plans that are reproduced in this book. Phillip Schwartzberg created the maps. Sophie Schlöndorff edited the text early on. John Smedley, Emily Pace, and their team at Ashgate provided guidance throughout the publishing process, and were always ready to respond to my queries.
I also thank the anonymous peer reviewer whose insightful comments did much to improve this book. Needless to say, all remaining errors are my own. My greatest thanks are due to my mother, Christine Blessing and her partner, Markus Heiniger, for always supporting me morally and financially even if my studies and research took me far away from them. My grandparents, Hans and Marianne Trost, my uncle Stephan Trost and his family, and my cousin, Zahra Trovatori always provide welcome breaks from academia.
Throughout my work on this project, my husband, Ali Yaycıoğlu, has been my greatest support, encouraging me to think outside the box, challenging me intellectually, and providing emotional backing. His extended family has made Turkey a second home: Rezan and Alaettin Yaycıoğlu; Zeynep Baltalı; Sevil Baltalı-Tırpan and S. Tuluğ Tırpan with their son Deniz; Saime Bicirik; Yasemin Biricik-Tüjümet; Hüsnü Coşkun and his daughter Derya; Annette and Haydar Coşkun; Deniz Coşkun; Meliha Coşkun-Yıldar and Canbek Yıldar with their children Mina and Onat; Sevgi and Hayri Karay with their daughter Almila, and many other members of the extended family have supported my research in Turkey and made life in general much more pleasant. I thank them all.
Note on transliteration
In transliterating Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish, I have largely followed the guidelines suggested by the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES).1 An exception are the letters ‘ayn and hamza, which I transliterated as ‘for ‘ayn and’ for hamza, respectively. Words that have entered English usage, such as madrasa, ulema, Sufi and kadi are not italicized. Place names that are current in English usage (e.g. Baghdad, Konya, Tabriz) are spelled without transliteration. Personal names are fully transliterated (e.g. ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Juwaynī).
Mongolian names and terms are rendered in a transliteration that corresponds to their use in Persian or Arabic (e.g. Uljāytū, Ghāzān Khān, yarlīgh, tamghā). Except in direct quotations from primary sources, Anglicized plurals are used throughout (e.g. waqfīyas, madhhabs rather than waqfīyāt, madhāhib). Simplified modern Turkish spelling is used for the names of monuments located in Anatolia (e.g. Şifaiye Medrese rather than Shifā’īya Madrasa or Şifaiye Medresesi, and Karatay Medrese rather than Qaraṭāy Madrasa or Karatay Medresesi). Dates, where available, are given according to the Muslim calendar, followed by the Common Era date (e.g. 670/ 1271–72). To improve clarity, centuries are indicated according to the Common Era only (e.g. thirteenth century rather than seventh/ thirteenth century).
Introduction:
Reframing the lands of Rūm This book is a study of Islamic architecture in Anatolia (roughly present-day Turkey) after the Mongol conquest of the region in 639/ 1243. The complex shifts in rule, population movements, and cultural transformations that took place at the time affected architecture on multiple levels. When the Mongol empire broke up into four distinct, if interdependent, realms (the Ilkhanate, the Golden Horde, the Chaghatay Khanate, and the Yuan dynasty) beginning in the 1250s, Anatolia became part of the Ilkhanid realm with its center in Tabriz in western Iran.1
Beginning with the conquest of Anatolia by Mongol armies in the middle of the thirteenth century, and ending with the decline of the Mongol Ilkhanid Empire centered in Iran in the 1330s, this book considers how the integration of Anatolia into the Mongol world system transformed architecture and patronage in the region. Traditionally, this period has been studied within the larger narrative of a progression from Seljuk to Ottoman architecture, in the context of a historiography that privileges Turkish national identity.
Only in recent years has a critical body of scholarship emerged that establishes a new framework for medieval Anatolia, with a fresh view of the underlying historiographical issues and national narratives. By establishing a particular sense of place, medieval Anatolian architecture reflects the complexities of the region in this particular historical moment and discredits the standard narrative of a unified dynastic style. Seen in this context, Anatolia appears both as a distinctive geographic entity with features particular to this region and as a place closely connected to larger neighboring territories such as the Caucasus, northern Syria, and western Iran.
Studying the architecture of medieval Anatolia within the wider context of the Mongol imperial umbrella, I will show that, far from being a singular, isolated case, it is an integral part of a broader framework that reaches beyond the borders of modern Turkey to include Iran and the Caucasus republics of Armenia and Georgia. According to the established narrative, the fragmentation of Anatolia into small principalities (beyliks in Turkish) in the course of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries came directly after two centuries of Seljuk rule that began in the late eleventh century.
Yet a closer examination of the historical context shows that this fragmentation is actually the result of a process that began earlier, with the weakening of Seljuk rule at the hands of the Mongols in the second half of the thirteenth century. At the architectural level, political events rarely resulted in stylistic changes that can be directly associated with particular shifts in power. Rather, the processes were more complex, involving not only changes in rulership but also, even more importantly, the development of cultural networks between Anatolia and surrounding regions. Another essential factor in the discussion of local and cross-regional styles is the prevailing mobility of workshops, with craftsmen from various areas and regions traveling to those sites where patronage was available, in particular in the early thirteenth century.
These craftsmen, who came to Anatolia (at first mostly to the Seljuk capital of Konya) from regions as far-flung as northern Syria, Iran, and Central Asia, brought with them skill-sets and design principles that, over time, were adapted to locally available materials. New designs and techniques emerged from the synergies created when skilled workers from different regions, with various skills and knowledge of materials such as stone, stucco, tile, and wood, gathered in new workshops together with local craftsmen.
The imported and local forms were the basis for highly skilled work, shaping architecture that is stylistically diverse, just as the historical context of Anatolia that produced it is complex. Therefore, stylistic analysis and close observation of monuments is useful in understanding the presence of the same or related workshops on different building sites, even though the written sources hardly ever address craftsmen and their work practices. The few signatures of builders, stone-carvers, and carpenters that can be found on buildings and mosque furniture in medieval Anatolia show the diverse origins of craftsmen, but do not tell us anything about workshop structure. Nor do they, in many cases, explain the place of a certain figure within the construction process.
As I will discuss further in Chapter 2, the identification of different, if similar, signatures with one (historically not otherwise documented) person stylized as a master builder is problematic. It suits a tendency in the history of Islamic art to look for builders and craftsmen who can be named, perhaps following a Renaissance model in which, at least since Vasari, the artist and his (rarely her) biography are central.2
I will eschew the attempt to attribute monuments to a specific master builder or architect, and rather pay attention to the ways in which close stylistic analysis can show how, in medieval Anatolia, workshops moved from one city to another, from one building site to the next, and how different sub-groups of the same workshop could be employed on several parallel construction projects. Thus, the attention paid to details of decoration and construction will allow me both to challenge the myth of the master builder and to demonstrate that several, distinct workshops could collaborate on one and the same building site. Moreover, this will also allow me to reevaluate the relationship between patrons and workshops. We will see that the notion of exclusive employment of one workshop for a singular patron at one time (perhaps related to the extensive evidence for imperial workshops in the sixteenth-century Ottoman empire) does not apply in thirteenth-century Anatolia. The same workshop could work for the sultan and one of his notables in Konya (as shown in Chapter 1), while in Sivas, a patron from Anatolia and one from Iran, despite their different political affiliations, commissioned the same workshop for parts of the buildings they had constructed (as we will see in Chapter 2).
Thus, even though historical events influenced who was able to commission monuments (both in financial and political terms), and made a certain city more or less attractive for the highly mobile workshops of the time, they did not necessarily determine architectural style. As I will show throughout this book, the integration of Anatolia into the Mongol empire fostered local styles, influenced much more by the continued presence and mobility of different workshops, and their use of local techniques and materials, than by the political realities of the day. At the same time, patterns of patronage profoundly changed because of the political and economic shifts of the period, affecting the types, scale, and location of the monuments that were built. Hence, while challenging the assumption that an exclusive correlation between architecture (and its style) and a given political power exists, I shift attention to the monuments themselves, using them as crucial sources for the cultural and economic dynamics of the time.
Within this framework, monuments are points of reference for larger socio-cultural developments that are tied to a specific place, Anatolia, and to specific sites within it, namely the cities in which these monuments were built. The idea of a geography of art, with its attention to cross-regional networks, is part of the broader attempt to move beyond a narrowly defined geographical unit.3 The term “lands of Rūm” in the subtitle of this book roots my study in the cultural geography of the region—part Roman by way of Byzantium, part Islamic by way of the Arabic term for the Byzantine realm. “Rūm” refers at once to Rome, Byzantium, and Anatolia while the adjective “Rūmī” can mean Greek, Byzantine, Anatolian, or Ottoman—to name just a few of a whole range of nuances.4
The term “lands of Rūm” thus alludes to core concepts that are at issue throughout this book: mobility, frontier, and geography. During the period of the Mongol conquests, which began in Central Asia in the 1220s and rapidly moved on to Iran, Anatolia, despite its frontier character, initially became a comparatively attractive destination for refugees, including scholars and craftsmen. When the Mongol armies reached Anatolia in the third decade of their conquests, however, the region’s position as a frontier was redefined. It was now also at the western edge of the Mongol realm, and no longer exclusively a borderland between Christianity and Islam. The notions of frontier and frontier culture are essential to any study of medieval Anatolia, especially after Cemal Kafadar’s influential book on the genesis of the Ottoman Empire and its ghāzī culture.5
The latter term, related to the ghazā (Muslim warriors’ efforts to secure territories for their own profit as much as for Islam), was essential to the initial Seljuk conquest of Anatolia in the late eleventh century, but also later on, when the relationship between urban and rural, and sedentary and nomadic, milieus was a constant renegotiation. The region’s inherent instability, along with the fluid identity and mobility of its populations is essential to understanding Anatolia, which experienced constant upheaval, dotted with occasional islands of stability, throughout the Middle Ages. Yet a frontier is not just an empty area waiting to be filled. Rather, it represents a space in which newcomers (be they conquerors or refugees) and locals have to negotiate the terms of politics, religion, and culture. Along these lines, Engseng Ho, in his insightful study of the genealogies of sayyid families (the Arabic term for families that count themselves among the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad) in medieval and early modern Yemen, and of the Yemeni diaspora in Southeast Asia, evoked the frontier as a concept not of emptiness, but of cultural exchange.6
Thus, frontier lands are not terrain vague, devoid of human settlement and culture, vague both in character and in terms of their lack of spatial definition. Rather, the frontier is a frontier only for the culture that enters, whereas for the people(s) already present, it remains what it always was: their home. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the Seljuk court of Konya provided a few decades of relative stability (see Map 1), allowing for great technical feats and aesthetic accomplishments in architecture in the early decades of the thirteenth century. The city was under constant construction, in particular during the rule of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād (r. 616–36/ 1220–37), who restored the Seljuk capital to its glory after the temporary threat of conquest during the Third Crusade in 1190.7
This period of Seljuk consolidation and centralization, when Konya was the capital and focus of patronage together with the surrounding region, has received the most scholarly attention, and is also the focus of the most extensive contemporary chronicle of Seljuk rule in Anatolia, Ibn Bībī’s al-Avāmir al-‘alā’iyya fī ‘l-‘umūr al-‘alā’iyya. 8 Nevertheless, the prevalent frontier culture of the region subtly affected these projects: the architecture remained the result of combining and shifting styles, eclectically bringing together seemingly disparate elements. In keeping with the frontier character so intrinsic to the region’s identity, the budding of a relatively centralized Seljuk realm did not immediately result in a stylistic unity directly linked to the royal patronage. If such a unifying tendency was visible to some extent in the 1220s, the Mongol takeover a mere two decades later put an end to it, privileging local styles instead.
It is this later period, from the 1240s to the 1330s, that is the focus of this book, which aims to paint a multifaceted picture of the patronage and architecture that emerged in several key cities in central Anatolia during this period (see Map 2). This attention to specific places in particular historical moments has led me to move beyond the study of one single category of monuments, either religious or ‘secular’, to the extent that the latter term is valid for the period studied here. Thus, while many studies of the architecture of medieval Anatolia focus on one type of monument (mosques, madrasas, or caravanserais, for instance), I have chosen instead to concentrate on particular cities and to study the extant monuments from the period discussed here.
The monuments in and of themselves say a lot about patterns of patronage from the 1240s to the 1330s, the decades that I focus on. If hardly any mosques are discussed in this book, it is because most mosques in Anatolia were built quite soon after the Seljuk conquest, throughout the twelfth century. Madrasas, on the other hand, were popular objects of patronage throughout the thirteenth century, and particularly after 1240, for reasons that are further discussed in Chapters 1, 2, and 3. Similarly, many monuments (various called khānqāhs, zāwiyas, or dervish lodges) related to the ritual and daily needs of Sufi communities were built in this period.
They reflect the religious milieu of the time, including the relationship between Sufis and ulema (discussed particularly in Chapters 1 and 4). At the secular level, caravanserais were important for the functioning of trade networks ever since Anatolia was integrated into the broader Islamic world and, clearly, the monuments commissioned by the Seljuk sultans in central Anatolia in the 1220s and 1230s continued to function into the fourteenth century. At the same time, shifting trade routes that came with the increased connections to Iran and the Black Sea region from the 1290s (discussed in Chapter 4) onwards led to the construction of caravanserais in north-eastern Anatolia, a region that was never central during the apogee of Seljuk rule.
Here, the economic integration of Anatolia into the Ilkhanid realm can be seen best, just as it is in the Ilkhanid coins minted in the region in the early fourteenth century and in tax inscriptions applied to monuments at the same time. This leaves the question of palaces, a type of monument that I do not discuss in this study for lack of evidence. None of the Seljuk palaces are fully extant; the ones that have been excavated, most notably the palace of Kubādabād, located on an island in Lake Beyşehir, date to the 1220s and earlier.9 Nothing remains of the mansions that the powerful patrons of the 1240s to 1280 presumably had. The Ilkhanids, with their center in Iran, had no interest in building palaces in Anatolia, a fact owed also to the peripatetic nature of the court, still rooted in a nomadic lifestyle.10
Summer and winter camps existed in different parts of the Ilkhanid realm—one of the summer camps, Alātāgh, was in fact located in the vicinity of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia.11 Thus, the monuments presented in this study reflect the types of buildings that were in particularly in demand at any given time in a specific location, often owing to a particular local context. Hence, as I will argue throughout this book, medieval Anatolia has to be treated as a place in which architecture is closely tied to local dynamics and workshops, much more so than to the broader imperial dynamics of Mongol, and later Ilkhanid, rule. At the same time, the historical, economic, and cultural context did affect the dynamics of patronage, movements of workshops, and financial means—conditions that, in turn, transformed architecture. The study of the architecture of empire, and of architecture as the expression of an empire’s aspiration to unify its realm in one cultural and stylistic sphere, is of course justified in many cases, especially for the early modern empires of the Islamic world, including the Ottomans and Safavids.
The architecture of Ilkhanid Iran and of Mamluk Egypt and Syria during the Middle Ages—in particular the way in which these two dynasties competed for monumentality—can also be seen in terms of unified, empire-wide building campaigns.12 In the case of medieval Anatolia, as I will demonstrate in detail throughout this book, architecture became increasingly localized under the Mongol imperial umbrella—an observation that pertains to patrons of various categories, including the Ilkhanid governors. Seen in this light, medieval Anatolia is no longer an isolated unit that developed its own idiosyncratic architectural styles.
Thus, as I argue, the region emerges as part of a larger network of economic and cultural exchange that included Iran and the Caucasus. Though the dynamics of Ilkhanid patronage evolved in various directions they nevertheless remained connected to the overall system of the Mongol empire as a site for the exchange of commodities, as Thomas Allsen has argued.13 The revitalization of trade networks reflected the impact of economic reforms introduced under Ghāzān Khān (r. 694–704/ 1295–1304), after his conversion to Islam.14 These networks, visible on the ground in the rare remains of caravanserais built in Armenia and western Iran in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, were connected to those in Anatolia, where the Seljuk sultans had already begun to establish an infrastructure for trade in the 1220s. While the Seljuk network of caravanserais was particularly strong in the region of Konya, and in connecting the ports of the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, it shifted eastwards after the Mongol conquest.15 Throughout this period, Sivas remained a hub for commerce due to its location at the intersection of trade routes, and it continued to rise in importance in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Ilkhanid investment in these trade systems, through remonetization and fostering Black Sea trade, connected Anatolia with the caravanserai network of Iran (see Map 3). Cities like Erzurum, one of the case studies in this book, benefitted from these new opportunities.16 Thus, while trade and caravanserais are secondary to this study that focuses on the urban centers that emerged and were reshaped during the period under investigation here, they are nonetheless an important part of the background for this transformation.
Anatolia, from Seljuk to Mongol rule A detailed introduction to events, historical figures, and sources—necessary for understanding the complex historical context of the period—is provided below and referenced throughout the following chapters. The initial conquest of Asia Minor by Turkic forces arriving from Iran began under the command of the Great Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan (r. 455–65/ 1063–73), initiating the Islamization of Anatolia. When Alp Arslan’s forces began to move into Anatolia, the Byzantine emperors were struggling to hold on to the eastern parts of the region.17 Nevertheless, the defeat of Romanos IV Diogenes (r. 1068–71) at Manzikert (Malazgirt), and the emperor’s captivity and subsequent death, came as a shock, even though recent research suggests that it may have been the culmination of the Byzantines’ gradual loss of control over much of Anatolia, which had begun as early as the 1040s.18
These conquests caused considerable upheaval as power constantly shifted back and forth between the Seljuks and the Byzantines, as well as between the Turkic groups and their Turcoman affiliates.19 Though a fragile peace was achieved occasionally, the Byzantine defeat at the battle of Myriokephalon in 571/ 1176 forced Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143–80) to cede large parts of central and eastern Anatolia to the Seljuks. Over the following decades, military leaders who had initially come to the region with the Great Seljuk armies progressively conquered large parts of eastern and central Anatolia, and began to establish their own proto-states based on complex relationships between the dynasty and Turcoman tribes.20 The Seljuks and Danishmendids proved to be the most successful in establishing their autonomy at the head of independent proto-states.
The Danishmendids had held Sivas since the late eleventh century and took over Malatya in 496/ 1103, even forging alliances with Crusader forces against the Seljuks. Weakened by its division into three parts in 559/ 1164, the Danishmendid principality progressively lost its lands to the Seljuks, until its last stronghold, Malatya, fell in 573/ 1178.21 In Erzurum, the Saltukids were the local rulers from 465/ 1072 to 598/ 1202, a time during which they were in conflict with both the neighboring Danishmendids and the kingdom of Georgia. Eventually, the Seljuks vanquished them, too.22 The Mengücekids in Divriği persisted until the mid-thirteenth century because they had acknowledged Seljuk sovereignty, and even outlived the Mongol conquest.23 The initial period of Muslim rule in Anatolia was characterized by rivalries between various local rulers. In terms of patronage, these rulers established the basic infrastructure of a Muslim proto-state in their respective regions, with the foundation of Friday mosques and madrasas. The Danishmendids in the region of Tokat and Sivas, the Saltukids in the region of Erzurum and Erzincan, and the Rūm Seljuks in the region of Konya each started construction projects aimed at establishing such an infrastructure.
At this stage, local styles and customs of building (such as the use of stone masonry) persisted, even as features appropriate for mosques (such as prayer niches and minarets) and certain forms of decoration (such as glazed tile mosaic) were imported, probably through the migration of craftsmen from Iran and Syria, as is documented by signatures in some cases. The locally available stone, for instance, had an impact on decoration: a softer limestone in the region of Sivas allowed for more subtle and plastic carving, while in the basalt of Erzurum, decoration remained closer to the surface of the wall and included motifs such as blind arches to provide rhythm, a feature seen already in the Armenian churches of the region. As the Seljuks in Konya began to expand their realm, they did so at the expense of the Danishmendids, Saltukids, and other smaller rivals, slowly adding large sections of central and eastern Anatolia, from Konya to Erzurum, to their territories. Newly conquered cities were first secured with the construction of military structures such as walls and citadels, financed by the Seljuk sultans and their amīrs. After the conquest of Sinop in 611/ 1214, inscriptions referring to the victorious sultan, as well as to the amīrs involved in the construction project, were placed on newly built towers and walls to mark Seljuk rule.24
Similarly, after the second conquest of Antalya in 613/ 1216, the fortifications were repaired and marked with elaborate narrative inscriptions celebrating the victory.25 Once the Seljuks had removed most of their rivals and could make investments in relative security, their patronage expanded. They established a dense network of caravanserais along trade routes and either restored or founded mosques and some madrasas. A style connected to the Seljuk patronage slowly emerged, yet an imperial architecture was never fully realized. The inherent fluidity of the cultural milieu, along with the mobility of participating craftsmen, certainly contributed to the ephemeral and unstable nature of this style.
The Mongol invasions in 639/ 1243, followed by the progressive integration of Anatolia into the Mongol realm, interrupted the development of a Seljuk royal style and led instead to an emphasis on local patrons, workforces, materials, and styles. The geographical concentration of Seljuk patronage in the region around Konya before the Mongol conquest shows that the sultans operated comfortably where their domination was most secure, primarily in an area limited to the region southwest of the river Kızıl Irmak, with a particular concentration in Konya. This city was the closest semblance to a capital, even though the sultan had residences in other locations, including in Sivas and Kayseri, as well as many smaller structures across Anatolia. To the south, the Taurus Mountains formed a natural boundary that was not easily crossed. The conquests of the port cities of Sinop and Antalya provided the Seljuks with access to the Black Sea and Mediterranean, a significant boost to trade.
Yet Seljuk hold always proved to be less stable in the eastern areas of Anatolia, giving these lands the character of a frontier shared by the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Iran. The richest foundations, in terms of the wealth of the architecture and of the related waqfs, are located within the zone around Konya, whereas only a little was built at the behest of the Seljuk sultans in the eastern cities of Erzurum and Erzincan. During the most stable period of Seljuk rule in Anatolia, between 1200 and 1243, the region of Konya became a center of artistic production that attracted architects and craftsmen. Seemingly disparate stylistic vocabularies with roots in Iran, Syria, and Armenia were combined in new constructions with a degree of creativity that often defies categorization. The stylistic and technical versatility on display in these buildings shows that the patronage of the Seljuk court attracted some of the most skillful craftsmen. At this specific moment in time, and in this specific location, the conditions of patronage, in keeping with the imperial aspirations of the Seljuk sultans, fostered a level of creativity that was unrivaled in the wider region at that point. While this patronage increasingly supported a unified architectural style, this was not uniformly the case across Anatolia.
Indeed, architectural style often took shape based on the dynamics of artistic creativity and structural possibilities, without being restricted by the mechanisms of imperial control and ideology. In the late 1230s, the Mongol armies, advancing from Central Asia into Iran and further into the Middle East, reached Anatolia. Initially, their incursions were limited to occasional attacks on cities, along with diplomatic contacts demanding that the Seljuks submit to Mongol rule, pay tribute, and send emissaries to the Mongol Great Khan’s court. These diplomatic efforts came to an end with the death of the Great Khan Ögödei in 638/ 1241, when succession struggles among the Mongols ended negotiations.26 During the rule of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw II (r. 636–44/ 1237–46), who was just a teenager at the time of his accession, the Seljuk realm appeared weakened and presented the Mongol armies with ample opportunities for more targeted attacks, which were now aimed at conquest rather than raiding.27 The city of Erzurum was the first to be attacked and conquered in 639/ 1242.
The Seljuk chronicler Ibn Bībī describes the conquest in the darkest terms, suggesting that a large part of the population was led into slavery or killed and parts of the city were destroyed, without however indicating what buildings or areas of the city were affected.28 Writing in the 1280s, several decades after the attack, Ibn Bībī may have used topoi about the destructive nature of the Mongol conquests, yet contemporary Armenian sources describe the event in similarly negative terms, suggesting that it was generally perceived to be traumatic.29 In the summer of 640/ 1243, the army of the Seljuk sultan was defeated at the battle of Kösedağ, a site located between Sivas and Erzincan.30 Anatolia was now under the authority of the Mongols, and the Seljuks were required to pay tribute to the Mongol Great Khan, though the sultan in Konya remained nominally in place. Continuing their invasion of Anatolia, the Mongol armies moved on to Sivas, a city that only narrowly escaped destruction. According to Ibn Bībī, the kadi of the city, Najm al-Dīn of Kırşehir, had encountered the Mongol Great Khan in Iran in his youth and had received a paize (passport shaped like a shield) and yarligh (an edict of authorization) from him. As the army under Baiju Noyan advanced towards the city, the kadi went to meet him and presented his documents. The Mongol general agreed to plunder only one section of the city, ordering his soldiers to stop after three days.31 The Mongols then proceeded to Kayseri, conquering and burning down the city after a siege.
The destruction subsequently continued in southeastern Anatolia and into northern Syria. Unable to resist the Mongol takeover any longer, the Seljuks were forced to submit to their rule.32 Internal troubles accentuated the political instability created by the Mongol attacks. The succession struggles after the death of Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw II in 644/ 1246 persisted for years, ultimately largely deciding the fate of Anatolia under Mongol rule. At first, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw II’s three sons—‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād II, ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs II, and Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV—ruled together under the administration of Jalāl al-Dīn Qaraṭāy.33 After Jalāl al-Dīn Qaraṭāy’s death in 652/ 1254, the agreement dissolved.34 The prevailing chaos in Anatolia emboldened the Mongol general Baiju Noyan to invade the region once again, resulting in the destruction of parts of the city walls of Konya in 654/ 1256. In the course of these events, Mu‘īn al-Dīn Sulaymān pervāne’s rise to power began.35 A few years earlier, in 639/ 1243, his father, Muhadhdhab al-Dīn ‘Alī al-Daylamī, had negotiated a truce and tribute between the Mongols and the Seljuk sultans.36
In 654/ 1256 ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs II sought refuge with the Laskarid Byzantine emperor in Nicaea (İznik), where he had relatives on his (ethnically Greek) mother’s side.37 The deposed sultan’s flight points to the broader historical context of the decades following the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when a Latin emperor was installed in the Byzantine capital. This resulted in the dismantling of the Byzantine Empire, with several vestigial principalities claiming its legacy—the Laskarid Empire of Nicaea, the Komneni in Trebizond, and Michael Doukas’s realm in Epiros.38 After Michael VIII Palaiologos reentered Constantinople in 1261, the newly restored empire tried to rise to its former glory, even as the Empire of Trebizond persisted. The latter ultimately survived longer than its mother state, not falling to the Ottomans until 1461, several years after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. In Trebizond, just as in other parts of Anatolia during this period, the formation of a local identity (Byzantine of sorts, in this particular case) clearly emerged in architecture.39
The Seljuk struggle for power took place amidst various different principalities, with actors that included the Byzantine emperors, along with Crusaders, Mongols, and Mamluks. In 655/ 1257, while Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV traveled to Iran to attend the court of the Ilkhan Hülegü (r. 654–63/ 1256–65), ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs II seized Konya. Upon his return to Anatolia the following year, Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān learned of his deposition, although Hülegü had appointed him the sole sultan of Rūm.40 By then, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād II had died on a mission to pay tribute to the Great Khan in Mongolia.41 After prolonged fighting between the two remaining brothers, Mu‘īn alDīn Sulaymān pervāne called for support from Ilkhanid forces, and they intervened, dividing the Seljuk realm into two sections.
The river Kızıl Irmak served as a natural boundary between the territories of ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs II to the west, and Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV to the east; the former retained Konya, while the latter chose Tokat as his capital.42 However, the tensions between the two sultans remained. Ṣāḥib ‘Aṭā Fakhr alDīn ‘Alī became the vizier of ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs II, while Mu‘īn al-Dīn Sulaymān pervāne took this post in the realm of Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV. Even as ‘Izz alDīn Kaykāwūs II tried to negotiate a reconciliation with his brother, a new Mongol intervention brought about another change in events: Mu‘īn al-Dīn Sulaymān pervāne offered Ṣāḥib ‘Aṭā Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Alī the post of vizier of all of Seljuk Anatolia, on condition that he accept the rule of Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV.
Once the deal had been concluded, Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV entered Konya in 659/ 1261, while the fight against revolting Turcoman tribes continued for another year.43 ‘Izz al-Dīn Kaykāwūs II fled to Constantinople, later living out his days in exile in the Crimea, where he died in 678/ 1279–80.44 After the death of Rukn al-Dīn Qilij Arslān IV, his young son Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw III (r. 662–82/ 1262–83) was installed, while Mu‘īn al-Dīn Sulaymān pervāne remained the de facto ruler of Anatolia.45 In 675/ 1277, a campaign undertaken by the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, Baybars I (r. 658–76/ 1260–77), resulted in tighter Ilkhanid control of Anatolia. During that same year, the Karamanids, a rising local dynasty from a city near Konya, conquered the former capital and installed a Turcoman leader, Cimri, who claimed Seljuk lineage, as sultan. The leader of the revolt, Mehmed b. Karaman, became Cimri’s vizier.46
The Mamluks’ invasion of Anatolia was directed at the Ilkhanids, their greatest political rival for control of the Levant.47 The Mamluk campaign was successful to some extent: the Ilkhanids suffered a major defeat in the battle of Elbistan (Abūlustayn), and the Mamluk armies occupied the city of Kayseri in central Anatolia for six months, before a lack of provisions forced Baybars to abandon the city and retreat to Syria as winter approached.48 Both events posed a direct threat to Mongol rule. Fearing further attacks in a political climate rife with espionage and treason, the Ilkhanid ruler Abāqā Khān (r. 663–81/ 1265–82) opted for tighter control over Anatolia. The administration became more closely connected to the Ilkhanid center in Iran than before; governors were appointed from Iran, and the Seljuk sultan was definitively reduced to a puppet ruler. During those years, the two most powerful local figures in Anatolia died: Mu‘īn alDīn Sulaymān pervāne was executed on suspicion of conspiracy with the Mamluks in 675/ 1277,49 while the elderly vizier Ṣāḥib ‘Aṭā Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Alī passed away in 684/ 1285.50 Governors were dispatched directly from Iran and changed frequently.
This tighter centralized control remained in place until the 1330s, when, with the decline of Ilkhanid rule, both appointed governors, including Eretna and his descendants in Sivas, and local actors began claiming independence.51 As the Ilkhanid dynasty itself grew weaker, especially under the rule of Abū Sa‘īd (r. 716–35/ 1316–36), centralized control gradually began to slip away, and some local notables and Ilkhanid administrators began to gain independence. By the mid-fourteenth century, this resulted in a similar situation to that in western Anatolia since the 1280s: small local principalities (beyliks) competed for power in the absence of any sort of central control. Sources on this complex historical background are widely dispersed and particularly difficult to relate to architecture, as building projects often remain overshadowed by complex accounts of political interactions. Primary sources This study draws extensively on both chronicles and texts directly related to the monuments. The latter consist of inscriptions on the buildings and foundation documents (waqfīyas) that have been preserved in some cases. The foundation inscriptions and other texts directly affixed to the buildings are the most immediate sources, since they are part of the structures and also narrate their histories.
Essential sources for the study of inscriptions include photographs, personal observations, the RCEA, and Max van Berchem and Halil Edhem’s Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum (hereafter, MCIA).52 The waqfīyas are legal documents first and foremost, essential for establishing the charitable foundations that provided for the maintenance and running costs of many monuments throughout the Islamic world. These documents are primarily useful in studying the functions of monuments and building programs, particularly where not all elements have been preserved. They provide insight into patronage and economic history, rather than into the structural aspects of the monuments. The documents mention properties assigned to a foundation, thus reflecting available resources in urban real estate, cash, or arable lands. Some detailed documents even mention the location of these properties within a city or in the surrounding countryside, thereby allowing for a detailed reconstruction of now-lost sites, in terms of both their architecture and layout, and their daily functioning.
Some medieval Anatolian waqfīyas have been published, often in a modern Turkish translation together with the original Arabic text.53 At times, only the Turkish translation is provided, making access to the original document even more crucial.54 Not many endowment documents from thirteenth and fourteenth century Anatolia have been preserved, and almost all of them have been published. Among the unpublished documents are some relating to small early fourteenth-century foundations, preserved in the archives of the Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü in Ankara. In most of these cases, the related buildings are no longer extant. In many cases, only later copies of waqfīyas have survived, with dates ranging from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century.55 In the Yakutiye Medrese in Erzurum, a detailed excerpt from the waqfīya is carved inside the building—a nearly unique case in Anatolia, as we will see in Chapters 2 and 3.56 There are few chronicles from medieval Anatolia, suggesting that much has either been lost or remains undiscovered in libraries.57
Charles Melville has argued that the very nature of Anatolian frontier culture initially made it a problematic place for writing history, and that references for a historical narrative only became available at a later stage, when the region gradually developed an identity distinct from the Persian historiography of Iran.58 One of the earliest Persian chronicles of the Seljuks that clearly shows the importance of Anatolia as the new center of this dynasty is Muḥammad b. ‘Alī b. Sulaymān al-Rāvandī’s Rāḥat-uṣ-ṣudūr wa-āyat-us-surūr, an account of the history of the Seljuks that focuses on the reign of Rukn al-Dīn Ṭughril III (r. 571–90/ 1175–94), during which the author lived in Iran.59 Rāvandī began to write his work in 599/ 1202, as stated in the introduction to the manuscript. Writing after the Seljuks had disappeared from Iran, Rāvandī traveled instead to Konya to dedicate his work to the Seljuk sultan of Rūm, eventually addressing it to Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kaykhusraw I (r. 588–93/ 1192–97 and 601–08/ 1205–11). The author died after 603/ 1207.60 His history essentially covers the urban Persianate culture of Seljuk Anatolia.61 The most well-known history of Seljuk Anatolia is Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Ḥusayn Ibn Bībī’s al-Avāmir al-‘alā’iyya fī ‛l-‘umūr al-‘alā’iyya (“The most exalted orders regarding the most sublime affairs”).
The work recounts the history of the Seljuks in Anatolia from 584/ 1188 to 679/ 1281, with a focus on the reign of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād (r. 616–36/ 1220–37).62 The only full manuscript is published in facsimile, and it remains unedited.63 Sara Nur Yıldız’s recent study of Mongol rule in Anatolia is based on this manuscript.64 The text also exists in an abbreviated version, the Mukhtaṣar, which is more readily available and more widely used.65 Musāmarat al-akhbār wa-musāyarat al-akhyār by Karīm al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Muḥammad al-Aqsarāyī, (fl. ca. 1300) is another source on the Mongol administration of Anatolia.66 The author held a position in the waqf administration under the Ilkhanid ruler Ghāzān Khān (r. 694–704/ 1295–1304) in Aksaray, a town that assumes an important place in the chronicle.
At the time of writing (723/ 1323), according to the author, Anatolia was fully integrated into the Ilkhanid realm, yet the lack of a clear chronology within the work often makes it difficult to follow the events.67 In fact, the author rarely mentions dates, so his narrative is only intelligible to readers already familiar with major events, historical figures, and corresponding dates. The Manāqib al-‘ārifīn by Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Aflākī contains the biographies of Mawlawī Sufis who were active in Anatolia.68 The author wrote the work for ‘Ārif Chelebī, his teacher and a grandson of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī.69 Since the author focused on the biographies of religious figures (rather like a lives of saints) rather than on history per se, it is often difficult to understand the chronology of the text without prior knowledge of the events.70
Nevertheless, recent studies of this and similar texts have shown that, despite their specific limits and biases, hagiographical accounts can be fruitful sources for historical work on medieval Islamic societies, in that they provide an alternative perspective to that provided in chronicles of rulers’ and dynasties’ achievements.71 At the same time, they need to be read with a critical perspective in relation to the idealization of Sufi teachers and leaders that is often central to their premise of establishing a particular movement’s spiritual genealogy. The letters Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī wrote to his patrons offer a corrective to the emphasis on the Sufi community’s independence from patronage postulated in Aflākī’s hagiography, since they show his interest in interacting with, and benefitting from, the ruling elite.72
Moreover, the letters are contemporaneous with Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s lifetime, unlike Aflākī’s account that was written several generations later. As far as sources written outside of Anatolia are concerned, there are several important Ilkhanid texts. ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ‘Aṭā Malik al-Juwaynī’s (d. 682/ 1283) Tārīkh-i Jahān-gushā (History of the World Conqueror) details the Mongol conquests beginning with Genghis Khan and attempts to achieve a balance in his treatment of the author’s Mongol overlords and his Persian compatriots.73 Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍl-allāh Ṭabīb’s (d. 718/ 1318) Jamī‘ al-Tawārikh contains brief yet important insights on Anatolia.74 The so-called letters of Rashīd al-Dīn, attributed to the same author, on the other hand, are an extremely problematic source as they may in fact be a later fabrication.75 Al-Qāshānī’s chronicle of the rule of the Ilkhanid sultan Uljāytū invites speculation about Ilkhanid patronage in Anatolia, or the lack thereof.76 Mamluk sources, both works that have been edited and ones available only as manuscripts, are used in great detail in Reuven Amitai’s studies on the conflict between Mamluks and Ilkhanids, including the place of Anatolia within it.77 Travel accounts and geographical literature, ranging from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, provide descriptions of monuments and their state of preservation.
One of the classics of travel literature in Arabic, the Riḥla, which records the travels of its author Shams al-Dīn b. ‘Abdallāh Muḥammad b. ‘Abdallāh al-Ṭanjī ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 778/ 1377) during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, contains a section on Anatolia that praises the region for its gardens and the hospitality of its Akhī communities, confraternities often associated with particular crafts.78 In Ḥamd-Allāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī’s Nuzhat al-qulūb, written in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, Anatolia appears as one of the most impoverished provinces of the Ilkhanid realm, though this may to some extent reflect negative topoi about the region.79 The roughly contemporary Mamluk writer Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-‘Umarī mostly describes the principalities (beyliks) of western Anatolia, yet also includes a detailed description of one thirteenth-century caravanserai in the region of Kayseri.80 Later accounts, dating from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century can be useful for details of the monuments or the urban fabric that have since disappeared.
Thus, the seventeenth-century Seyâhatnâme by Evliyâ Çelebî, Ottoman traveler par excellence, contains descriptions of several central Anatolian cities, including Sivas and Erzurum, which will be used later.81 Finally, the relevant nineteenth- and twentieth-century travel diaries and accounts are too numerous to be named here and will be mentioned throughout the text whenever appropriate. Armenian sources provide information on the Mongol conquest of the Caucasus, sometimes including cities in Anatolia with significant Armenian populations, such as Erzurum (Karin in Armenian).82 The chronicle of Grigor of Akanc describes the Mongol conquests.83 Kirakos Gandzakertsi was a prisoner of the Mongols and provides lists of vocabulary in Mongolian.84 Galstyan provides extracts, translated into Russian, from a number of Armenian sources relevant to the Mongol conquest.85 While Georgian sources are also pertinent to an understanding of relations between the Seljuks and the Caucasus, they are available in translation even less frequently than the Armenian ones.
Overview of the chapters The focus of this book is on monuments built in the second half of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, as Anatolia progressively became integrated into the Mongol imperial sphere.
After royal Seljuk patronage disappeared, two new groups of patrons became active at a high level: those affiliated with the Mongol rulers, on the one hand, and those associated with the powerless Seljuk sultan, on the other. Chapter 1, which focuses on a number of madrasas and a large mosque complex that were built in Konya from the 1240s to the 1280s, examines how these new patrons used their projects to reshape the Seljuk capital, which was devoid of royal patronage at that point. These patrons included Jalāl al-Dīn Qaraṭāy (d. 652/ 1254), a powerful amīr both before and after the Mongol conquest, and the two main viziers in the 1260s and 1270s, Mu‘īn al-Dīn Sulaymān pervāne (d. 675/ 1277) and Ṣāḥib ‘Aṭā Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Alī (d. 684/ 1285). All three patrons were very active in Konya and also sponsored monuments in the surrounding region and in other cities, including Sinop, Sivas, and Kayseri. The focus on Konya shows how the transformations in patronage reshaped the Seljuk capital once the sultans themselves were no longer active as patrons of architecture.
The addition of several madrasas, some located close to the citadel and the site of the mosque that ‘Alā’ al-Dīn Kayqubād restored in the 1220s, gives the impression of a Sunni revival; however, it may instead reflect a strengthening of the college structure in a city already heavily marked by such institutions. At the same time, patronage for Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (d. 671/ 1273) and his disciples suggests a religious milieu in which ulema and Sufis moved in similar circles. Thus, while the notion of a Sunni revival akin to that promoted by the Great Seljuks in Iran in the eleventh century and subsequently transferred to Syria in the twelfth century may not be entirely appropriate for Anatolia, a heightened interest in religious institutions was nevertheless apparent there. Whether this interest in the construction of institutions of Muslim learning was the result of fear of the largely nonMuslim Mongols remains a matter for debate. Subsequent chapters examine the construction of madrasas in other cities under diverse circumstances, opening the larger question of the role of institutions of religious learning in Anatolia.
Continuing in this vein of analysis, Chapter 2 discusses the construction of three madrasas in Sivas in the same year, 670/ 1271–72. The interventions of competing patrons—including Ṣāḥib ‘Aṭā Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Alī, who for the first time commissioned a monument further east in Anatolia, away from his focus on the region of Konya— created a college town teeming with the students and ulema who populated these institutions. The construction of two madrasas at the very center of the inner citadel, possibly on a former Seljuk palace site, transformed the urban fabric. The third madrasa, located near the outer citadel of Sivas, was central to the expansion of the city, and thus had a similar effect to the complex of Sahib Ata in Konya, which was built away from the citadel along a road leading in the direction of Karaman in 656/ 1258.
Moreover, Sivas presents one of the few cases where a patron from Iran became directly involved in Anatolia: the founder of the Çifte Minareli Medrese, Shams al-Dīn Juwaynī (d. 683/ 1284), was a high official of the Ilkhanid court and commissioned his madrasa in direct competition with both Sivas’s Seljuk past and Ṣāḥib ‘Aṭā Fakhr al-Dīn ‘Alī’s new foundation. In Chapter 3, this sense of integrating the past into a newly reformulated urban context emerges more strongly in an analysis of Erzurum at the very end of the thirteenth century and in the early decades of the fourteenth century. Now firmly under Ilkhanid rule, this city on the eastern edge of Anatolia saw the construction of several madrasas that all strongly refer to earlier monuments in the city. The earlier buildings were founded under Saltukid rule in the twelfth century, before the Seljuks defeated this local dynasty in 601/ 1205. The architecture of the city’s Ilkhanid patrons, among them the governor of Erzurum and Bayburt, is strongly rooted in the urban fabric, with subtle reference to earlier monuments, while the foundations of the Ilkhanid rulers in Iran are hardly referenced at all. It becomes clear that Anatolia’s integration into the Ilkhanid realm happened at the fiscal and economic level, due to reforms implemented under Ghāzān Khān after his conversion to Islam. Architecture, on the other hand, was allowed to go its own way.
Madrasas were once again used as a way to bring new populations of students to the city and to reassert the hold of Islam, especially once the Ilkhanid rulers had converted to Islam—the final step in their acculturation with Persian-speaking Muslim families such as the Juwaynīs, who had been at the helm of the Mongol administration since the conquest of Iran in the 1220s. Finally, Chapter 4 discusses how the architectural landscape changed in the cities of Ankara, Amasya, and Tokat as the Ilkhanid hold over Anatolia waned in the early fourteenth century. While Erzurum, as the gateway between Iran and Anatolia, continued to be a major site of patronage, local patrons in other cities were active on reduced scale. As the Ilkhanids felt their power slip away, they tried to tighten their hold over the region. As a result, no new generation of local elites emerged, and high-level patronage effectively collapsed. Instead, the leaders of local Sufi and Akhī communities established zāwiyas and mausolea, often built in strongly local styles and with endowments that included only properties within and in the immediate vicinity of the city where the monuments stood.
These structures served as sites for communal activities among local Muslims and to tie lands in the immediate region to these foundations. In a time of political and economic instability, in particular beginning in the 1320s as the Ilkhanid realm became increasingly troubled, these local forms of patronage ensured the continuity of institutions and community life. If architecture in Anatolia reflected political changes, it did so most poignantly from the 1290s to the 1330s, when the increased fiscal pressure exerted by the Ilkhanid administration drained the region of resources—including, of course, those essential to major architectural projects.
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