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The
Architectural Heritage of the Ottoman Balkans
Machiel Kiel, research fellow
Netherlands Institute in Turkey, Istanbul
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In 1353 the Ottoman Turks set
foot on the shores of South-Eastern Europe after having served for
more than half a century as mercenaries of the various warring
Byzantine political fractions. This time they came to stay. In 1371
the outcome of the Battle on the Maritsa secured their hold. After
this date they unfolded an impressive building activity. Within half a
century the Ottomans developed their own style of architecture. By the
end of their rule over the Balkans, in 1912, their total architectural
output reached around 20.000 buildings: mosques, schools, baths,
caravanserais, kitchens for the poor, castles, dervish convents,
mighty bridges and monumental mausolea for the great military or
spiritual leaders.
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Kadin Most (Woman’s Bridge)
Over the Struma near Kyustendil (W. Bulgaria), built in 1470 (H. 874)
by Inegöllü Ishak Pasha. The bridge is representative for the many
great bridges built by the Ottomans in the Balkans. |
Sarajevo, Bosnia
The old city centre with its 16th century monuments. In the foreground
Hovace Durak Mosque, 1528, at left the Bursa Bedesten 1550s, in the
background Gazi Husref Bey Mosque, 1530. |
Eski
Djami, Shoumen, N. Bulgaria
‘Old Mosque’, founded around 1495 by Yahya Pasha from Skopje, who also
provided a hamam. These buildings were the starting point of the
emergence of a new Muslim-Turkish city. |
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The successor
states of the disappeared empire (after 1878 or 1912) saw themselves as Christian nation
states, pushed out their Muslim population and
destroyed (not counting Bosnia) perhaps 98% of all existing Ottoman
buildings. In the rest of Europe this kind of ‘cultural policy’ was
hardly noticed. The rich literature on Islamic architecture did not,
or hardly, reach the great libraries of the various Balkan libraries
and the history of Islamic art was not taught in any Balkan
University.
Forty years of field work in the Balkans combined with study in
libraries all over Europe and the US, and especially the long years of
research in the Ottoman Archives has resulted in a vast fond of
knowledge and documentation. The inventory of the still existing
monuments of Ottoman architecture is now largely completed.
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Dervis Banja (Bath of the Dervish)
Kyustendil, W. Bulgaria, 1566. One of the rare examples of a small
domed mineral bath surviving in Bulgaria. In the past there were nine
of them in Kyustendil alone. |
Travnik, Bosnia
panorama taken from east |
Feridun Ahmed Pasha Mosque
Kyustendil, W. Bulgaria, built between 1575-1577. The builder of this
mosque must be the well-known historian and politician Feridum Ahmed
Pasha, who served some years as Sanjak Bey of Kyustendil in the early
1570s.
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What still needs to
be done is much work in the archives to find the original building
orders or the accounts of the construction of them, preserved from
about 1460 onward. The monuments have to be placed within their
socio-economic and historical background. We still have to find the
patterns of patronage, just as we have to reconstruct the population
of town and villages to find out why Islamic buildings were erected
there, and not elsewhere.
Here the Ottoman population-and taxation registers (tahrir defter) of
the 15th until the early 17th century are of great help, giving
population and production village by village, household by household.
For the 17th and 18th century we have the very detailed Avariz defters,
supplemented by the dzizye defters, that only give the non-Muslim
population per district. The architectural legacy of the Ottoman
Empire can be understood only when presented against its
historical and socio-economic background. This work will take another
few decades, and in fact art historical interpretation never ends.
The present researcher published 12 books on the topic, as well as
almost 200 studies and contributions to various encyclopaedias. His
work appeared in English, French, German, Dutch, Bulgarian, Greek and
Turkish. Translation of his books on the Ottoman legacy of Albania and
on the island of Mitylini in the Ottoman period is
in process.
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