The Princes' Route · Stop 2

Çilehane Mosque

Mosque, tomb and retreat cells all together. Not a classical mosque — the building of a Sufi order. And the name people gave it says a great deal.

1413 Halveti lodge North of Pirler Park

The Çilehane Mosque (Yakup Paşa Zaviye) — The Çilehane Mosque. *TTK Archive (Kültürel Miras Boyutuyla Amasya, Photo 4).*

Because so many Halveti sheikhs were trained in this lodge, the people gave it this name:

“Derviş Fabrikası”

— the Dervish Factory. Given to a place of worship, the name says in a single word what the building was for: people were formed here.¹

📜 What do the documents say?

Standing north of Pirler Park, the building was built in 1413 by Yakup Paşa. Besides serving as a mosque, it was designed as a Halveti lodge (tekke).

Yakup Paşa built this lodge for the Halveti sheikh and mufti Gümüşlüzade Abdurrahman Çelebi.²

The building is a complex made up of a small mosque, a tomb and retreat cells.³ In these respects it departs from classical mosque architecture and reflects the spatial arrangement of the buildings of Sufi orders.

What is çile? In the Halveti order, a dervish shuts himself away for a set period in a small cell, devoting himself to worship and the discipline of the self. The “retreat cells” on this page are those cells; the building takes its name from them (çilehane: house of retreat).

🗣️ What do the people say?

At the centre of the stories attached to the Çilehane is Şeyh Abdurrahman. Tuğrul Balaban's collection records more than one memorate about him — that is, events that people believe really happened.⁴

The Qur'an on gazelle skin

In the Çilehane Mosque there is a copy of the Holy Qur'an written on gazelle skin. The imam serving there wants to take it home.

As he goes out of the door, a huge snake rears up in front of him. He tries going out by the other door — the snake appears there too. He puts the Qur'an back; he looks, and there is no one at the door. He picks it up again, and again the snake rears up at the door.

“The one who watches over the Holy Qur'an is Şeyh Abdurrahman. Because he is the spiritual guardian of that place.”

The sleeping imam's prayer

The imam fails to get up for the dawn prayer; he oversleeps. The congregation come and say: “Hocam, you led the dawn prayer and went off. The festival prayer is about to be said — where are you?”

But the hoca had not woken for the dawn prayer. The doors, which had been locked, had been opened, and the lamps were lit.

The imam understands what has happened but does not let the congregation notice. While the imam slept, Şeyh Abdurrahman had taken on his likeness and led the prayer.

This section is a folk narrative, not a document. Memorates are events that their tellers believe happened; they are given here as they were told.

While you are there, look for

The retreat cells. They are what sets the building apart from a classical mosque.³ See with your own eyes the size of the place where someone shut himself away for weeks.
The tomb. Small mosque, tomb and cells form a single complex³ — worship, death and discipline in the same courtyard.
The doors. In the tale the imam cannot get out by either door. How many doors does it have today?
Pirler Park. The building stands north of it. In the same area is Saraydüzü, another stop on this route.

Key facts

Built: 1413
Commissioned by: Yakup Paşa
For whom: The Halveti sheikh and mufti Gümüşlüzade Abdurrahman Çelebi²
Type: Mosque · Halveti lodge · tomb · retreat cells³
Popular name: “Derviş Fabrikası” (the Dervish Factory)¹
Location: 40.653759, 35.838337 — verified against OpenStreetMap
In the book: Kültürel Miras Boyutuyla Amasya, p. 34

📍 Open on the map

Sources

Every factual statement on this page rests on one of the sources below. Titles are given in their original language so that they can be found; quotations from Turkish sources are our translations.

Hasan Karataş, The City as a Historical Actor: The Urbanization and Ottomanization of the Halvetiye Sufi Order by the City of Amasya in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Doktora Tezi, 2011), 69.
Abdulhamit Budak, Bir Şehir Bir Tarikat: Amasya ve Halvetilik (Amasya: Amasya Belediyesi, 2014), 164.
Kani Kuzucular, Amasya Kentinin Fiziksel Yapısının Tarihsel Gelişimi (İstanbul: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Doktora Tezi, 1994), 57.
Tuğrul Balaban, Amasya Efsane, Menkabe ve Memoratları (Amasya: Amasya Valiliği, 2014), 136. — “Şeyh Abdurrahman (I)” and “Şeyh Abdurrahman (II)”, p. 136.