Introduction

Our study is inspired by Ottoman archival material. It began with a shared interest in antique marble reused in Ottoman Athens.¹ We turned to Ottoman registers and court records in order to learn about marble reuse more widely in Ottoman lands. Sifting through the examples, we were drawn to a sixteenth-century discovery near what we today call ancient Pella. Combined with another development nearby and two centuries earlier, the documentation of this episode allows us, with due caution, to draw some general conclusions about two different Ottoman responses to ancient material, one directed by the imperial court, the other by a regional commander.

In the spirit of this volume, at the forefront of our minds has been to understand, to the extent it is possible, the motivation behind the reuse of materials and the attraction of ancient materials to different groups, not only European travellers. The word ‘antiquities’ is caught up with Europeans’ imaginings of the Greek past. We avoid the word in the hope of seeing more clearly how non-European actors understood the material.² As Nasia Yakovaki (2006), Yannis Hamilakis (2007), Benjamin Anderson (2015) and many others have been showing in recent years, how we see the Greek world today has been monopolised by Europeans’ projection of their own desires. The views of local populations of Greece – Jewish, Christian and Muslim – have been until recently treated as ethnographic, if taken seriously at all. What is exciting about this moment in time is that we are now learning more about these previously disregarded or unnoticed ways of engaging with the past. But the task is difficult. To elicit motivation and even emotional response – amply available in European travellers – from Ottoman records risks overreading, something we hope to have avoided here. What we offer for consideration is further evidence of a way of engaging with the past that did not involve removing later accumulations to reveal the original architectural creation as it was believed to have been in antiquity, but instead the creation of new structures using the old materials. These old materials might indeed have been chosen to lend not only beauty, but also prestige from the old to the new – if knowledge of the past had somehow clung to the ancient marbles. We offer our readings of rarely studied Ottoman registers as a contribution to investigations of past and contemporary practices of adaptive reuse and architectural recycling, which are so urgently discussed in architecture schools today.

Sultanic control of ancient materials

In spring 1565, three Christian men named Brodan, Stal and Niḳola were digging a ditch around an arable field in the village of Göçeri when they struck marble. The exact location of Göçeri is uncertain, but it was near the town of Yeñice-i Vardar (modern Yannitsa or Giannitsa) (Figure 1), a long day’s walk northwest of the city of Selānik/Thessaloniki. Our source for the incident is a letter written by Selānik’s sancaḳbe g (governor of a sancaḳ, a provincial administrative division) that was reproduced in an order from the Dīvān-ı Hümāyūn (Imperial Council) dated AH 9 Şevvāl 972/AD 10 May 1565.³ According to this letter, the field was owned by Mevlānā ‘Alī, the ḳāḍī (judge of an Islamic court) in the town of Yeñişehir (modern Larissa, in Thessaly). The investigations had extended into the adjacent arable field that belonged to the sipāhī (cavalry officer) Küçük ‘Alī, who had hastened to continue the excavation with his Christian partner named Avlob(?) and two Christian brothers who were also from Göçeri, Stoyḳo and Petḳo, sons of Bojik. Together they excavated what the sancaḳbeg’s letter to the Imperial Council described as a gūrḫāne, or ‘mausoleum’.⁴ The fact that the structure found was made of marble (and, we will see, contained a treasure of golden items) makes it almost certain that what the field workers excavated was a structure from antiquity. This is made all the more likely since Göçeri was located near ancient Pella, the capital of ancient Macedonia.⁵ What form the gūrḫāne took, other than consisting at least partly of marble, cannot be determined from the document.⁶

Figure 1: Edward Lear, ‘Yenidjé’, September 1848. (Photo credit: Edward Lear, Journals of a landscape painter in Albania, Illyria &c. 1852. London: Richard Bentley, facing page 28.)

News spread quickly and a handful of officials from Selānik and Istanbul appeared on the scene to witness what else would emerge in the excavations. They included Ḥurrem, the ḳāḍī’s nāib (deputy); ‘Abdī, from the silaḥdār corps (the sultan’s sword-bearers), voyvoda and nāzır ķāymmaḳāmı (deputy of the superintendent); Velī, the Selanik muḥżırbaşısı (head of the bailiffs of Selānik); and Ṭur Bali, Ḳal‘a-i ‘Atīḳ Ketḫüdāsı (deputy of the Old Citadel in Istanbul). Their sensational discovery of various golden items included golden necklaces set with jewels, embroidery with golden thread, five golden rings with precious stones and other precious metals. The treasure was conveyed to the sancaḳbeg of Selānik who sent the findings to be kept in the Old Citadel in Istanbul, together with a letter for Sultan Süleymān I ‘the Magnificent’, ‘The Lawgiver’, and the Imperial Council. The so-called ‘Old Citadel’ in the document was the Old Palace built in the centre of Constantinople by Meḥmed II ‘the Conqueror’ before he built the Ṭopḳapı Palace and which served in the sixteenth century as a treasury where precious metals were kept (Bilgicioğlu 2009; Kafescioğlu 2009: 22–28).⁷ On 10 May 1565, a follow-up order recorded in the same document was sent from Sultan Süleymān and the Imperial Council to the sancaḳbeg and the ḳāḍī of Selānik: they should follow the case very carefully; were there more items found in the gūrḫāne and hidden elsewhere? They should summon all those involved and investigate the case according to Islamic and sultanic law – but without oppressing those interrogated. In case more items were discovered, the names of the discoverers should be submitted to the Imperial Council.⁸

Buried treasure was of perennial interest for its economic, aesthetic and talismanic value. Anything coming from the earth, including what remained underground, was by law the possession of the sultan (Beldiceanu 1964: 94), making it crucial to establish who found it, what exactly it was, and where exactly it was located. The response of the Imperial Council to events in Göçeri reflects the demand for exactitude and precision in recording ancient materials in order to assess their potential value and use. The report about the Göçeri finds includes names of the excavators and involves a cast of players with a vested interest – ḳāḍī, sipāhī, sancaḳbeg, the Imperial Council and the sultan himself. In their response Sultan Süleymān and the Imperial Council address the sancaḳbeg and ḳāḍī of Selānik with instructions to continue the excavations but now under firm sultanic control, most probably in order to avoid illegal excavations aimed at hidden treasures among the ruins of what we know today as ancient Pella.

The village (ḳarye) of Göçeri was located in the ḳaża (judicial district) of Selānik and from the fifteenth century was one of the six villages of the vaḳıf (pious foundation) of ‘İsā Beg, son of Evrenos Beg: the six villages were Göçeri, Ḳademci, Turḥanlu alias Söğütlü, Ala Kilise, Çığarova and Rumanova (Figure 2). All these villages appear in the Ottoman registers of the sixteenth century.⁹ The toponym Göçeri is linked to ‘migration’ (göçmek) and, like the toponyms Turḥanlu and Ḳademci, is certainly associated with the migration of the pastoralist Yörüks (yörümek is a synonym of göçmek) into the area in the second half of the fourteenth century.¹⁰ In all these registers, Ala Kilise (literally ‘colourful church’, a toponym to which we will return) was a rather large Christian village (registered in 1568 with 128 households; 79 bachelors; 15 widows). Ala Kilise was also identified with the Greek toponym Hagioi Apostoloi (Holy Apostles), Balkan Slavic Postól,¹¹ and later renamed Palaia Pella (Old Pella) (Soustal 2022, vol. 2: 833–835). Our villagers working the fields were most probably from Ala Kilise: we can read the personal names Brodan, Stal, Niḳola, Stoyḳo and Petḳo many times among the names of that village’s inhabitants in the Ottoman register of 972/1568.

Figure 2: Map including the place names mentioned, based on the Generalkarte von Mitteleuropa 1:200.000 der Franzisco-Josephinischen Landesaufname, Austria-Hungary, sheet 40–41, Vodena. 1904 with annotations by Elias Kolovos.

In 1568 the village of Göçeri, on the other hand, was a much smaller Muslim settlement that included 6 çifts (peasants with a yoke of oxen each), 3 bennaks (married householders) and 2 bachelors, and was made up of 20 çiftliks (estates) belonging to officials such as those who appear in our letter from the sancaḳ of Selānik to the Imperial Council. Neither Mevlānā ‘Alī, the ḳāḍī of Yeñişehir, nor the sipāhi Küçük ‘Alī or his partner Avlob(?) (it was not uncommon for çiftliks to be possessed in partnership) were registered as çiftlik holders in 1568. However, the first çiftlik registered in 1568 in Göçeri was the çiftlik called ‘of Aḥmed Ağa’.¹² According to the register entry, it was formerly in the hands of ‘Alī. This ‘Alī might have been Mevlānā ‘Alī, the ḳāḍī of Yeñişehir¹³ in 1565 or the sipāhi Küçük ‘Alī who in 1565 had owned the adjacent field. In 1568, however, the çiftlik ‘of Aḥmed Ağa’ was in the hands of the sancaḳbeg Mustafa Beg, a descendant of Evrenos Beg, the celebrated Ottoman commander who had died in Yeñice-i Vardar a century and a half earlier. The fact that the estate where the treasure might have been found in 1565 was owned in 1568 (possibly after a buy-out) by a member of the Evrenos family, who governed the neighbouring town of Yeñice-i Vardar, hints at the local importance of the Göçeri discovery, which might have created expectations of more ‘golden’ findings in the arable fields of the area.

The topographical context of our 972/1565 document situates the discovery in a culturally and religiously mixed contemporary environment with a deep history of habitation from antiquity. Gūrḫāne, the word used for the burial structure, may also suggest this complexity. Gūrḫāne appears to be relatively rare in other sixteenth-century documents. The lexicographer James W. Redhouse explained the Persian loan word gūr as ‘grave’ and gūr-ḫāne as ‘mausoleum’ (Redhouse 1890: 1585 and 1586). The common word in sixteenth-century Ottoman Turkish for a mausoleum was the Arabic loan word türbe, usually referring to a Muslim burial structure. For example, türbe is the word used by ‘Āşıḳ Meḥmed in his late sixteenth-century universal geography, e.g. for the tomb of Eyüp in Istanbul (Āşık Mehmed 2007, 1072: Türbe-i Ebī Eyyūb el-Ensarī). ‘Āşıḳ Meḥmed does not use the words gūr or gūrḫāne in his work. Evliyā Çelebi, in his Seyāḥatnāme, or ‘Book of Travels’, twice uses the word gūrḫāne for non-Muslim cemeteries in Kolojvar (mod. Cluj, Romania) (Evliya Çelebi 2002, p. 11: ve maşrıḳ ṭarafına nāẓır varoş ḳapusu ve ḳıbleye mekşūf gūrḫāne ki maşatlıḳ ḳapusu var), and Dubrovnik (Evliya Çelebi 2002, p. 263: ve cümle kāfirlerüñ gūrḫāneleri ve bilā-teşbīh Ḥażret-i ‘Īsā ṣūreti ve Ḥażret-i Īsā ḫalīfesi havāriyyūndan Şem‘ūn-ı Safā bunda medfūndur derler).¹⁴ Moreover, in the same volume Evliyā also used the word gūristān for the old Christian cemeteries in the fortress of Uyvar (mod. Nové Zámky, Slovakia), where the Ottoman conquerors buried in a deep ditch corpses they had found while transforming a church into a mosque (Evliya Çelebi 2002, p. 211: zīr-i zemīnlerinde olan cīfe-i murdārlaruñ cümle derūn-ı cāmi‘den çıḳarup bīrūn-ı ḳal‘ada maniye gūristānlarında bir hafr-i amīk ḳazup anda ilḳā etdiler). Finally, when Evliyā Çelebi visited Ustolni-Belgrad (mod. Székesfehérvár), where all the Hungarian kings were buried, he remarks that if one of the kings died elsewhere, it was the tradition to throw earth from Ustolni-Belgrad on their graves, using the word gūr (Evliya Çelebi 2002, p. 127: gayri diyārda mürd olan keferelerin gūrlarına Ustolni-Belgrad ţoprağından ḳomasalar hāşā ehl-i cennet olamaz). In the light of the above usages, it is arguable that the excavators in Göçeri in 1565 used the word gūrḫāne in their original report (and repeated by the Imperial Council) in order to indicate a non-Muslim burial structure, in this particular case what would have been understood as a pre-Islamic tomb.

Thanks to the date of the accidental discovery in Göçeri we can place it in a wider historical context. The discovery coincided with period of large sultanic construction projects and documented interest in registering and often gathering ancient materials from across the empire for reuse in these projects: the Süleymāniye complex in Istanbul (1550–1557), Selīmiye in Edirne (1568–1574) and Murādiye in Manisa (1583–1586). Thanks to archival work and analysis by Ömer Lütfi Barkan and Gülru Necipoğlu, we are aware of the court’s meticulous concern for recording material resources across the empire, especially ancient marble columns that were impressive for their beauty and talismanic properties, but also capable of being put to use to make strong political statements of conquest and to articulate Ottoman inheritance of the glorious ancient past (Barkan 1979: 11–100; Necipoğlu 2005: 142–143, 156–157, 174, 180–181, 209–210, 220–221). The master-architect Sinān created the Süleymāniye mosque using an unprecedented number of columns gathered in from pre-Islamic temples and churches (Aktuğ Kolay and Çelik 2006: 251). In his dictated autobiography Sinān describes this fresh synthesis of reused material alive with the political and cultural legacies inherited by the Ottomans: marble columns brought from Alexandria, Ba‘albek, Arabia, others associated with Solomon’s Queen Belkis, still others brought from the palace marble repository (Sa‘i, Teẕkiretü’l-Bünyān, fols. 9b–10a, tr. 123). Thanks to the imperial correspondence provoked by the Göçeri discovery we have a vivid picture of at least one episode that drew the provincial Ottoman world into the ambitious collecting and reuse strategies of the sultans.

Fragments of splendour

Having begun with the Ottoman archives, we now ask what European sources can contribute to our knowledge of the ancient marbles discovered in Göçeri’s vicinity. From at least the mid-eighteenth century the villages in the area had attracted the attention of scholars and travelers in their pursuit of material remains from the ancient world.¹⁵ However, toponymy posed an obstacle. As we have seen, local names changed many times and the matching up of ancient Greek toponymns known from ancient texts with locations on the ground was an arduous and often speculative task. The site of ancient Pella is a case in point. In his Γεωγραφία Παλαιὰ καὶ Νέα [Geography Old and New], first published in Venice in 1728, the learned Meletios, Metropolitan of Athens, records that there were two opinions about where ancient Pella should be located: at the current site of Yannitsa (here spelled ‘Γιανιτζά’), which he found improbable as it was founded ‘when the Turks reigned’ (ὁπου ἄρχησαν οἱ Τοῦρκοι) or, more likely (ἀληθέστερον), at the place nearby known as Ta Palatia (τὰ Παλάτια, literally, ‘the Palaces’) (1807²: 472). The name conforms to the widely attested habit in medieval and early modern toponymy – in Greek and Arabic, and subsequently Ottoman, traditions – to identify ancient ruins whose history is long forgotten as ‘palaces’ (e.g. at Miletus, Palatia-Balat, see Niewöhner 2019: 194; at Thracian Traianopolis where the baths are remembered locally as the ‘Palace of Trajan’, see Zournatzi 2003: 326 n.8). In this case it would not be surprising if Pella’s Hellenistic palace had left a mark in the dim collective memory. A likely interpretation is that even if the historical significance of ancient Pella had been forgotten in the vicinity of Yeñice-i Vardar, the abundant ancient ruins inspired the notion of ancient ‘palaces’ lurking underground.¹⁶

Indeed, this abundance is confirmed by the travellers. A century after Meletios, François Pouqueville visited the village of ‘Allah-Kilissa ou Palatitza’ and described a landscape covered with tombs, some even with inscriptions he could make out (Pouqueville 1826: 114–115). Pouqueville helpfully identifies Palatitza with Ala Kilise, one of the villages near Göçeri belonging to the same vaḳıf of ‘İsā Beg, son of Evrenos Beg, as mentioned above. The Turkish name Ala Kilise, ‘colourful church’, suggests the village must have had a church whose colourful stones or perhaps painting was worthy of commemoration in the toponymn – indeed, a church in the village was described as solidly built (with visible ancient stones), its interior highly-decorated (Cousinéry 1831: 90; Delacoulonche 1858: 88–89). This point was missed by the travelers (and subsequent scholars until today) who assumed that Ala was a reference to God, ‘Allah’ (e.g. Leake 1835: 261, ‘Aláklisi, meaning in Turkish Godchurch’; Papakonstantinou-Diamantourou 1971: 26 and 159). Pouqueville noted that the village was ‘a precious mine of antiquities, if we could make excavations there’ (Pouqueville 1826: 116). It appears that excavations had in fact begun before the Frenchman’s interest since a contemporary traveller Esprit-Marie Cousinéry had visited one tomb near Ala Kilise that had been opened long before (Cousinéry 1831: 90).

Pouqueville testifies that in the vicinity of Ala Kilise antiquities were visible above ground not only as ruins, but in reuse, noting Muslim cemeteries with ancient columns reworked as funerary markers: ‘Beyond a bridge over which we crossed [the river] I saw, near the road, a Turkish cemetery covered with “cippes” [stone markers or stelae] formed from columns taken from the ruins of Pella’ (Figure 3). At Ala Kilise Pouqueville also mentions a Turkish reservoir built on top of a Hellenistic foundation (cemetery: Pouqueville 1826: 111; cp. Leake 1835: 259; reservoir: Pouqueville 1826: 116, cp. Leake 1835: 262; photograph in Struck 1908: 84 and roughly half a century later in Moutsopoulos [1973] 329.) Pouqueville wistfully remarks that nothing remains for the traveler to see of the Macedonian capital’s ‘ancient splendour’ – further indication of the extent to which over the generations Pella had been quarried for its materials (Pouqueville 1826: 112). Cousinéry offers the same speculation: ‘one must assume that much of the material removed from this ancient city was used in the construction of the new [i.e. Yeñice]’ (Cousinéry 1831: 86). Traveling in the 1820s, Baron Félix de Beaujour reached the conclusion that the ruins of ancient Pella formed the quarry from which Yeñice came into being (Beaujour 1829: 197). Beaujour also confirms that Alla-Clissia (as he calls Ala Kilise) was inhabited by Christian ‘Bulgarians’ (as Balkan Slavic¹⁷ speakers in the area were then known to the European travellers), the most likely identity of Brodan, Stal and Niḳola who first found the marble gūrḫāne at nearby Göçeri.

Figure 3: Sketch map of ancient Pella and environs in the early twentieth century.

(Photo credit: Adolph Struck. 1908. Makedonische Fahrten. II. Die Makedonischen Niederlande, p. 88).

In 1855 Alfred Delacoulonche, archaeologist and member of the newly founded École française d’Athènes, came to the area well-prepared and left a detailed account of what he could observe of the ancient city. Delacoulonche had read his ancient sources, but also Pouqueville, Beaujour and Cousinéry, who had all suspected Turkish Yeñice’s debt to ancient Pella. Delacoulonche observes that

it is not only at Hagioi Apostoloi, but in all the neighbouring villages that one finds the ruins of ancient Pella. At Sarili [Ṣarılı], at Cofalowo [Ḳofalovo, mod. Koufalia], at Bosaeshi [Bozeç, mod. Athyra], at Petrowo [Petrovo, mod. Hagios Petros], at Tchaousli [Çavuşlı], at Agalahri [Ağalar, mod. Archontiko], in the cemeteries, in the churches, in the walls of houses one discovers fragments that clearly once belonged to the Macedonian capital. More than twenty villages and one town have been constructed with its remains. Is it any wonder that she herself has retained so few traces of her former prosperity? (Delacoulonche 1858: 92)

For Delacoulonche there was no doubt that the town of Yeñice-i Vardar, founded by the Ottoman conqueror of the Balkans Gāzī Evrenos Beg, was constructed with material from the neighbouring ancient Pella, a mere fifty minute ride away as the meticulous W. M. Leake had recorded (Leake 1835: 266) (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Fountain in Ala Kilise/Palaia Pella/ancient Pella with ancient foundation stones and reused Hellenistic marble grave stele. (Photo credit: Adolph Struck. Makedonische Fahrten. I I. Die Makedo nischen Niederlande, 1908, p. 90.)

We will return to Delacoulonche’s observations of reused antiquities in Yeñice-i Vardar, but conclude this overview of exploration with the excavations in ancient Pella that started in summer 1914, immediately after the establishment of the Greek administration in the area by the then Ephor of Antiquities G. P. Oikonomos. The excavations continued in summer 1915, but were interrupted by the Great War. In spring 1957, a lucky discovery of a number of column drums during the construction of a modern building in the village by then named Palaia Pella provoked the beginnings of systematic excavation by Fotis Petsas and, later, by Charalambos Makaronas. Seven ‘Macedonian tombs’ were located in the vicinity of the archaeological area of Pella. The majority of the tombs had been looted in earlier centuries, in some cases already from antiquity. Delacoulonche himself records being present in 1855 when a ‘Bulgarian’ fieldworker had hit stone and dug down to reveal a sarcophagus and a painted tomb (Delacoulonche 1858: 76–78). Strikingly reminiscent of the inventory list sent to Sultan Süleymān four centuries earlier, one of the intact tombs found by twentieth-century archaeologists included a marble sarcophagus containing a wooden box for a young girl wrapped in gold-embroidered purple cloth, two golden wreaths of myrtle leaves and one gold stater of Philip II.¹⁸

The Evrenos dynasty’s architectural inheritance

Now that we have established the connection between ancient Pella and Yeñice-i Vardar, what might we learn about the adaptation of ancient material, and perhaps its symbolic weight, in the new foundation’s architectural history? The founder of Yeñice-i Vardar, Evrenos Beg (d.1417), was the dynamic uc beg (frontier lord) who conquered much of the Balkans on behalf of the Ottoman sultans. He was known as both gāzī (warrior) and ḥācī (pilgrim) after his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. His name was associated with almost every important conquest from Thrace to the Morea. Heath Lowry and İsmail Erünsal have dubbed Ḥācī-Gāzī Evrenos Beg and his family ‘the second family of the Ottoman Empire’ (2010: 7). In the wake of the major defeat of the Ottoman house in the Battle of Ankara (1402), Gāzī Evrenos Beg objected to ceding hard-won territories in the Balkans to the Byzantines and Venetians, according to the testimony of the Venetian negotiator Pietro Zeno. Through his prestige and power, accumulated over nearly seventy years of service to the Ottoman dynasty, Gāzī Evrenos Beg came to represent ‘continuity in the Ottoman presence in the Balkans’ (Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 5–8). The Ottoman dynasty ‘owed its success’ to these and other warrior families (Finkel 2005: 75). Despite Gāzī Evrenos Beg’s undoubted centrality to Ottoman expansion in Thrace and Macedonia, little literary evidence survives on which to ground either the basic chronology or the cultural achievements of his rule.

Lowry has argued extensively that Gāzī Evrenos Beg’s establishment of infrastructure and construction of public buildings went hand in hand with military conquest (e.g. Lowry 2008). Developing this argument, Suna Çağaptay has demonstrated that the u c beg asserted his ‘lordship’ through construction projects, in particular the erection in the 1370s of his ‘imāret in Gümülcine (Greek Koumoutzena; modern Komotini), by using the construction technique characterized by alternating brick and stone masonry with cloisonné and the reuse of material that echoed both late Byzantine and early Ottoman building in Bithynia (Çağaptay 2011: 438; also Androudis 2016: 124–127 and 439 with n.59 on the pervasive use of this style in Evrenos constructions; Ćurčić 2010: 611; Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 32–33, 87 pl. 35; Lowry 2008: 41–47; Kiel 2004: 330.) The white marble head looking down from the apex of the ‘imāret’s gable might have been positioned deliberately to ward off evil from his monument to public welfare, though no comparable use of sculpture in Evrenos’s building projects helps to confirm this interpretation¹⁹ (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Roman marble head reused in the façade of the Gāzī Evrenos Beğ ‘imāret, Komotini. (Photo credit: reproduced with permission of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Rhodope.)

Very close in construction style to the Gümülcine ‘imāret is the large ḫān built by Gāzī Evrenos Beğ in neighbouring Traianopolis (Turkish: Ḳara Ilıca; Greek: Loutros/Loutra [‘baths’]). The Roman foundation on the Via Egnatia had grown into an important metropolitan see in the Christian period until it was severely damaged by Bulgarian and Turkish raids in the early decades of the fourteenth century. It can be no accident that Gāzī Evrenos Beg selected this site for his ḫān and adjacent domed ḥammām on account of its good communications, access to drinking water and hot springs (Lowry 2008: 29–40, pl.24; Androudis 2016: 88–90). Travelers noted that Traianopolis and also the above-mentioned Ala Kilise (Palaia Pella) – both Evrenos-related sites – were locations of a holy water source (agiasma / ayazma) frequented by Christians and Muslims.²⁰ Traianopolis is an obvious candidate for a multi-period study, as has been shown by Antigone Zournatzi’s investigation (2003: 333–340) of the bath’s understudied Roman phase with its associated healing cult focused on the thermal waters, also appreciated in the Ottoman period and up to the present day. In addition to a sacred spring, the site was also rich in ancient material conveniently to hand for construction. Indeed reused material from Roman and early Christian buildings has been found in the ḫān (Soustal 1991: 482–484). Two fragments of Gāzī Evrenos Beg’s dedicatory inscription, cut on a (presumably reused) white marble plaque, were rediscovered and published by Lowry subsequent to Zournatzi’s work, making it possible to establish a date for the ḫān’s construction between 1389 and 1417 (Lowry 2008: 33–35; Lowry 2010: 83–85) (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Ottoman dedicatory inscription on reused marble, Trainanopolis, Thrace. (Photo credit: Heath Lowry and İsmail Erünsal. 2010. The Evrenos Dynasty of Yenice-i Vardar 83, pl. 31; reproduced with permission).

(Photo credit: Adolph Struck. 1908. Makedonische Fahrten. II. Die Makedonischen Niederlande, p. 88).

Coinciding in time with his architectural benefactions in Thrace and possibly as early as his 1383 conquest of Serres, Gāzī Evrenos Beg established his base further west in Rumelia, in a town of his own creation, Yeñice-i Vardar (Kiel 1971 and 1990; Demetriades 1976; Lowry 2008: 58–64, Lowry 2010: 20–36; Androudis 2016: 426–431). Why did the commander who had by this time conquered huge territories in the Balkans choose the site of Yeñice-i Vardar to build a new town? First of all, the site of Yeñice-i Vardar (like Komotini and Traianopolis) was built on the Via Egnatia, the main artery crossing the Balkan peninsula from the second century BC and continuing as a vital line of communication in the Ottoman period (Zachariadou, ed., 1996). Phokion Kotzageorgis has argued that the site of future Yeñice-i Vardar was an excellent choice for the establishment of a market place (Kotzageorgis 2014). Modern excavations suggest that a late Byzantine settlement was located where Yeñice-i Vardar was later founded by Gāzī Evrenos Beg. This would explain why the ‘new’ town was not called Yeñi (‘new’), but Yeñice (‘newish’ or ‘almost new’) (Kiel 1971: 303).

There was, in fact, ancient precedent behind the choice of an ‘almost new’ foundation in this vicinity. After his victory at Actium Octavian established the Roman colony of Pella in 30 BC for more or less the same reasons, i.e., access to good routes, water, arable land and an abundance of building material (Chrysostomou 1990: 226–231; Chrysostomou 1995: esp. 117–120; Chrysostomou 2004: 93–94, 147–148). The site chosen for the colony was located in a suburb of Classical and Hellenistic Pella located 1.5 km. west of the site of Hellenistic Pella, near the site later known as the ‘Baths of Alexander’. How far back this modern local appellation reaches is unknown; early travellers also recorded the Balkan Slavic names ‘Banja’ (bath) or ‘Pel-Banja’ (see map above, Ill. 3, Struck [1908: 88]). Archaeological exploration north and northwest of the ‘Baths’ has brought to light a variety of Byzantine-era buildings constructed from reused Hellenistic and Roman material. Excavation 150 m. north of the ‘Baths’ has revealed an early Christian three-aisled basilica built with marble from Hellenistic and Roman Pella as well as another sizeable late antique building reusing Corinthian capitals and marble plinths (Chrysostomou 1995: 123–124; Gounaropoulou, Paschidis and Hatzopoulos 2015: 626). Settlement continued into the early Christian period, and suffered destruction in the late sixth, but in the northeast part of Hellenistic and Roman Pella there are signs of new construction from the ninth century until the late Byzantine period. Excavators have even unearthed a glazed ceramic bowl with an incised warrior from the late twelfth century, a century before the appearance of Gāzī Evrenos Beg as the area’s new ruler (Chrysostomou 1995: esp. 123–124, 130–131, and 136, ill.20).

In the light of the archaeological evidence, and in line with the surmise of the nineteenth-century travelers, especially Delacoulonche who recorded much more evidence than is visible today, the abundance of ancient materials must have been one of the important factors contributing to Gāzī Evrenos Beg’s choice of location for his ‘almost new’ settlement. It is a reasonable supposition with an ancient precedent (Chrysostomou 1990: 229). But what was Gāzī Evrenos Beg communicating with his new settlement in Yeñice-i Vardar? He envisioned and materialized a huge programme for constructing public buildings and infrastructure, a use of architecture that Çağaptay has called ‘the material pronouncement of his power’ (2011: 432). His mosque was recently identified with the well-known later mosque of İskender Beg, one of his descendants who had the building renovated in the early sixteenth century (Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 29–36; Androudis 2016: 443–444, 465). According to Lowry and Erünsal, the original mosque might have been built directly behind the residence of Evrenos Beg, which was turned later into an ‘imāret. Today, the surviving Gāzī Evrenos Beg/İskender Beg mosque (in its renovated form) clearly attests the fact that this was the most imposing building in Yeñice-i Vardar, built with well-cut stones and with the cloisonné system of brickwork widely used in pre-Ottoman buildings in the Balkans. Next to his residence, Evrenos Beg had a ḥammām built as well. The building survives today as a double bathhouse, as perhaps the oldest surviving Ottoman bathhouse in the Balkans. In the mid-seventeenth century Evliyā Çelebi (2003: 77) describes the ḫān as a massive building, ‘an inn with a large courtyard… among the charitable works endowed by Gāzī Evrenos Beg. By day and night it feeds, houses and provides rest to between five and six hundred men and their horses’ (bir ‘aded kārbānsarāy-ı mihmān revān-i ḥasbīsi var… ol dahi Gāzī Evrenos Beğ’in ḥayrātındandır kim şeb [ü] rūz beşer yüz altışar yüz ḳadar atlılar ḳonup). Lowry and Erünsal have recognized the ḫān in an old photograph, taken just prior to the Greek army’s entry into the town and the subsequent fire, and in three twentieth-century photographs have identified another building lost today, the medrese (theological seminary), which Evliyā Çelebi describes as built by Gāzī Evrenos Beg and ‘decorated with lead covered domes… a true house of learning’. In addition to these, an aqueduct was probably initially constructed by Evrenos Beg and later extended and repaired by his descendants, including his grandson Ḥācī Aḥmed Beg (Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 7, ḥammām; 104, ḫān; 136–137 medrese; 103, ṣu yolu [aqueduct]).

By the beginning of the reign of Süleymān I, the Muslim households in Yeñice-i Vardar numbered almost five hundred (Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 110–111). For all the major public buildings mentioned above, but perhaps also for the construction of domestic houses, the most likely scenario is one of multiple reuse of ancient as well as medieval materials as Gāzī Evrenos Beg and his heirs exploited building material from the late Byzantine settlement attested at the site as well as from the nearby late Byzantine (thirteenth to fourteenth century) settlement of ancient Pella, which would already have reused available ancient materials.

The obstacle to our fuller understanding of this probable multiple reuse of materials is the fact that the majority of the early Ottoman buildings no longer exist to be examined. In addition, surviving evidence of reuse is relatively limited today since most of these buildings were in all probability quarried, in their turn, for subsequent constructions. In the mid-nineteenth century some columns were recorded as intact and at this point we may return to Delacoulonche’s observations, worth quoting in full:

There is no doubt that it was built almost entirely with materials removed from Pella. But the ancient marbles were cut and shaped in all manners for the tombs of members of the Gazi-Gavrhénos [Gāzī Evrenos] family, for the porticos of the mosques, the fountain basins, and the original work has completely disappeared. The columns alone are respected, thanks to their shape which cannot admit any change. Cousinéry speaks of a bas-relief discovered at Jannitza [Yeñice-i Vardar] and representing a lion which brings down an ox and prepares to devour it. It was impossible for me to find it, although I traversed all the districts of the city, visited all the mosques, searched all the cemeteries, from that of the Bulgarians to the tombs of the companions of Gazi-Gavrhénos [Gāzī Evrenos]. The Jannitza [Yeñice-i Vardar] médressé was once a considerable building. It has been abandoned for some time now, and it is beginning to fall into ruin. But its portico is still supported by eight monolithic columns in white marble, unfluted, which rest on Ionic bases and are topped with Corinthian capitals. Similar ones are found in the baths of Gazi-Soul-Than. Something more curious is another monolithic column in red marble flecked with white, of the finest grain and with a polish as bright and as soft as that of porphyry. It is located in the Buyuk-Téké [Büyük Tekke] cemetery, alongside several fragments of ancient green and a magnificent piece of red porphyry rounded like the back of a seat (Delacoulonche 1858: 93).

We can identify the ḥammām of ‘Gazi-Soul-Tan’ with the aforementioned double bathhouse of Gāzī Evrenos Beg, surviving in a ruinous state today. Archaeological and architectural reports make no mention of marbles, which would naturally have been prime material for looters (Androudis 2016: 444–447). Delacoulonche also located ‘eight monolithic columns in white marble, unfluted, which rest on Ionic bases and are topped with Corinthian capitals’ in what he describes as the portico of the medrese. The medrese of Gāzī Evrenos Beg is thought not to have survived, hence it has not possible to locate the white marble columns, bases and capitals observed by Delacoulonche. However, Lowry has proposed to identify the Evrenos medrese with what appears to be a medrese courtyard in a photograph from c.1912, taken roughly half a century after Delacoulonche’s visit (Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 136–137, pl.86, without reference to Delacoulonche).²¹ Five white, monolithic columns are visible in the photograph (presumably more would have been beyond the lens) and would certainly suggest a reuse of ancient materials that would correspond to Delacoulonche’s description of the medrese’s elaborate portico²² (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Photograph from c. 1912 tentatively identified by Heath Lowry as the Gāzī Evrenos Beğ medrese courtyard. Note especially the reused(?) white columns, c.1912. (Photo credit: Heath Lowry and İsmail Erünsal. 2010. The Evrenos Dynasty of Yenice-i Vardar, p. 136, pl. 86; reproduced with permission.)

Gāzī Evrenos Beğ died in 1417, at a very great age. The extant marble funerary inscription that belonged to his sarcophagus described him in Arabic as ‘…martyr [shahīd] / king [mālik] of the ghāzīs and fighters of the jihād / slayer of the infidels and the polytheists, he who has visited the sacred house of God [i.e. Mecca]…’ (tr. and discussion in Demetriades 1976; Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 89–90; Çağaptay 2011: 438–439). The inscription’s Qur’anic and Islamic language is shared by the narrative poem the Ḫalīlnāme, composed in 1414 for Sultan Mehmed I, in which Evrenos is compared with the ‘rightly-guided’ caliph ‘Umar.²³

Gāzī Evrenos Beg’s türbe was built by his descendants in the vicinity of his residential complex in the city he had founded. This is how Evliya Çelebi described the funerary structure in the mid-seventeenth century:

He is buried inside this city, under a beautiful dome (ḳubbe) made of stone and covered with a lead dome. The interior of the dome is a warriors’ shrine (meşhed-i gāzīyān) built of two storeys. One descends three stone steps to the underground floor. There, inside a long marble sarcophagus (mermer ṣandūḳa), Gāzī Evrenos is buried. This is a dark underground place. However, on the upper level, under the same dome, there is a second marble sarcophagus (mermer ṣandūḳa). The inscriptions at its head and at its foot give the date 820 [=1417 AC]. The holy corpse of Gāzī Evrenos is in fact buried inside the other marble sarcophagus on the lower level. I have never seen this style (tarz)²⁴ of grave (ḳabr) in any other province. The dome is a high one, full of light, adorned with windows on all sides, like a pavilion in Paradise. All world-travelers have written graffiti on the walls in beautiful handwriting. May God bless his soul. (Evliya Çelebi 2003: 77; trans. Elias Kolovos; cf. Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 149)

The türbe of Gāzī Evrenos Beg has undergone multiple renovations, most recently by the Greek Archaeological Service (Skiadaresis and Karagianni 2008: 291–293; Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 89–102; Androudis 2016: 431–437). The original building phase is discernible today only in the nearly square room in the northwest part of the ground level. During the restoration, a marble threshold was revealed that gave access to the square room with the lower tomb.

The firstborn son of Gāzī Evrenos Beg was Ḥācī Baraḳ Beg. According to the late seventeenth-century family tree (c. 1675) of the Evrenosoğlu family located by Lowry and Erünsal (2010: 8), ‘his noble tomb (mezār-ı şerīf), next to that of the deceased [Evrenos], is built of tall marble columns (uzun mermer direkler)’. The tomb was still standing on four columns, or piers, in a photo dated c.1940 (photographs and discussion in Lowry 2010: 20–21; Lowry 2012: 56–58) (Figure 8). It is a reasonable conjecture that marbles from neighbouring Pella would have been incorporated in many more of the tombs of the descendants of the Evrenosoğulları family mentioned in the aforementioned family tree (Lowry and Erünsal 2018: 41–80).

Figure 8: Evrenosoğlu burial ground with reused ancient materials. Note especially the colonette with spiral fluting in the foreground. (Photo credit: Heath Lowry. 2012. Fourteenth Century Ottoman Realities, p. 57, pl. 32; reproduced with permission.)

During the fifteenth century, more public buildings were constructed by Evrenos Beg’s descendants in Yeñice-i Vardar. According to the 1498 endowment document of his vaḳıf, Ahmed Beg, grandson of Evrenos, was an avid builder in the town, providing a mescid, a medrese, a double ḥammām, a single ḥammām, an ‘imāret, a bedesten, and a ḫān, many workshops and fountains. The ḥammām Ahmed Beg built was destroyed by the Greek bombardment of the Ottoman town in 1912, but it was rediscovered in a recent excavation (Androudis 2016: 448 and 467, photographs and plans). Ahmed Beg’s mosque survives today in ruins after an effort to demolish it in 1974, during the Turkish invasion in Cyprus, by a Greek officer of the military camp in which the mosque was located (see Triantafyllidou 2023: 142; for the mosque and the materials used for its construction, see Androudis 2014: 442 and 464).

Apart from the türbe of Gāzī Evrenos Beg, another was built and became famous in Yeñice-i Vardar, that of the Şeyh ‘Abdullah İlāhī, originating from the town of Simav, near Kütahya, and a pioneer of the Naḳşibendī order in Anatolia and the Balkans (Kara and Algar 1998). Şeyh ‘Abdullah İlāhī was the spiritual guide of the aforementioned Ahmed Beg, grandson of Gāzī Evrenos Beg, who invited his teacher to live and teach in Yeñice-i Vardar, where he eventually died (Kiel 1971). The tomb was located near the hilltop mosque of Ahmed Beg, as shown in old photographs (Androudis 2016: 452; Lowry 2010: 24–28). The presence of two venerated figures from the Muslim past transformed Yeñice-i Vardar into a place of pilgrimage. On a short trip from Selānik, the aforementioned Ottoman traveller ‘Aşıḳ Meḥmed visited Yeñice-i Vardar for three days in 994/1586 and prayed at the tomb shrines of Ḥācī and Gāzī Evrenos Beg and Şeyh İlāhī:

The aforementioned Ḥācī and Gāzī Evrenos Beg – may God bless his soul – is buried in Yeñice-i Vardar. In addition, the honorable ancestor of the Şeyhs, Şeyh İlāhī is likewise buried in Yeñice-i Vardar near his dervish lodge (zāviye). I visited the tombs (meşhedler, lit. martyrs’ shrines) of these two saints and recited prayers on their behalf

(Aşık Mehmed 2007, vol. I, p. LXIV; vol.II., pp. 268–269, 406; vol. III pp. 994–995; Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 166–167)

The town’s sacred history attracted even more monumental public building. According to Evliya Çelebi, who visited Yeñice-i Vardar in 1668, the town possessed three mosques and fourteen mescids, one medrese, seven mekteb (schools), three ‘imārets, three ḥammāms, one karavanserāy, nine ḫāns, one bezzāzzistān and 740 workshops (Evliya Çelebi 2003: 76–79; Lowry and Erünsal 2010: 140–151). While the landscape was adorned with buildings constructed with impressive marble elements from the ancient past, the historical figures who gave Yeñice-i Vardar and its environs meaning were distinctly Islamic or, as in the case of the holy spring, Islamised.

Conclusion

The volume entitled Indigenous Archaeologies, Vernacular Classicisms in which this study appears aims collectively to document ways in which the ‘monuments of Greek antiquity’ have been subject to many (and often conflicting) ideologies, epistemologies, mythologies, as well as a whole range of practical and symbolic uses. The limited surviving evidence of local and non-European use and interpretation of the past has determined that most studies of Greece focus on the late eighteenth century onwards.²⁵ We have offered here a glimpse of earlier Ottoman engagement with the Greek past.

We began our study with an official Ottoman document reporting that in 1568 ‘marbles came out from the ground’ and a gūrḫāne (‘mausoleum’) was discovered near ancient Pella by farmers. Before the age of modern archaeology, the more common and useful but no less prized ‘antiquity’ was high quality, reusable building materials, whether revealed in excavation or extracted from ruins above ground. The discovery in 1568 triggered correspondence between provincial officials and the Imperial Council representing Sultan Süleymān I, after which material was sent to the capital. Might marble sent from ancient Pella have ended up among the many marbles reused in some new sultanic construction? In contrast to this intriguing and probably unanswerable question, we have clear evidence of reuse from Pella at Yeñice-i Vardar, but an almost total lack of documentary evidence from which to tease out motivation, even though the geographical choice indicates deliberate exploitation of established communicational, architectural and therapeutic advantages in the adjacent area.

While we lack the documentary evidence that supports the marble collection and reuse habits of sixteenth-century Ottoman rulers, stepping back to the formative years of Ottoman architectural practice we glimpse in Thrace and Macedonia a less top-down manifestation of power that grew (quite literally) from the ground upwards, responding to local conditions that were shaped by the newly-established Muslim rule. A century and a half before the accidental discovery of the ancient marble gūrḫāne during Süleymān’s reign, the tomb of Gāzī Evrenos Beg was constructed, in part with marble found in ancient Pella. For several decades before he was buried as ‘martyr and king’, according to the funerary inscription, Gāzī Evrenos Beg had executed an extensive building project for his ‘newish’ town of Yeñice-i Vardar, located 10 km from ancient Pella. As in his projects elsewhere in Thrace and Macedonia, architecture was a vehicle of the region’s Islamisation. His heirs perpetuated this architectural habit in Yeñice-i Vardar where their great ancestor had joined location on the Via Egnatia with natural resources and abundant ancient and medieval building materials ‘to build an alternative focus of power, legitimacy, and political alliances’ (Çağaptay 2011: 439).

By way of conclusion we might widen our viewpoint to contextualise Evrenos Beg in the light of better known examples of fifteenth and especially sixteenth-century Ottoman ideological reuse of ancient materials in the Ottoman capital, most notably by Meḥmed II and Süleymān I. Such a contextualization can be seen as an exercise in the limits of interpretation since no literary evidence survives to suggest the (improbable) likelihood that Evrenos had the support of learned circles such as Bāyezid I and, in particular, Meḥmed II enjoyed in Edirne and Constantinople. Bāyezid I (r. 1389–1402), under whom Evrenos served, was a great emulator of İskender, so much so that he had demanded tapestries on which were depicted the life and conquests of King Alexander as ransom from the Duke of Burgundy (Necipoğlu 2012: 3–4). At the end of Evrenos’s lifetime we see the appearance and popularity of Turkish versions of the broader Alexander cycle above all Ahmedi’s Anatolian Turkish İskendernāme, a work –it must be noted– that betrays no knowledge of, or interest in, Macedonian topography (Kastritsis 2016). Two surviving manuscripts of the İskendernāme were illustrated in the reign of Bāyezid’s grandson Meḥmed II, whom the ancient Macedonian king continued to inspire (Necipoğlu 2012: 8–9 with Necipoğlu 2019: 74–75 n.174; Bağçı 2019). Meḥmed II cultivated a complex image as heir to both Rome and Iran, hailed as Caesar and Padishah, but also İskender, the Qur’anic Dhū’l-Qarnayn (Raby 1983: 18–19; Necipoğlu 1992: 195–198). Four centuries later, another provincial leader in what had also been ancient Greek lands – ‘Alī Pasha of Ioannina – could liken himself to Pyrrhus (Neumeier 2017b). But local knowledge in late fourteenth-century provincial Macedonia seems to have had little grip on its ancient history. While a dim recollection of ancient Pella might adhere to the toponyms ‘Pel-Banja’ or ‘Ta Palatia’, no evidence seems to survive of local awareness of the toponym ‘Baths of Alexander’ attested in later travellers, or that these ‘baths’ or ‘palaces’ had been the site of Alexander’s birthplace. Even the name of the ecclesiastical see ‘Slanitzes, or Pella’ has left no deeper traces to suggest local engagement with the glorious past (ὁ Σλανίτζης ἤτοι Πέλλῶν, Gelzer 1902: 11; Stalidis 2007: 20–22). Evrenos Beg did call one of his sons İskender, but in the light of this hero’s widespread popularity, the name hardly justifies an argument of local identification of the area with Alexander. It seems that Evrenos Beg’s reuse of the past was powerful on its own terms as the visible appropriation of architectural techniques and above all impressive materials he and his architects had inherited and made their own in new constructions.

We would like to close with what must remain as a counterfactual thought, but one latent in the very ground Gāzī Evrenos Beg so attentively developed. Let us return to the observations made by Delacoulonche who visited Yeñice-i Vardar/ancient Pella in 1855:

However inconsiderable these remains may be, we nevertheless understand when seeing them that one of the main riches of Pella must have been the variety of its marbles, the diversity of materials used for the construction of its buildings. Granite, basalt, ancient green, red or brown porphyry, green porphyry with small white dots, the marbles of Thasos and Paros mixed with the white marble of Beroea, the pinkish marble of [T]itarion²⁶ …The kings of Macedonia were rich enough to bring them from Egypt and Asia as needed. (Delacoulonche 1858: 93)

Delacoulonche’s assessment of the Macedonian kings certainly brings to mind the similar political-architectural strategies of Süleymān and his architect Sinān. It also makes us ask, what if Gāzī Evrenos Beg, whose funerary inscription addresses him as king and whose contemporaries considered (and feared) him as second only to the sultan of the expanding Ottoman Empire had actually heard local legends of the Macedonian kings and above all Alexander? What if he had known that the precious marbles with which he built had stories to tell as statements of political reach and ambition – the ambition of Philip and Alexander, but also, with the foundation of the Roman colony at Pella, of Octavian soon to become the first Roman Emperor as Caesar Augustus? A millennium later Gāzī Evrenos Beg established his nearly-new Yeñice-i Vardar to exploit the same rich resources and develop another emerging empire. This choice could be interpreted as a potent mix of cultural appropriation and inventive engagement with the past, merging pre-Islamic and Islamic legend and material culture, even foreshadowing Meḥmed II’s complex architectural projects in Constantinople. But Gāzī Evrenos Beg’s was an Islamic empire whose leaders were only just beginning to forge the legendary and mythological links with the Greek, Roman and Byzantine pasts that would become part of the discourse of power reinforcing the Ottoman-Islamic empire. The evidence suggests that Ḥācī-Gāzī Evrenos Beg himself did not yet need to be a new Alexander or Caesar Augustus. It sufficed to be a warrior, pilgrim, martyr and king.

Authors’ Note

For comments on earlier drafts, we thank Anna Blomley, Suna Çağaptay, Garth Fowden, Miltiades Hatzopoulos, Myrina Kalaitzi, Dimitri Kastritsis, Nikolaos Magouliotis, Olga Palagia, Paschalis Paschides, Maria Stamatopoulou, Maria Triantafyllidou and the two anonymous peer reviewers. The authors alone are responsible for errors and oversights.

This paper uses the International Journal of Middle East Studies transliteration system for Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Appendix 1

OADB 1995, vol. II, p. 166.

Translation by Elias Kolovos

The order addressed to the [sancaḳ]beg and the ḳāḍī of Selānik is the following: You, the sancaḳbeg [of Selānik], sent the following letter for our information: ‘While the z immīs [non-Muslim] men named Brodan, Stal and Nikola, were digging a ditch around an arable field belonging to ‘Alī, Mevl ānā [His Excellency], the ḳāḍī of Yeñişehir, in the village named Göçeri, marbles came out from the ground. A part of the marbles was located inside the arable field of the sipāhī Küçük ‘Alī. His partner, named Avlob(?), together with the z immīs from the aforementioned village named Stoyko and Petko, sons of Bojik, excavated: a gūrḫāne [mausoleum] appeared. Ḥurrem, the nāib [deputy of the ḳāḍī]; silaḥdār ‘Abdī, the voyvoda and nāẓır ḳāimmaḳāmı [deputy of the superintendent]; Velī, the Selānik muḥżırbaşısı [head of the bailiffs of Selānik]; and Ṭur Bali, the deputy of the Ḳal’a-i ‘Atīḳ [Old Fortress], all those men arrived in the area of the discovery (ḥadī s e). There had been found the following, which were sent to the Gate of Felicity: 2,100 dirhem of gold; 188 dirhem of golden necklaces set with jewels (cevherī muraṣṣa‘ zencīr ve meftūl); a quantity of [golden] embroidery; five golden rings with their precious stones (altun yüzük ṭaşları) weighing 280 dirhem together with gold weighing 58 dirhem; finally, 700 dirhem of [golden?] sarcophagus with its cover (ṣanduḳa ḳaplu): [in total], 121 oḳḳas of precious metals (baḳır) were deposited in the Old Fortress’.

Now, I am ordering the following: When my imperial order arrives, you should follow up the case very carefully. Were there more items found in the gūrḫāne and hidden elsewhere? You should summon those suspects who had found and hidden items elsewhere. You should investigate the case according to Islamic and Sultanic Law. In case there are more items which appeared [from the ground] like the ones above, you should submit the names of those found them. However, you should not oppress anyone in a manner contrary to Islamic and Sultanic Law.

List of precious items found and their weight equivalents

2.100 dirhem of gold = 6,7347 kg.

188 dirhem = 602,916 gr. of golden necklaces set with jewels

unspecified quantity of [golden] embroidery

5 golden rings with their precious stones weighing 280 dirhems = 897,96 gr. together with gold weighing 58 dirhems (= 186 gr.)

700 dirhem (= 2,2449 kg.) of [golden] sarcophagus with cover (ṣanduḳa ḳaplu)

In total, 121 okkas of precious metals (baḳır) were sent to Constantinople (=151,2188 kg.).

NB: 1 dirhem = 3.207 gr., 1 oḳḳa = 1.2828 kg., based on Halil İnalcık, ‘Introduction to Ottoman Metrology’, Turcica 15 (1983), p. 320.

Transliteration (cf. OADB 1995, vol. II, p. 166)

Selānik begine ve ḳāḍīsına ḥüküm ki: Sen ki sancaḳbegisin, meḳtūb gönderüp; Yeñişehir Ḳāḍīsı Mevlānā ‘Alīnüñ Göçeri nām ḳaryede tarlası eṭrāfına Brodan ve İstal ve Nikola nām zimmīler ücretle hendeḳ ḳazarken mermerler çıḳup bir cānibi Küçük ‘Alī nām sipāhīnüñ tarlası içinde olmağla anuñ dahı Avlob(?) nām şerīki ḳarye-i mezbūreden Ustoyḳo ve Petḳo veledān-ı Bojik nām zimmīler ile ḳazup bir gūrḫāne ẓāhir olup Nā’ib Ḥurrem, Voyvoda ve Nāẓır Kāyim-i Maḳāmı silaḥdārlar[ın]dan ‘Abdī, Selānik Muḥżırbaşısı Velī, Ḳal‘a-i ‘Atīḳ Ketḥüdāsı Ṭur Balı maḥall-i ḥādiseye varduḳlarında iki biñ yüz dirhem altun ve cevherī muraṣṣa‘ zencīr ve meftūl yüz seksen sekiz dirhem altun ve bir mikdār sırma, iki yüz seksen dirhem beş aded altun yüzük ṭaşlarıyla elli sekiz dirhem altun bulunup ve ṣanduḳa ḳaplu yedi yüz dirhem bulunup Südde-i Sa‘ādetüme irsāl ėdüp yüz yiğirmi bir vuḳıyye baḳır Ḳal‘a-i Atīḳ’da emānet ḳondı” deyü bildürmişsin. İmdi; buyurdum ki: Ḥükm-i şerīfüm varıcaḳ, bu ḥuṣūṣa muḳayyed olup göresin; ziḳr olunan gūrḫānede bulunan esbāb dahı ziyāde olup bel‘ u ketm olmış mıdur, bel‘ u ketm olunmış ise maẓanne olanları ihżār ėtdürüp şer‘le ve ḳānūnla tefaḥḥus ėdüp anuñ gibi ẓuhūra gelecek dahı esbāb var ise ẓuhūra getürüp kimlerde bulundugın isimleriyle yazup ‘arz eyleyesin. Hılāf-ı şer‘ u ḳānūn kimesneye ẓulm ü ḥayf ėtdürmeyesin.

Figure 9: Facsimile.

Appendix 2

The village of Göçeri in the register of 1568 with its many Muslim çiftlik s.

Figure 10: TKA, TD 414 [1568], f. 32.