Ruins of Past Glory: the Earliest Standing Ottoman Building in Bulgaria

by Mariya Kiprovska*

The Town of Ihtiman

The small town of Ihtiman is situated only 52 km southeast of the Bulgarian capital Sofia.  It is widely believed that the town of Ihtiman is the successor of the Roman and later Byzantino-Bulgarian fortified settlement Stipion/Stiponje. In fact, today’s town of Ihtiman was a creation of the Ottoman Turks, which developed three km southwest of the medieval Stipion. The Ottoman archival documentation shows that Ihtiman developed quickly shortly after the conquest of the area (1370/1) and came into being as a result of the building enterprise of one person, who most probably played a crucial role in the military invasion of that region – Mihaloğlu Mahmud Beg. The complex patronized by Mahmud Beg, consisting of hospice (zaviye), public bath (hamam), and in all probability inn/caravanserai (han), became the nucleus of the new settlement.

Once created Ihtiman served as a military base of the Ottoman vanguard forces (akıncı troops) for their raids westward in the direction of Sofia along the Via Militaris road, one of the main lines of Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. Both Ihtiman and Stipion continued their parallel existence throughout almost the entire Ottoman period. The old Christian Stipion was sacked, destroyed and disappeared for good during the period of anarchy in Rumelia (late 18th – early 19th c.), while the newly created predominantly Muslim town of Ihtiman made its way to modernity.

Mihaloğlu Mahmud Beg’s zaviye/‘imaret

photo: M. Kiprovska 2005

The zaviye (hospice, transformed into a mosque only later on) of Mahmud Beg has been wrongly identified by some researchers as a medieval church, converted into Muslim prayer house immediately after the conquest of the city. The presently neglected and ruinous building is indeed a genuine Ottoman structure, which is an early example of a distinct type of buildings in early Ottoman architectural development, variously categorized as “zaviye-mosque”, “eyvan-mosque”, “reverse T-shaped mosque”, “Bursa type mosque”, or “cross-axial mosque” etc.

source: S. Eyice,TDVIA, vol.16

Actually, the representatives of the thus labeled buildings were initially built not as mosques, but as hospices (zaviyes), a fact confirmed by both the naming of the buildings in their endowment deeds or dedicatory inscriptions (where they are mentioned either as zaviye or ‘imaret – both terms in most cases used interchangeably, which on the other hand points to their initial functions, i.e. to host the dervishes and travelers, and feed the needy) and by their architectural predecessors and actual prototypes – the zaviyes or khankhahs of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century Anatolia.

photo: M. Kiprovska 2008

The zaviye of Mahmud Beg in Ihtiman must have been built sometime after the conquest of the area (1370/1) and certainly before its patron’s death, who lost his life at the battle of Ankara (1402). The architectural characteristics of the building, as specified by Machiel Kiel, show that its construction must be assigned to the period between 1380 and 1395. This undoubtedly places it among the very early examples of its type in the Balkans, along with the earliest such structures built by Evrenos Beg along the Via Egnatia road (Gümülcine/Komotni, Serres, Yenice-i Vardar/Gianitsa). The building thus became the focal point around which the settlement grew. Its endowment deed is so far unknown, but the Ottoman registers of the pious foundations (vakfs) of the region (the earliest being from the beginning of the 16th century) explicitly mention it as a zaviye built by Mihaloğlu Mahmud Beg. Mahmud Beg has hereafter stipulated the upkeep of the foundation by endowing the incomes of more than a dozen villages around Ihtiman and the town itself, which he owed as landed property (mülk), for its maintenance. After Mahmud Beg’s death the management of the foundation was inherited by his sons and grandsons, as it remained in Mihaloğlu family possession well after the independence of Bulgaria (1878).

photo: M. Kiprovska 2008

photo: M. Kiprovska 2008

The building itself comprises of four spaces: a central square hall surmounted by a dome on the drum of which four windows were opened for the sake of better illumination; a barrel-vaulted prayer hall to its south; and two lateral domed rooms with a slightly lower domes than the central one. The side rooms, equipped with fireplaces, the chimneys of which are still visible, were once connected to the central hall by way of doors. The lightning of the zaviye was provided by windows on each outer wall of the building. The wall construction features the late Byzantine and early Ottoman style – brick and stone masonry, as on the façade several ornamented elements in brick were used for decoration.

In the mid-sixteenth century the zaviye was still providing shelter and food for the passengers, who must have been numerous considering the favorable position of Ihtiman on the main diagonal road from Istanbul to Belgrade. Indeed many Western travelers who passed through there have received shelter in the ‘imaret of Mahmud Beg. The guests of the zaviye were fed with wheat gruel, as on Friday nights a rice dish was served. Thus, one would imagine that the two lateral rooms of the building were still used as guest rooms, but not as prayer halls.

photo: K. Mijatev 1920s

Sometime during the sixteenth century, though, the zaviye lost its initial functions and was transformed into a mosque. The doors leading to the two flanking guest-rooms were replaced by arches so that they were opened to the central prayer hall and allowed to be used for the same purpose. A minaret was added, but even then it was not virtually connected to the building, standing separately from the west-most corner of the façade wall as seen in early twentieth-century photographs. Presently the zaviye, once the nucleus of the small town and one of the earliest examples of its architectural type in the Balkans, is in completely ruinous condition.

Mahmud Beg’s hamam

source: Harbova

Contrary to the miserable condition of the zaviye, the public bath (hamam) in Ihtiman was perfectly restored as at the present serves as an art gallery. The building was once part of the complex built by Mihaloğlu Mahmud Beg, as its incomes must have supplied the nearby hospice. As architecturally the hamam bears certain features from the early Ottoman period, i.e. late fourteenth century, and because the same masonry as well as identical brick decoration was employed as in the building of the zaviye, it must be accepted that it was build at the same time as the hospice (1380-1395).

photo: M. Kiprovska 2008

The Inn (han)

Due to Ihtiman’s location on one of the most important military and trade routes of the Balkans, Via Militaris, a great number travelers have passed through there and have described it in their travelogues. Although in the eyes of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travelers Ihtiman was a small settlement, inhabited predominantly by Muslims, their accounts testify for the existence of two caravansaries in the town, which obviously served the travelers and traders passing through there. One of the hans was known by the name “Mihal” and the other – simply as “Beg’s han”, suggesting that in all probability they have been built by members of the Mihaloğlu family who chose Ihtiman as their place of residence. It is plausible to suggest that one of these caravanserais was built as part of the complex of Mahmud Beg and the other might have been erected later, though there are no contemporary sources to support this hypothesis. The only references to these structures come from the travelers, whose accounts date to the 16th century the earliest.

* This publication was made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Turkish Cultural Foundation.

Sources:

Кр. Миятев, „Приноси към средновековната археология на българските земи,” – В: Годишник на Народния Музей за 1921 г. (1922 г.), 248-254. [Kr. Mijatev, “Contributions to the medieval archeology of the Bulgarian lands,” National Museum Year-Book for 1921 (Sofia, 1922).]

М. Харбова, Градоустройство и архитектура по българските земи през ХV-ХVІІІ век, София: БАН, 1991. [Margarita Harbova, Urbanism and Architecture in Bulgarian Lands in 15th - 18th c. (Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1991).]

Semavi Eyice, “İlk Osmanlı Devrinin Dini-İçtimai Bir Müessesesi: Zâviyeler ve Zâviyeli-Camiler,” İstanbul Üniversitesi İktisat Fakültesi Mecmuası 23:1-2 (1962-1963): 1-80.

Semavi Eyice, “Sofya Yakınında İhtiman’da Gazi Mihaloğlu Mahmud Bey İmâret-Camii,” Kubbealtı Akademi Mecmuası 2 (1975): 49-61.

Semavi Eyice, “Gazi Mihaloğlu Mahmud Bey Camii,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 13 (1996), 462-463.

Machiel Kiel, “İhtiman,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 21 (2000), 571-572.

Machiel Kiel, “Four Provincial Imarets in the Balkans and the Sources About Them” in N. Ergin, Ch. Neumann, A. Singer (eds.), Feeding People, Feeding Power: Imarets in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul: Eren, 2007), 97-120.

Aptullah Kuran, “The Eyvan Mosque” in idem. The Mosque in Early Ottoman Architecture (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), 71-136.

Doğan Kuban, “Osmanlı Mimarisinin Öncül Yapısı: Zaviye”  in idem. Osmanlı Mimarisi (Istanbul: Yem Yayın, 2007), 83-122.

Emir Sedat, Erken Osmanlı Mimarlığında Çok-işlevli Yapılar: Kentsel Kolonizasyon Yapıları Olarak Zaviyeler. Cilt II – Orhan Gazî Dönemi Yapıları (İzmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1994).

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