İstanbul Eyüpsultan, Cafer Pasha Dervish Lodge Culture and Art Center Project

Abstract

The dervish lodges, which sustain their existence with the plans shaped within the belief pattern of the Islamic world and art, have been shaped in different ways. Dervish lodge buildings, which include units such as masjid, dervish lodge, monotheism hall, a place reserved for women, a place reserved for men, mausoleum-hazire, kitchen, toilet, and focus more on the essence, display complex planning due to their functions. In this sense, Cafer Pasha Dervish Lodge, which is an important work in İstanbul-Eyüpsultan, is located in one of the important sect areas of its period, together with the Yahyazade, Özbekler, Afife Hatun lodges on the same axis. According to the inscription on the mausoleum, it is understood that the dervish lodge was built by Cafer Pasha in 1585 or close to this year, seems to have been inspired by the Ottoman madrasas with porticoes and the associated mosque-madrasa buildings lined up around the shared courtyard. Dervish lodges, which were encountered with many examples in the Ottoman period and used the shared open courtyard, seem functional in terms of maintaining the activities of a sect structure more organized. The madrasah/lodge cells that surround the three sides of the open courtyard in the shape of a "u", the masjid/classroom/monotheism hall at the west end of the south side extended to the courtyard, and the rectangular tomb located in the western part of the complex are enclosed in the surrounding wall. Today, a project has been developed to regulate various cultural activities in the courtyard to the south of the tomb and the exhibition area in the courtyard of the lodge, classrooms, and cells. This article has been written in order to make the relationship of the project to be implemented healthy with the cultural property that needs to be preserved in the first degree, that is, to serve as a recommendation and guide for the least intervention to the historical artifact, in other words, intervention at a scale that will not change the plans and facades.