Religious Monuments of Bursa and their Abandonment or Transformation in the Late 19^th Century

Prof. Dr. Beatrice ST. LAURENT, Bridgewater State University

Bursa as the first capital of the Ottoman Empire is an interesting stage to examine the topic of the re-use of religious spaces, for this paper limited to monuments surviving in the Tanzimat (1839-1876) and period of Abdülhamid (1876-1909). This paper examines the status of some religious monuments, their transformation to other purposes or abandonment in the face of population movement and political change. Also, to be examined are selective abandoned properties designated as awqaf or evkaf land retaining their status as religious and their fate post-Tanzimat Era.

With the absorption of the Jews fleeing the Inquisition, Bursa absorbed a population from that migration and synagogues sprang up in Jewish neighborhoods, which were later abandoned with the movement of Jews out of the city. Affecting much of what occurred in Bursa was the silk industry, still flourishing today. Churches (and small mosques) were built in the Greek and Armenian neighborhoods—areas that supported the silk factories up through the late 19^th century. Also, France exploited the industry by construction of a rail line from the coast to that city and marking their presence with French church. In the late 19^th century period of Abdülhamid, evkaf properties were released from their religious designation to be used for modernizing secular buildings such as the military school built on an upper slope of the city.

The political events of the post-Hamidian Period and the establishment of the Republic resulted in the loss of Greece as part of the Empire resulting in the movement of populations in both directions—Greeks to Greece and Turks to Turkey. This affected the transformation of both religious buildings and residential architecture in Bursa but will not be dealt with in this paper. Suffice it to say that mosques in Greece were destroyed or served new secular purposes.