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Cil, Ela

Assist.Prof.Dr.
Department of Architecture
Izmir Institute of Technology
Turkey
elacil@iyte.edu.tr +90 232 7507083

Morphogenetic History of Kula,


A Preserved Ottoman Town in Aegean Anatolia

Introduction
This paper presents a research focusing on the morphological transformation of Kula, which
is a town in Aegean Anatolia dating back to 56 B.C., when the area was settled by the
Lydians. They were, sequentially followed by the Persians, the Eastern Romans
(Byzantines), and the Anatolian Principalities in the 13 th and 14th Centuries. Kula had been
settled by the Ottomans from the 15 th Century until the foundation of Turkey.

Although there had been major changes in the 20 th Century, the town‟s peripheral status after
the construction of the railroad and non-damaged condition after the 1922 war resulted with a
relatively slower spatial transformation of the town, and additionally out-migrations in the
1950s and the preservation regulations established in 1987 helped most of the urban fabric
to stay intact. This helps us to conduct morphological analysis for exploring the relationship
between the irregular block sizes, and organic plot agglomerations and their relationship to
the overall town form.

The method of morphological analysis in this paper is influenced by the method introduced
by M.R.G. Conzen and developed by others focusing on the medieval urban landscapes.1
Due to little visual and written documentation of the medieval Anatolia, such analysis is hard
to conduct for the Ottoman settlements.2 In order to overcome the absence of historical
plans, this research utilizes previous work on the tax records from the 16th Century, travel
books dating back to the 17 th Century, and the yearbooks (salnames) printed in the late-19th
1
M. R. G. Conzen, "The use of Town Plans in the Study of Urban History," in The Study of Urban History, ed. H.
J. Dyos (New York: St. Martin's Press; 1968); T. R.Slater, "The Urban Hierarchy in Medieval Staffordshire"
Journal of Historical Geography 11 (1985); K. Lilley, “Mapping the Medieval City: plan analysis and urban history”
Urban History 27, 1, (2000).
2
Representative works are: S. Aktüre, Ondokuzuncu Yüzyıl Anadolu Kenti, Mekansal Yapı Çözümlemesi
(Ankara: METU, 1978); P. Pinon, "Anadolu ve Balkanlardaki Yerlesim Dokusu Uzerine Bir Tipoloji Denemesi”,
Osmanlı Mimarlığının Yedi Yuzyılı ‘Uluslarustu Bir Miras,’ eds., Nur Akin, Afife Batur, and Selcuk Batur, 166-79
(Istanbul: YEM, 1999); and A. Borie, P.Pinon, S.Yerasimos ” Tokat: Essai sur l‟Architecture Domestique et la
Forme Urbaine” Anatolia Moderna I, BIFFEA 22, (1991)

1
Century; as well as the oral history conducted with the old inhabitants of the town; and
archival records in the local government office.

Words and Buildings: Reconstructing the Spatial Environment


The construction of public buildings in Kula provide benchmarks for tracing the town‟s
physical growth. In fact, all the information about that era is localized and limited to the
market area. The threads of growth beginning with Sungur Bey‟s developments in the mid-
14th Century can be traced to the town‟s current marketplace where he erected a public bath,
a mosque,3 and a caravanserai, which, according to İsmail Tosun, was located on the site
once occupied by the Zincirli Caravanserai before its demolition. 4 Writers who worked on the
history of Kula have hypothesized that the current Market Mosque is situated directly over
the site of the mosque built by Sungur Bey.5 According to local sources, the current Market
Mosque was built through the patronage of the Buruşuklar Family in the nineteenth century
to replace the mosque destroyed by the big fire of the 1860s, which also destroyed the entire
marketplace.6

Following Sungur Bey‟s developments, the tomb of Süleyman Shah, governor of the
Aydinogullari Principality, who had chosen to settle in Kula had his tomb built within the
boundaries of the market mosque in the late fourteenth century.

The other prominent building, the Kurşunlu Mosque, which was founded by Hodja Seyfeddin
in the late-fifteenth century, has been the town‟s Friday mosque since it was built. Another
building mentioned in the archival sources that still stands in the market district is a public
bath, built in 1503 by Mehmet bin Mustafa.7

The large open space at the north-end of main street was once the animals‟ market (hayvan
pazarı). The buildings surrounding the northeast sector of the open space contained the
tanners‟ workshops (debbahhane) with the timber market (odun pazarı) located in the
adjoining area.

3
B. Darkot, “Kula.” İslam Ansiklopedisi. vol. 6, eds., A. Adıvar, et al. Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basımevi. 1955, 973-
976.
4
İsmail Tosun, Tarihi, Sosyal, Kültürel ve Turizm Yönü ile Kula, Kula tarihi ve folklor notları. Izmir: Aboloji
Matbaacılık, (1969)18.
5
Besim Darkot, “Kula.” İsmail Tosun, Tarihi, Sosyal, Kültürel ve Turizm Yönü ile Kula
6
Mustafa Keleşoğlu, interview by author, 10 July 2002, Kula, tape recording. Moreover, both Ali Ünveren and
Hüseyin Şahin talked about the same fire that they heard of from their grand fathers. Ali Ünveren, interview by
author, summer 2002, Kula, AD; Hüseyin Şahin, interview by author, 6 March 2003, Kula, AD.
7
Rüstem Bozer, Kula’da Türk Mimarisi (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yay. 1990), 60.
2
One can speculate that the open bazaar was located where market activities were once held
in both the pre-Ottoman and Ottoman times.8 According to İlhan Tekeli, the location of the
market places during the establishment of Ottoman towns usually coincided with that of the
pre-Turkish/Ottoman ones, situated immediately outside the walls, usually in an open space
in front of the town‟s main gateway.9 Thus, it is no coincidence that the two main axes
approaching Kula still terminate at the Blacksmiths‟ Gate (Demirciler Kapısı) and the Citadel
Gate (Hisar Kapı).

Construction of a new mosque, the Hajji Abdurrahman Mosque, in 1574, coincides at almost
the same time with the population decrease. This new mosque was then located rather far
away from the marketplace. Today, the mosque stands in the middle of the old town. Though
modest in size, its form and material is different from those of the other neighborhood
mosques, which in fact were originally mescids later converted to mosques by the addition of
minarets. The plots of family, The Müftüler, that had commissioned the construction of the
Hajji Abdurrahman Mosque are adjacent to the mosque while the entrances to the houses
are on the street behind the mosque.10

The construction of the Hajji Abdurrahman Mosque fits into the pattern of Anatolian town
growth that Uğur Tanyeli terms “growth with opposite focal points.” He states that early
Ottoman settlements were founded on two simultaneously-active establishment principles;
the first part of the new Turkish / Ottoman settlement permeated the earlier settlement,
usually located within a fortress, while, according to the second principle, Ottoman
settlements grew around a new center outside the walls.11

We can be sure of the walls‟ existence, which is reasonable to date back to the Byzantine
period, since Katip Çelebi, the well-known geographer of the seventeenth century, when
describing Kula, had stated that the town had a castle in a dilapidated state. 12 Nothing
remains of that castle today but by following some of the streets around the Old Mosque, we
can hypothesize about the line where the walls of the castle mentioned by Katip Çelebi might
have been located.

8 th
Mustafa Cezar states that the two words, market and bazaar, were used synonymously until the 16 Century.
Since then the word market is employed to indicate the area comprised of shops and workshops, and the bazaar
refers to the open area gathering place for the vendors. Mustafa Cezar, Tipik Yapılarıyla Osmanlı Şehirciliğinde
Çarşı ve Klasik Dönem İmar Sistemi (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basımevi; 1985).
9
İlhan Tekeli, “Anadolu‟daki Kentsel Yaşantının Örgütlenmesinde Değişik Aşamalar” (Different Steps in the
Organization of Urban Life in Anatolia) Toplum ve Bilim, (Bahar-Yaz 1980) : 36-55.
10
As stated by the members of the family a door connects the house to the mosque‟s compound.
11
Uğur Tanyeli, Anadolu-Türk Kentinde Fiziksel Yapinin Evrim Sureci, 11.-15. yy (The Evolution of the Urban
Structure in the Anatolian-Turkish City, 11th-15th centuries) ( Istanbul: ITÜ Yay., 1986), 128-135.
12
Katip Çelebi, Cihannuma, quoted in Besim Darkot, “Kula” Islam Ansiklopedisi. vol. 6
3
Seventeenth century developments in Kula can also be traced through the accounts of the
well- known Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi who visited Kula. He stated that the town had

Construction of Public Buildings and Certain Events in Kula.

CENTURIES DATES BUILDINGS AND EVENTS IN KULA


Kula changes hands between the Byzantines, the Seljuks, and the
13th
Germiyans
1305 The Byzantines take Kula back from the Turks.
1356-57 Sungur Bey (he was probably a governor from the Germiyaoğlu
Principality) founds the bath known as the Sungur Bey Hamamı; the
14th
caravanserai that was later called Zincirli Han and the Mosque at the
same place where the Market Mosque is located today.
1387-88 Süleyman Shah tomb built in the Gürhane district or medrese
1496 / 902 Kurşunlu Cami founded by Hodja Seyfeddin
Kula became an Ottoman town and included in the city of Kütahya.
15th
1481-1512 The first tax register: Kula has three neighborhoods, The Old Mosque,
The Uşaklı, and the Mihmad Mescidi, with a total of 214 households.
1502-3 Mehmet bin Mustafa founds the Public Bath, called Çin Çin Hamamı or
New Hamam today.
1520 The second tax register: Kula has four neighborhoods with a total of 273
households; the Hoja Seyfeddin Neighborhood added on.
16th 1534 The third tax register: Kula has the same four neighborhoods with 235
households.
1571 The fourth tax register: Kula has two neighborhoods, The Uşaklı and the
Old Mosque, with 181 households.
1574-75 The Hajji Abdurrahman Mosque built.
Katip Çelebi visits Kula.
17th
1671 Evliya Çelebi visits Kula.
1723-4 The Zincirli Mosque built.
1772-3 The Karakavuk Mosque was built.
1783-84 A minaret added to the Necipler Mosque.
18th
A minaret added to the Pasha Mosque.
1784-85 The Soğukkuyu Mosque was renovated.
The Haji Recepler Mosque was built.
1815-6 The Old Mosque renovated.
1837 The Greek Orthodox Church Panagia built / renovated.
Traveler-scholars Texier, Von Diest, Ramsay, and Cuinet visited Kula.
1864 The big fire in the marketplace.
1869 Kula becomes apart of the Aydın province; formerly used to be
administered from Kütahya.
19th
1884 A primary-school (ibtidaiye) and a middle-school (rüştiye) built.
1894 The Taş Mosque built.
1896 The Barracks constructed
Two other churches built / renovated.
Two primary and two junior high schools built for the Rum students for
Greek education.
1902 The municipality building built at the marketplace (the municipality
20th
organization established in 1866)
1904 A new junior school (Mekteb-i Ünas) built by the governor Hacım
Muhittin Çarıklı.

4
eight neighborhoods, 1200 flat-roofed houses covered with soil, 24 altars (mihrap), three
public baths (hamam), six caravanserais (han), and 200 shops.13 Although Evliya had
already comprised a full-fledged town in the seventeenth century, one can surmise from the
dates of the construction of several mosques in the neighborhoods that the town actually
flourished in the 18th Century. The Karakavuk, the Hajji Recep, and the Zincirli Mosques were
constructed then; the minarets were added to the Necip and the Pasha Mosques during this
period as well.14 The epigraph on the façade of the Soğukkuyu Mosque also reveals that it
was renovated during the same period as well.15

By the early-eighteenth century, Kula was a small town that collected the surplus of its region
and exchanged it for the manufactured goods that the peasants could not find in their
villages. During the 19th Century, the market place, many houses were reshaped and new
public buildings were built. Many new schools for the Muslim and non-Muslim students were
built during this century as well. Apart from the schools, the three churches constructed in the
Rum neighborhoods also stand out in this period. One of the such built churches pledged to
Saint Mary and named Theotoku was built in 1837. The other church also located within the
Greek neighborhoods was named Hagios Georgios by the Rums;16 but today it is
occasionally referred to as the “big church.” There is currently no information on this church‟s
exact date of construction, but comparison of the plans of the two churches and the
availability of political permission enables one to assume that it was built in the second half of
the 19th Century. The “third church,” as it has simply been named by the few townspeople
who still remember its existence, was the graveyard church of the Rum community. The area
was reserved toward the northeast region right outside the Rum neighborhoods and town.
The third church was completely demolished in the 1950s.17

Reading the Town Plan


Projecting today‟s town plan into the past is based on the assumption that the contemporary
town form can lead one back to the earlier stages of the configurations. There are houses
which are dated back to the 18th Century, but most of the houses are from the 19 th Century.
According to M. Cezar, the growth of pre-industrial towns tended to stall after their material
production and population growth balanced out; this stagnation in transformation sustained
the main structure of the urban form and preserved the shape and location of most of the

13
Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname vol. 9 ( Istanbul: YKY, 2004),52. One always has to be careful about relying on
Evliya as a source, since he has a lively imagination and often exaggerates the numbers. Thus, 1200 houses or
twenty-four religious structures, even if one were to assume that Evliya Çelebi counted the churches along with
the mosques and the mescids, seems too exaggerated.
14
Süleyman Bozer, interview by author, 19 June 2002, tape recording, Kula.
15
Rüstem Bozer, Kula’da Türk Mimarisi (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yay., 1990).
16
Talat Ulusoy, interview by author, Summer 2003, AD. Istanbul.
17
Mustafa Keleşoğlu, interview by author, 17 June 2002, tape recording, Kula.
5
units and institutions.18 Similarly, referring to P. Lavedan‟s continuity principle, P. Pinon
suggests that 19th Century forms reflect earlier forms19. Thus, although the current cadastral
plan of the town is from the late 20th Century, it still provides a good starting point for reading
the town plan into history, and for understanding the physical fabric in terms of „land
divisions‟ and „physical growth‟ by analyzing the building blocks, main roads, and major land
divisions.20 As the cadastral plan solely represented the footprints of the buildings and the
boundaries of the plots, it was not always possible, however, to determine whether the
shapes in the plans represented the building or the void. In addition, information about the
third dimension and most importantly about the alterations and additions were missing from
these plans. Therefore, this crucial information had to be gathered by walking through each
and every street. Additionally certain spatial changes could be traced through the interviews
conducted with the elderly inhabitants.

The Separation between the Market place and the Neighborhoods


The plan of the whole town reveals that the town has been divided into two main parts: the
market place and the neighborhoods. This separation can be roughly defined as the
separation between the “public” and the “private" spheres, was common to almost all
Ottoman towns; in fact, according to Andre Raymond, it formed the primary urban principle of
Ottoman settlements. 21

There is also a major difference between the configuration of the building blocks that form
the neighborhoods and the grid plan of the market place. The grid plan of the market area
must have been implemented in the 1860s after the large fire that destroyed the area. It is
quite probable that, following the fire, the new market area was reconstructed in accordance
with a series of building regulations (Ebniye Nizamnamesi) issued by the Ottoman State in
1848.

Location of the Mosques, Mescids, and Churches


Not only do mosques provide us information about the dates related to the towns‟ past, but

18
Mustafa Cezar, Tipik Yapılarıyle Osmanlı Şehirciliğinde Çarşı ve Klasik Dönem Imar Sistemi (İstanbul: Mimar
Sinan Üniversitesi, 1985).
19
Pierre Pinon, "Anadolu ve Balkanlardaki Yerlesim Dokusu Uzerine Bir Tipoloji Denemesi” (An Essay on the
Typology of Settlement Patterns of Ottoman Cities in Anatolia and the Balkans), in Osmanlı Mimarlığının Yedi
Yuzyılı ‘Uluslarustu Bir Miras,’ eds., Nur Akin, Afife Batur, and Selcuk Batur, 166-79 (Istanbul: YEM, 1999);
20
Pierre Pinon, "Anadolu ve Balkanlardaki Yerlesim Dokusu Uzerine Bir Tipoloji Denemesi”; Tülay Artan, “Early
20th Century Maps and eighteenth-nineteenth century Court Records, Urban Continuity on the Bosphorous"
Environmental Design 13/14, no. 1-2 (1993) : 96-111.
21
Andre Raymond, Osmanlı Döneminde Arap Kentleri (Arab Cities in the Ottoman Era) (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı
Yay., 1995), 118.
6
The Church of
Hagios
The Taş Georgios
Neighborhood The "Third" Church
Mosque

The Old Mosque


The Pasha Mosque
The Church of
Saint Mary

The Zaferiye Mescid

The Zaferiye
Mosque
The Market Mosque

The Hajji
Abdurrahman
Mosque

The Hodja
Seyfeddin /
Kurşunlu Mosque The Soğukkuyu
Mosque

The Necipler The Hajji Recep


Mosque Mosque

The Taşkuyu
Mosque

The Karakavuk
Mosque

The Zincirli Mosque

The Tahtalı Mosque

The New Mosque

The map of Kula showing the location of the mosques, mescids ,churches, and fountains

they also play an important role in the growth of an Ottoman town. New mosques were built
in peripheral areas beyond the edges of the existing settlements to encourage the
development of houses around them.22 In the following years, the areas between the old and
the new neighborhoods would be incrementally in-filled eroding the gaps between the
neighborhoods.

22
Zekiye Yenen, “Social and Religious Influences on the Form of Early Turkish Cities of the Ottoman Period”
Journal of Architectural Planning Research. 1992; 9(4):301-314. In fact, it was never the mosque alone that
constituted the new neighborhoods, but the complex of buildings, medrese, library, hospital, charity kitchen, etc.,
lead by the mosque in the big cities.
7
The Market Mosque instead of being nearby had been built outside the already existing
settlement with the intention to attract settlers and form the new town. In early Ottoman
towns, religious buildings were built to serve the needs of recently urbanizing groups within a
group of other buildings that provided food, health, education and social services (imaret). As
towns developed, the quarters including these complexes expanded to surround the old
Byzantine nucleus.23 In the following eras as towns grew, larger mosques were built this time
to create new neighborhoods and they thus became the nuclei of new districts.

When we analyze the distances between any two mosques closer to each other than other
mosques in town, we can see a pattern that confirms the hypothesis about the town‟s growth
process and the almost equal distribution of all the mosques within it. Both of these
observations support the theory on the role of the mosques acting as cores of the
neighborhoods.

Similarly, the three churches are in almost equal distance from each other. Since there were
few buildings around the third church (of which nothing remains today), we can assume that
the third church was built with the intention to expand the Greek neighborhood toward that
location. The Greek school built in the late nineteenth century on a large plot, and the size
and configuration of the other blocks in the same area also demonstrate the expansion of
that district in early 20th Century.

The distance between the Old Mosque and the three mosques (the Pasha, the Market, and
the Yuvalı mosques), closer to it are greater than the distances between the Old Mosque and
the two churches. This can be interpreted as further support for the hypothesis that the Old
Mosque or the building located there could be a part of the pre-Turkish settlement. Thus the
old mosque instead of being a center of then the new neighborhood marked its juxtaposition
at the edge of the old one.

The Pasha Mosque was frequented by tanners. People who have such professions with their
appearance and the smell associated with their work do not want to disturb prayers in the
Market Mosque and therefore preferred to pray separately. Now, the tanners‟ workshops are
located outside town and the Pasha Mosque is used by the inhabitants living around it.

The equally long distances between the Hajji Abdurrahman Mosque and the two main
mosques, the Market Mosque and the Kurşunlu Mosque, reveal that the location of the Haji
Abdurrahman Mosque was intentionally chosen to spread the town in that direction. The

23
Zekiye Yenen, “Social and Religious Influences on the Form of Early Turkish Cities of the Ottoman Period”303
8
Yuvalı Mescid must have been turned into a mosque through the conversion by a pious
inhabitant of a house; and this must have ended complaints of the neighborhood residents
who neither wanted to pray in the Market Mosque in the evening or early morning nor walk to
the Haji Abdurrahman Mosque.

When we compare the birds-eye view distances with the lengths of the streets that form the
walkways from one mosque to the other, the shortest distance measured by the birds-eye
view is between the Haji Recepler and the Taşkuyu Mosques. In fact, when the distance
between these two mosques is measured by adding the length of the streets, the sum is
longer than the distance between the Zincirli and Karakavuk Mosques. Another discrepancy
can be observed in the distances between the Taş Mahalle Mosque and the Old and Pasha
Mosques. The distances in terms of streets as walkways are even greater. This might prove
that the Taş Mahalle was isolated from the rest of town.

The Kurşunlu Mosque was not as isolated in the square as it is today. Before its demolishion
there was a school (Hacılarlı Medresesi) facing the mosque that filled up most of the space in
the square. It is not possible to draw the exact location of the school that accompanied the
mosque, but according to Süleyman Bozer, the open space in front of the mosque was not
as wide as it is today.24

Although the proximity of the two large mosques the Kurşunlu Mosque and the Market
Mosque, is intriguing at first sight, their proximity can be explained by the fact that they
performed different functions and assumed different ceremonial roles. Although the Market
Mosque was built first, it was not built as a symbolic and representational building, but meant
to serve the shopkeepers, the artisans, and the shoppers daily. The Kurşunlu Mosque,
however, was built with the intention that it would be the Friday Mosque of the town; thus it
would be the main gathering place and the symbol for the Muslim identity of the town; this
was also the mosque where the funerals took place.

All the mosques are generally located at the end of their respective building blocks. Yet, the
two churches, Hagias Georgios and Panagia, were located in the middle of the building
blocks. Unlike the mosques, although they are as a mass bigger than the surrounding
buildings, they are neither taller nor more dominating than the other buildings. The oral
accounts state that the third church was more outstanding in its mass and visual
characteristics, and that it was built in an empty area.

24
Süleyman Bozer. Interview by author, 19 June 2002; Winter 2003. Kula. Tape redording.

9
The diagram showing the territories centered by the mosques.

The Public Fountains and Wells


For the Ottomans the most prioritized urban infrastructure was the water transport system
which, among other things, made fresh water available within the urban setting. According to
Cerasi, even to the surprise of the historians who were eager to criticize the Ottomans‟
organizational capabilities the construction of public fountains and the tunnels paralleled
them were often well engineered.25

Since the public fountains and wells were the only sources of water in the pre-industrial era,
there were no towns that could afford not to build them. Still, the fountains in Kula were

25
Maurice Cerasi, Osmanli Kenti [The Ottoman City] (Istanbul: YKY, 2000), 191 Similarly, Emre Madran
emphasizes the importance Ottomans attributed to the construction and maintenance of structures for water
transport.) E. Madran, “Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Onarım Esnafı” Osmanlı Mimarlığının Yediyüzyılı Uluslarüstü
Bir Miras [Seven Hundred Years of Ottoman Architecture "A Transnational Heritage”] N. Akin, A. Batur, and S.
Batur, eds. (Istanbul: YEM, 2000) 327-336
10
unusual in that they were all underground.26 Eleven fountains, of which only one remains,
were located in an open air courtyard accessed by steps and the taps were anchored on one
of the walls. Because of the changing depths needed to access water that were located in
different parts of town, and connected to each other through tunnels. Probably because of
the high elevation of the terrain in the region, the Rum neighborhoods did not have any
fountains.

Streets
In the labyrinthine plan of the town certain streets stand out as the skeleton of the network.
These are parallel to each other and to a west-east axis from the edge of the neighborhoods
to the market area suggesting the primacy of that relationship over the ones among the
neighborhoods. The streets that are perpendicular to these and connecting them to each
other are shorter. Towards the north, where there is change in topography there are two
curvilinear streets emphasizing the difference in the pattern.

A close examination of the physical relations between the street layout and the block
boundaries demonstrate some of the changes in the directions of the streets to be very
sharp. Even after such a sharp turn, a similar one occurs symmetrically right after that and
then the street continues in its original direction. Also, some streets get narrow and then
immediately broaden back to their original size. Although these changes in directions and
sizes of the streets are due to the construction practices that occurred over the course of a
long time, it is tempting to see them as physical demarcations separating one quarter from
another and filtering strangers entering into the intimacy of a neighborhood.

26
Hitherto, the public fountains resembling the ones in Kula could be found in Gaziantep where the local name
given to them is kastel. These kastels are not underground courtyards, however but instead buildings with
openings on their ceilings or side walls. Nusret Çam, “Gaziantep‟te „Kastel‟ Adı Verilen Su Tesisleri” Vakıflar
Dergisi, 18, 1984, 165-174
11
The map showing the gate-like formations.

Neighborhoods
As stated above the boundaries of neighborhoods are hard to discern in an Ottoman town,
and their existence is demarcated rather territorially than with borderline. Nevertheless in
Kula the presence of a Rum community (Orthodox Christians speaking both Turkish and
Greek) and recounts of their neighborhoods in oral history suggested an investigation in the
archives for understanding the boundaries of Rums‟ neighborhoods. The search at the Land
Registry Office in Kula showed that the two communities lived in two separate
neighborhoods, with some porous boundaries when their margins intersected. Houses
belonging to the members of different communities are located with back to back while
others face each other from the two sides of the street. It is also possible to conclude that
visibility demonstrates itself as a principal boundary between the Rum and Turkish
neighborhoods and consequently of who is included into the personal or more intimate radius
of communal life.
12
The Map Showing the Rum / Christian and the Turk / Muslim Neighborhoods

Turkish / Muslim Neighborhhoods The Marketplace


Rum / Christian Neighborhoods Mosques
Exchanged Properties Churches

But the reading should be received with caution since it is also probable that the Muslims and
the Christians may not have been separated earlier. It should be kept in mind that the
boundary that is drawn with a single line could manifest a situation in a moment in time that
may not be generalizable. In my research I went back in time as far as the documents and
13
the oral histories led me and mapped the oldest situation that I could reach, which is late 19 th
century. During this process, I have come across some information that revealed about the
exchange of property between the Muslims and non-Muslims. This suggests that the building
blocks, which were shared during the moment I reached in my investigation, may have
belonged solely to one group back in the same period (17 th century) that Faroqhi informs us
about Ankara.27

Open Spaces
There are thirty-nine nodes that can be distinguished as open spaces. These open spaces
are mostly referred to by the townspeople as meydan; but they prefer to employ the local
name of the open space, which is usually given the name of the public fountain, or the well
located in the space. All of these open spaces except eight include public fountains, wells or
mortars. In the other eight neighborhood squares, one (no. 18 Appendix E) is distinguished
from the others with the graveyard of a holy person at its edge; but still the space left is too
wide for this purpose. One reason can be the barracks located by this open space. Two of
these eight open spaces, seem like they were widened because of their closeness to
mosques.

Plots and Blocks


After the separation between the market place and the neighborhoods the pattern of the
building blocks is the second distinctive character of the town. We can hypothesize that two
processes come together to create the outline of the building blocks: one is the subdivision of
land that can be termed „fragmentation,‟ and the other is the addition of one plot next to an
already existing one, which can be defined by the term „accretion.‟

Fragmentation is the subdivision of large once-rural plots that were located at what was then
the edge of the town28 or the vegetable gardens in the middle of the neighborhoods.29 With
time, the large plots have been subdivided to turn into dwelling plots. Initially, house was
built on one large piece of land and as the family became too crowded to fit into the one
house, the land was either subdivided to make another individual plot or pieces of land were
as sold slowly it became more profitable to do so. The empty plots within the blocks are used
27
In order to investigate this hypothesis one needs to locate and do research in the same type of archival sources
that were explored by Faroqhi (and other Ottoman historians), such as the kadı registers and tax registers of
Kütahya.
28
In his research on the typology of Ottoman town forms in Anatolia, Pierre Pinon how in the town of Ayvalik
lands that were once rural have been subdivided and transformed into compounds; in “Anadolu ve Balkanlar'daki
Osmanlı Kentlerinde Kentsel Dokular Tipolojisi Üzerine Bir Deneme.”
29
Zekiye Yenen states that gardens in the middle of the neighborhoods or even the islands intertwining with the
domestic space were one of the common characteristics Ottoman settlements. Zekiye Yenen, “Türk Kentinde
Açık Alan Olgusuna Analitik Bir Yaklaşım” (An Analytical Approach to the Open Space Phenomenon in Turkish
Towns) TMs. (Istanbul: YTU, 1993).
14
as vegetable gardens even today, and the elderly remember how when they were children
there were, in their neighborhoods, empty pieces of land at the edges of the blocks. For
instance, Ali Ünveren remembers that the building block comprising the Kurşunlu Mosque
was a void that has been filled up relatively recently. 30

The subdivision of the land that belonged to the Keleşler family, one of the prominent
families, provides some clues to this process. The land that belonged to Ebu Bekir Agha, we
understand from the oral account that he must have been born between 1800-1835, was
eventually divided between his two grandsons, Mehmed Agha and Hakkı Agha. While Hakkı
Agha inherited the land at the south part of the land, Mehmed Agha had the north part, and
they both built houses. The land in between these two plots was subdivided into two plots. In
one plot was built the guesthouse of the whole family while and next to it was erected the
house for the fourth wife of Medmed Agha. The plot at the east end of the Hakkı Agha‟s was
then given to the housekeeper of the family. Currently a dead-end street exists in between
these plots and the plots which were probably added later to close off the east part of the
building enclave.

a Fig. # The building island that


includes the compounds of the
Keleşler Family.
a. The compound that
belonged to Mehmed Agha,
the house was sold in the
b 1970s and demolished. b. The
compound that belonged to
Hakkı Agha; it is now owned
by Mustafa Keleşoğlu.

Parcellization within the compounds of the Keleşler Family. a. The compound that
belonged to Mehmed Agha, the house was sold in the 1970s and demolished. b. The
compound that belonged to Hakkı Agha; it is now owned by Mustafa Keleşoğlu.

Accretion, is the process of adding one plot after another that could occur by either joining a
plot next to an already existing building enclave or by individual plots coming together and

30
Ali Ünveren.
15
making an enclave until there is just enough space left for circulation.

In both processes the critical point is to divide the land or to add the plots together so that
every plot would have its own entrance from the street. According to Pinon and others, the
configuration of the plot, i.e. the lack of urgency in composition to turn the house facing
toward the street when the plot included a large courtyard, was the main factor that created
the dead-end streets. A street wide enough to reach a door was considered adequate for the
creation of the relationship between the household and the outside world. 31

The building
Fig #enclaves withisland
A Building different configurations.
Fig # A relatively small town with large plots on the Fig # A building island with a
building island with side facing the edge of the old garden in the middle.
Similar to the streets and the building blocks, the emergence of dead-end streets cannot be
compounds aligned evenly. town.
understood without the principles related to the division of land in accordance with Islamic
law. While streets were named tarık-ı amm (public thoroughfares), dead-ends or blind alleys
were referred to as tarık-ı hass (private street).32 In Kula, half the number of building blocks
have dead-end streets (out of 108 building blocks, excluding the ones in the market place,
exactly 54 have dead-end streets). Most of the blocks that do not have any dead-end streets
going into them are smaller than the other building blocks. Three types of dead-end streets
can be observed in Kula: One is the short type, which is almost like a linear open-space with
many doors opening onto it; the second is the middle-size type; and the third is the long type,
which extends into the middle of the enclave, almost cutting it in half.33 Among all the dead-
end streets, eleven streets can be considered long dead-ends, 39 nine dead-ends have
middle lengths, and 43 are short streets, almost forming a niche.

When we focus on the plot pattern, we observe that it is hard to find plots that are similar to
each other in shape and size, their agglomeration suggests a different order in which variety

31
Pierre Pinon, “Anadolu ve Balkanlar'daki Osmanlı Kentlerinde Kentsel Dokular Tipolojisi Üzerine Bir Deneme.”
32
Cem Behar, A Neighborhood in Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 46-49.
33
Observing long dead-end streets in Antakya, Pinon suggests that these long dead-ends are in fact potential
streets which could have divided the building blocks into two. Pierre Pinon, “Anadolu ve Balkanlar'daki Osmanlı
Kentlerinde Kentsel Dokular Tipolojisi Üzerine Bir Deneme.”
16
is wide. There are plots of which boundaries on the street side are narrow but widen as it
goes deeper into the block, and there are those with an exact opposite character. That is due
to slow incrimination process that is based on infill strategy. As some boundaries are sinuous
some are zigzagged. Even the blocks with a rectangular shape are comprised of dynamic
plot shapes. Nevertheless a closer examination searching parallelism and continuity
suggests definable plan units and speculations on the historical evolution of the town.

Plan Units: Construction of the Historical Evolution of Kula


Writing the history of a town and visualizing its growth without archeological remains nor
documents has to draw on from the conclusion of others work on the growth patterns of other
places. Unfortunately the cadastral plans of Kula date only back to 1940, but with oral history
and land registrations helping to demarcate the boundaries between the Rum/Christian and
Turkish/Muslim neighborhoods the information could be chased back to the early 19 th
Century. For the earlier periods the location of public buildings (mosques, mescids,
churches, and fountains), and the analysis of plot divisions gave clues. The most intuitive
part of the plan analysis process is related with the pre-Turkish/Byzantine period of the
settlement. Two hypothesis clash while mapping the defense walls. The topographic
contours and toponymical information suggest an eastern location on the higher terrain
whereas earlier work on the town suggest the area including the slopped terrain ending with
the old mosque.

Finally integration of the historical data and plan analysis concludes with seven primary
stages in the growth of the town: 1.the pre-Turkish period (within the defense walls, located
on upper level on the slope); 2. Principality period (the market area is founded); 3. Beginning
of the Ottoman period (late 15th Century; 1 plan unit); 4.Early Ottoman Period (16th Century; 2
plan units); 5. Growth period (17th-18th Centuries; 5 plan units); 6. 19th Century period (1 new
plan unit, 4 infilling plan units, and a new belt); 7. 20th Century Period (plan units surrounding
the town).

In this context, the research contributes to the study of Ottoman town morphology with a
case study from Aegean Anatolia. The overall town form displays the semi-rural status of the
town with its main streets connecting the fields with the neighborhoods and neighborhoods
with the market area. Mapping oral history shows that visibility among the members of the
small or big community was the main principal in the plot locations and neighborhood
formations. Nevertheless, future work on court registers and archaeological excavations can
complement and test the suggestions of this paper.

17
Mapping the Town Growth

18

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