Bursa Bedesteni

The Bursa Bedesten, also known as the Yıldırım Bayezid Bedesten, stands at the very heart of the historic bazaar north of the Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami). As the Culture Portal puts it, it lies just to the right of the street leading from the Grand Mosque to the Covered Bazaar. It was commissioned at the end of the 14th century by Sultan Bayezid I, known as Yıldırım Bayezid. Drawing on foundation records, the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam dates it to 1400, says it was built to provide income for Bayezid's charitable foundations, and counts it among the largest bedestens in Turkish architecture. The Culture Portal describes it as the first bedesten built in the Ottoman period. The inventory of the Bursa Site Management office, however, notes that Emir Han, a building from the time of Orhan Gazi, was known for a while as the "Old Bedesten" after this new building went up, which means the centre of the bazaar shifted here in Yıldırım's reign. The bedesten was where the bazaar's most valuable goods were bought and sold and where precious items were kept. The Site Management office describes it as the nucleus of banking and exchange in its day, since the safekeeping of money and valuables was a job that banks do today. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, bedestens were built of solid masonry to protect valuable goods from the fires that destroyed wooden shops. Merchants' strongboxes and ledgers and the records of the craft guilds were also kept inside. The bedesten was therefore a kind of inner citadel of the bazaar, and trade grew up around it. The encyclopaedia explains this building type as the multi-domed plan of the great congregational mosques adapted to a commercial purpose. The Bursa building has a rectangular plan running from east to west. Six massive piers divide the interior into fourteen bays, each covered by a dome. There is a door in the middle of each of the four facades. Shops are set against the inner walls, and the Culture Portal records 32 shops inside today and 68 outside. Above the entrance is a relief inscription in a mixture of Kufic and Naskh script, and the word "Bazestan" appears above the west door. According to TDV, the Edirne Bedesten, built around 1417-1418, closely resembles the Bursa one, with the same arrangement of six piers and fourteen domes. The last century was not easy for the building. The bedesten burned in the great fire that swept the Covered Bazaar and could no longer be used; most sources date the fire to 1958, while the Culture Portal's bedesten page gives 1956. The bedesten was repaired in 1960. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam notes that during this repair the outer shops were completed in concrete, and the rows of shops in the surrounding bazaars were rebuilt in reinforced concrete to keep the old layout. According to Wikipedia, valuable goods were once sold in the centre and more ordinary wares in the shops around it. That arrangement survives today: the inner bedesten is the jewellers' bazaar, while the outer bedesten sells shoes and clothing. As you walk along the domed inner corridors, remember to look up, because the rhythm of piers and arches is the building's real show. The Sipahi Bazaar to the north of the bedesten was built in the 1420s by Dayı Karacabey, and according to the Site Management office it is one of the few parts that survived the 1958 fire in its original form. Also to the north is the İvaz Paşa Bazaar, where furniture and textiles are mostly sold today. Opposite the bedesten's east door, on the street of the Yorgancılar Bazaar, stands the Geyve Han, and the Site Management office stresses that the surrounding inns and bazaars were planned with the bedesten as their core. According to TDV, the bazaar that grew up around the bedesten covers the area between the Grand Mosque and the bedesten, taking in inns such as Koza, Emir, Fidan, Geyve and Pirinç and bazaars such as Gelincik, Sipahi and Okçular. Because some of the streets between them were later roofed over, Bursa also came to have a Covered Bazaar. The Hanlar district where the bedesten stands is one of the components of the site "Bursa and Cumalıkızık: the Birth of the Ottoman Empire", inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014. Bursa's fame in the silk trade spread so far that a bedesten in Sarajevo still bears the name Bursa Bedesten, after the Bursa silks brought there and sold. The bedesten is not a museum but a working bazaar, and it can be visited whenever the shops are open. For a relaxed walk away from the crowds, a weekday morning is a good choice. From Heykel Square you can walk west along Atatürk Caddesi to the Grand Mosque and from there reach the bazaar entrances below the mosque in a few minutes. After seeing the bedesten, walking on to Koza Han and to Emir Han, which dates from the time of Orhan Gazi, completes the story of how the bazaar grew in the 14th and 15th centuries.