Irgandı Köprüsü

Irgandı Bridge is a stone bridge over the Gökdere stream, which runs through Bursa, carrying two rows of shops above its single arch. The Bursa Site Management office and the Culture Portal present it as the only Ottoman bridge with a market street. At this point the Gökdere separates the districts of Osmangazi and Yıldırım, and the bridge links the two banks. According to the Culture Portal, it lies between the Boyacı Kulluğu Bridge to the north and the Setbaşı Bridge to the south. Sources do not fully agree on when and by whom it was built. The Site Management office and the Culture Portal say it was commissioned in 1442, in the reign of Murad II, by the merchant Hoca Muslihiddin, son of Ali of Irgandı. According to the Site Management office, Muslihiddin was one of the leading Bursa merchants of the mid 15th century and made his fortune selling silk bought in Azerbaijan to Italian merchants. The Culture Portal adds that the builder is thought to have been Timurtaş, son of Abdullah. The TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam points out that there is no inscription on the bridge; the date 1442 comes from entries in the court registers, while a chronogram poem gives the year 1492. The origin of the bridge's name is also debated. According to TDV, one view holds that the patron's father, Ali el-Irgandi, came from a place called Irgand. Evliya Çelebi, writing in the 17th century, tells some hard-to-believe stories linking the name to the word "ırgalandı", meaning "it was shaken". Scholars have also disagreed on whether the shops were built together with the bridge or added later. As TDV reports, Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi believed the shops were added about a century later, while Yılmaz Önge, who wrote a monograph on the bridge, argued that the two were built as a single whole. The bridge consists of a single pointed arch resting on the rocks on either side of the Gökdere valley. TDV gives a span of about 15 metres and a height of about the same, while English Wikipedia gives a span of 16 metres and a width of 11 metres. The arch is built of regular cut stone. The Site Management office and the Culture Portal record that 32 shops were built on the bridge, 16 on each side, and that one of those at the north-eastern end was set aside as a small prayer room. Inside the abutments at either end are vaulted spaces that served as stables and storerooms. TDV describes the space in the north-western abutment as measuring 4.50 by 14.85 metres and covered with a brick barrel vault, with small cells between the shops and this large space that took in air through loopholes opening to the outside. The bridge caught the eye of travellers over the centuries. Evliya Çelebi, who came to Bursa in 1640, wrote that there were some 200 shops in the bridge market, although the Culture Portal stresses that 32 shops were actually built. Evliya also describes iron gates with loopholes at both ends of the bridge, like the gates of a fortress, and several sources say the two ends of the market were closed with these gates at night. According to TDV, Julia Pardoe, who came to Bursa in 1836, published an engraving of the bridge, and at that time looms were working in its shops. The same article notes that Albert Kahn's archive of colour photographs includes a picture of the bridge taken on 3 June 1913. The bridge has had its share of floods, earthquakes and war. According to the Culture Portal, it was partly destroyed by a flood in the 18th century and damaged in the earthquake of 1855. After the earthquake the vaulted shops disappeared, and in the second half of the 19th century the bridge became an open market lined with wooden shops of different sizes that looked like small houses. In 1922, as the occupying forces withdrew from the city, the bridge was wrecked and the shops on it disappeared completely. In 1949 it was repaired as a reinforced concrete bridge without shops. According to the Culture Portal, efforts to restore it began in 1988, and the bridge was rebuilt with its shops in 2004. Today the bridge is both a crossing and a market. The Site Management office writes that after the reconstruction it became a bridge of the arts, with art workshops in its shops. Crossing it, you see only the row of shops; the bridge's real profile appears from the side, where the single arch rises over the stream bed. So to see the arch, it is worth looking along the Gökdere valley from the neighbouring Setbaşı or Boyacı Kulluğu bridge. The bridge is reached from Atatürk Caddesi by walking towards Setbaşı. It is a short walk from the Bursa City Museum on Heykel Square; as TDV describes it, the bridge spans the Gökdere valley that divides the Yeşil district in two.