Ankara of the Ahis and the Mohair Merchants

From Ulus metro walk south along Atatürk Boulevard; the plain, symmetrical building opposite the Opera is the museum of the General Directorate of Foundations. It belongs to the First National Architecture period; the Ankara Law School, opened in 1925, moved here in 1928 and stayed until 1941. It then served as a girls' vocational school, a hostel and, until April 2004, the Ankara Mufti's office; after restoration it opened as a museum on 7 May 2007. On its basement, ground and first floors, 236 pieces from a collection of 2,669 are on show, ranging from the 13th to the 20th century and all drawn from foundation property across Turkey.

What you are looking for on this route is a pair of shutters in the woodwork gallery: the 13th-century window leaves of the Ahi Evran Mosque. Ahi Evran, according to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, was Sheikh Nasiruddin Mahmud, who died in 1262 and founded Anatolian Ahi brotherhood by joining the sheikh and disciple bond of the lodge to the master and apprentice bond of the workshop. Most of the inns you will see later on the route are foundation property too: Suluhan and Çukurhan belonged to endowments, and Çengelhan to the endowment of Rüstem Paşa. The museum is the right place to understand how the endowment system kept those buildings standing.

The ground floor holds carpets, kilims and weaving tools, the upper floor manuscripts, tiles, metalwork and woodwork; the door leaves of the Great Mosque of Divriği, candlesticks, endowment deeds, clocks and calligraphic panels stand out. There is a conservation workshop with a carpet-washing pool and a multilingual audio guide. Check visiting days and admission on the official site.

Source: VGM Ankara Vakıf Eserleri Müzesi; TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Ahilik; Wikipedia.

Go back to Ulus square from the boulevard and into Anafartalar Avenue; Suluhan stands on the block between Anafartalar and Posta Street. It was built between 1508 and 1511 by Hasan Paşa, a statesman of the reigns of Bayezid II and Selim I, and was long known as Hasanpaşa Han; the name Suluhan appears in the records from 1688. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam lists it as Hasanpaşa Han among the thirty or so inns of Ottoman Ankara.

It is a two-storey stone inn with two courtyards. The first courtyard is square, with 30 rooms below and 32 above, a fountain pavilion and a small mosque in the middle. The second courtyard held the stables and contains the bath. In the Ottoman period coffee and yarn were traded here; for this route the yarn matters, because in the sof city of Ankara yarn meant mohair yarn. The inn was damaged in the Balıkpazarı fire of 1929, served as a fruit and vegetable market until the 1950s and was restored by the General Directorate of Foundations in 1984. It works as a bazaar today; the Ankara market hall built opposite in 1937 and the stove-makers' bazaar leaning on its wall show how the surroundings always stayed a specialist market.

Walk through both courtyards: the arrangement of the rooms, the arcades, the mass of the entrance gate. The plan, often compared with the Koza Han in Bursa, can be read here with your own eyes. After this the steepest part of the route begins, about a kilometre uphill to the foot of the Castle.

Source: Wikipedia, Suluhan; TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Ankara; Güven Dinçer, İdealkent 2014.

Other routes cover the collection of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations; on this one, look at the two buildings you enter. The museum on Gözcü Street consists of two Ottoman structures. Mahmut Paşa Bedesten was built between 1464 and 1471 by Mahmut Paşa, vizier to Mehmed II; it carries no inscription. A rectangular enclosed hall under ten domes in the middle, ringed by an arcade of 102 barrel-vaulted shops: the classic bedesten scheme. Kurşunlu Han beside it was built in the second half of the 15th century by Mehmed Paşa, another of Mehmed II's viziers; a two-storey rubble-stone building with 28 rooms below and 30 above.

This was the centre of the sof trade. Sof woven in Ankara could be sold only to the sof merchants in the bedesten, so the stamp tax could not be evaded; from here the cloth went to Istanbul, Aleppo and Venice. The shop rents in Kurşunlu Han tell the same story: a record cited on Wikipedia puts the rent at 41,500 akce here against 1,800 elsewhere. Both buildings were abandoned after the fire of 1881. The museum began in 1921 in the Castle's Akkale tower; when space ran out, the two buildings were bought at Hamit Zübeyir Koşay's suggestion. Restoration lasted from 1938 to 1968 under the architects Macit Kural, Zühtü Bey and İhsan Kıygı; the central hall of the bedesten opened to visitors in 1943. The museum was named European Museum of the Year in 1997.

Stand inside the bedesten and look at the domes and the rhythm of the shop cells; Kurşunlu Han is now the administrative building and cannot always be seen inside. Some halls are under maintenance until early 2027; check the official site.

Source: Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi resmi sayfası; Wikipedia; Wikipedia, Kurşunlu Han (Ankara); Kaya 2021.

Walk from the museum towards the main gate of the Castle; at Atpazarı, in front of the gate, two inns stand side by side. The smaller one, set into the slope, is Çukurhan. It dates from the 16th or 17th century and belonged to the endowment of Ankaravi Mehmed Emin Efendi, chief mufti of his day; it had major repairs in 1791 and 1801. It is a two-storey building of timber over stone foundations and brick walls, with a partial basement caused by the slope on its western side; the "hollow" in its name presumably refers to that lower level. The rectangular courtyard is entered from the north, on the classic plan of an Ottoman urban inn, like a smaller sibling of Çengelhan.

In the early 2000s the building was on the World Monuments Fund's list of structures in urgent need of rescue. A restoration from October 2007 to May 2010 returned it to its original form and covered the courtyard with a glass roof for protection. It now operates as a lodging house, so this stop is a fifteen-minute look from outside: the stone and brick texture of the facade, the timber of the upper floor, the courtyard gate and the way the building sits into the hillside.

It is no accident that the two inns stand together at the Castle gate: Ottoman Ankara had some thirty inns, most of them clustered around the bedesten below the Castle; caravan loads came off at the gate and the goods went down to the bazaars. Çengelhan is a few steps from Çukurhan; once you have seen both, look down from the square to Koyunpazarı, the slope that will be your way back.

Source: Wikipedia, Çukur Han; TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Ankara.

The large inn facing the Castle gate is Çengelhan. According to the sources it was built in 1522, in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent, and belonged to the endowment of Rüstem Paşa; it counted as one of the four great inns of its day. With its near-square plan, open courtyard, many rooms and camel stable it is Ankara's best preserved example of the classic Ottoman urban inn. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam names it first among the city's thirty inns. For a long time it served as a warehouse for mohair, wool and leather and was a lifeline of the sof trade. An entry of 1721 in the Ankara court registers records a merchant resident in Çengel Han selling 750 okka of mohair yarn to a Dutch trader. It is the most concrete document of the network this route follows: the foreign merchant came to the inn, bought the yarn and carried it to Europe by way of İzmir or Istanbul.

In the twentieth century Vehbi Koç's first shop was in this inn. In 2005 the Rahmi M. Koç Museum and Culture Foundation leased the building from the General Directorate of Foundations, restored it and opened it as Ankara's first industrial museum; the neighbouring Safranhan of 1511 was repaired in 2012-2016 and joined the museum. The collection runs to more than ten thousand objects, from transport to aviation; on this route, though, step into the courtyard first, take in the arcades and the rhythm of the rooms, then go into the galleries.

Check the official site for closing days and admission; on your way out, stand at the gate and compare Çukurhan and Çengelhan once more. One function, two scales.

Source: Wikipedia, Çengelhan Rahmi M. Koç Müzesi; Kaya 2021 (DergiPark); TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Ankara.

Coming down Koyunpazarı slope from Atpazarı, Ahi Elvan Mosque stands beside the road; the route ends here, at the mosque of a family that organised the trades. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam it was built at the end of the 14th century by Hacı Elvan son of Mehmed Bey, of the line of Nizameddin Zehrab; the inscriptions on the minbar record that Mehmed I had it renewed and repaired in 1413-14. The Ahis were the brotherhood that gathered artisans fleeing the Mongol invasion in Ankara in the 13th century and played a decisive part in the city's social and economic life before it joined the Ottomans in 1354. The nearby Aslanhane Mosque in the Samanpazarı quarter was also built by an Ahi, Ahi Şerafeddin; of the two this route enters only Ahi Elvan.

Inside, the rectangular hall is divided into four aisles by three rows of four timber columns; their marble capitals are reused from Roman and Byzantine ruins. The lower walls are stone, the upper parts mud brick; the ceiling is timber on consoles and the galleries are timber too. The plaster mihrab has stalactite work and relief ornament; the finely carpentered minbar is the work of Mehmed son of Bayezid of Harput. The door leaves, inscribed with the founder's name and the repairs, are now in the Ethnography Museum.

Visiting etiquette: the mosque is in use, so do not enter at prayer times or wait quietly at the back; shoes off at the door, shoulders and knees covered, a headscarf for women, no flash. Twenty minutes is enough for the timber of the columns and the minbar. From here go down Koyunpazarı to Samanpazarı square, where buses leave for Ulus and Kızılay.

Source: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi, Ahi Elvan Camii ve Ankara maddeleri.