17th CENTURY İSKENDER EFENDİ MANSION HOUSE

Having the most distinctive characteristics of the 17th century Ottoman architecture, İskender Efendi Mansion House is the only site that displays the delicate calligraphy works of the Ottoman architecture and culture.

The project named “Kebapçı İskender® Kültürü (Kebapçı İskender® Culture)” was conceived and carried out by Yavuz İskenderoğlu, one of the grandsons in the third generation of the family, and the mansion house began to be constructed and restored in 1997 and on July 26th 2003, it came out to be the fruit of a period of 6 years work. It was built sticking to history to commemorate our own culture of nearly 150 years and serve as a bridge between our historical values and new generations. It consists of two major buildings. The first one of them is the “Kebapçı İskender® Dükkanı (Kebapçı İskender Shop)” which was built taking into consideration what the first restaurant in Kayhan Bazaar in the 19th century was just like. That was the first step of the project launched in Botanik Park with its concept based on light blue color, its building technique in which no nails is used, its places where we used turquoise blue color that symbolizes our corporate principles, its Kebapçı İskender® daisies and its way to serve with that taste and presentation of 150 years. It is also a project whose franchises will be granted.

The other building is named “İskender Efendi Konağı (İskender Efendi’s Mansion House)” and it is a product of the restitution of İskender Efendi’s own mansion house which was once in the centre of the Bursa City. It was built with the construction materials and techniques used in the 17th century and the household wares left in that original mansion house were placed in it. After all, it was not a restoration work but a restitution project.

The wooden door with two wings at the gate of the mansion house is an identical copy of the entrance door of Bursa Yeşil Mosque and it was built by southeastern calligraphers. The Kebapçı İskender® signboard at the entrance is the original manuscript signboard that İskender Efendi used himself in his first restaurant.

The Ottoman relief motifs on the ceiling at the entrance were installed after being snatched from İskender Efendi’s house built in the 17th century.

The glazed tiles on the floor are the identical copies of those used in the mansion houses of the 17th century, and they were made by the last Armenian artisans who live in İstanbul, Ortaköy. They are all handmade. The motifs on the tiles resembling plane tree leaves symbolize the Ottoman sun.

The stone walls were not made with coating technique but they were built using lots of stone blocks delicately carved and trimmed. The red tile lines placed parallel to one another over, through and underneath the stone walls are one of the essential characteristics of the Ottoman architecture. Besides that, they function in another way and provide buildings with resiliency to prevent collapses during earthquakes. The mirrors ornamenting the stone walls are the original stone mirrors people used in the 17th century.

The second floor consists of the Main Room, Divan Room, Eyvan and Sofa. The mortar and plaster used on the walls all around that floor is “Khorasan” itself. The peculiarity of Khorasan mortar is that lime is melted and filtered first and then fermented with thousands of egg whites added in, and it becomes ready to use only after waiting in deep wells so long to stiffen properly. It is already known that the people who were once living in buildings covered with Khorasan mortar did not have any rheumatic problems thanks to the porous and floaty tissue of the mortar. Moreover, if you hang string bangs with ostrich eggs in them on the ceilings of the buildings coated with Khorasan mortar, you can prevent spider webs in there.

On the upper floor of the mansion house, what welcomes you is the Sofa Section, which was used in the old mansion houses in daily life, with its striking ambiance created with blue and red lights. You can see there even the details of the Ottoman ornamentation, decoration and calligraphy arts and discover the way they contribute to Ottoman architecture with their blazonry and ambiance they create. The carpets in the Sofa Room are original handmade rugs weaved by young girls in the Ottoman Era.

The rug in the Eyvan Part is an original Karabagh rug weaved by Armenian girls in the 17th century. The rug is important because of the turquoise blue color in the middle. It is a color attained using the madders of that era and despite the 150 years elapsed since that time; it is still as vivid as it was on the day it was first used.

The wooden arc ornamenting the Eyvan’s entrance between the Main Room and Divan Room is a typical 17th century Bursa arc, which has always reminded the city of Bursa. It is an identical copy of the arc ornamenting the Ottoman thrones when Bursa was the capital of the empire. The original samples could be seen in Topkapı Palace today. The mirrored consul in the Eyvan Part is original too and it is a “kündekari (wood arts)” work, which was made with madders. The armchairs and tables are original as well.

The Divan Room (the part of a house reserved for women and girls) represents the rooms where only women were sitting whenever men sat in Sofa Rooms to chat and/or entertain themselves in the 17th century Ottoman Mansion Houses (it was forbidden then for women and girls to sit together with men in any place). The room includes also the gate to another room in the attic reserved for women yet. Women used to get there to watch the entertainment of men, and girls used to look from there at young men (their fiancés sometimes) having fun below. The window through which one can watch the Sofa Room is original and you cannot see anything behind if you look at it from below. However, if you look through it in the attic at the Sofa Room below, you can see everything clearly. The 17th century stone mirrors are other rare pieces preserved until today.

The gate to get from the Divan Room to the one in the attic looks like a wardrobe, so it was also the way to escape for people in case bandits or enemies attacked there.

The fireplace in the Divan Room symbolizes the helmets the soldiers of the empire used to wear when they left to fight in battles.

The ceiling motif in the Divan Room looks like the Hebrew Star of David, but it is not. It is the Ottoman Sun and it is the symbol of being a Turk. Who is a Turk? The legend says, “The sun appeared, then it rained, then a storm came up suddenly, a lightning flashed, and a boy with blue eyes and blonde hair came out of that huge cloud of dust. That is the Turk and that star is the symbol of him. Turks appeared at the time mankind began to exist in the world.”

Turks were shamans before being Muslims. They used to worship the Sun and the sun mentioned above is what symbolizes being a Turk.

The ceiling of the Divan Room is the identical copy of the 17th century ceilings and it is covered with fine muslin. At that time, people used to cover ceilings with starched muslins to prevent dust driven by wind from getting into houses through planks.

The shelf on the wall was the place where people would put books etc. and it is called “lazımlık”.

At the left upper corner of the Main Room, the board on which “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim” is written is a masterpiece. Hattat Ömer, a Turkish citizen of Syrian origin and one of the last calligraphers of the era, made it in 17 months. It is a perfect example of Ottoman calligraphy. The letters are of a mixture of wax and gold dust and the background beneath the letters is of the soot that came out of the chimney of Süleymaniye Mosque. At that time, the soot was used to produce ink and the ink was used for the correspondence in the palaces. Before building the mosque, Mimar (architect) Sinan calculated the air currents to absorb the soot to come out from inside, and thus gathered the soot coming out of 1300 oil lamps in a room built over the entrance door of the mosque via those air currents. At times, the soot was added a certain amount of water and stored in small barrels to send to Hicaz City on camels’ humps. It used to slosh on camels’ humps for nearly 180 days and then become a kind of indelible ink resistant to any weather condition for almost 5000 years. The ink was used writing also the sultans’ edicts. Later, it became one of the presents that sultans would send to the kings and palaces in the countries of other continents.

The fabrics on the couches in the Main Room are of original Bursa velvets. The three crescents on the fabrics symbolize the domination of the Ottoman Empire in three different continents and the rumor says, “The sultans were conveying the message that they felt like sitting on three continents while sitting on those couches”.

The ceiling of the Maim Room is covered with fine muslin too and it is called “tekne tavan (floating roof)”. It was completely colored with madders. It took three years to construct it. The fireplace was designed to symbolize the helmets Ottoman soldiers used to wear. The stained glasses are the same as those of İstanbul Şehzade Pasha Mosque and they are fine works of art.

The ornaments on the wardrobe doors in the Main Room symbolize heaven and hell. In Ottoman miniature arts, cypress trees symbolize life and its end, coffins symbolize the bridge to heaven, fire is the symbol of hell and flowers symbolize heaven. The God says, “I sent mortal human beings to the world. They live and turn back to me in the end. I test them. If they have any sins, I make them pay the cost in hell, but I take directly to heaven those who have no sins. In the end, I make all people sinless and put them in my eternal heaven, I leave none of them far from heaven.”

The wall sconces were designed as based on tulip and carnation motifs, which symbolize the God in Ottoman miniature art and other ornamentation works. Tulips and carnations were two of the indispensable motifs for the artisans then. The wall sconces are the products of an Ottoman glass art called “Çeşmi Bülbül (glassware with colored decorations)”. The characteristic of the works of that art is that the glass to be used is two-tiered and tulip and carnation motifs are placed between those two pieces of glass. The glass is melted first and then the motifs are embroidered.

The baseboards in the rooms are wooden. That is another salient characteristic of Ottoman architecture. The door handles of the Main Room and Divan Room are original and made of acacia trees.

The nails within the floor are original Ottoman nails. The nails used in the wooden beams of the ceiling are famous for being flexible. In earthquakes, they do not let two pieces of plank draw apart from each other and they never crack. They are produced after being forged in fire for many days by blacksmiths.
We lost many people just a few years ago in the Gölcük Earthquake just because of the buildings that had been constructed carelessly with poor quality materials. Thousands of people died in Gölcük and around in the 20th century and the earthquake turned out to be a disaster. The building techniques that Ottomans used in the Mansion House and other buildings should be noted repeatedly for revealing the importance Ottomans attached to people’s lives back in even the 17th century.

The exterior facades of the Mansion House exhibit the characteristics of the 17th century Ottoman architecture too. When looked closely, it can be seen that the front sides of the tiles covering the roof is coated with mud all over. It was done to prevent the house from burning. At that time, birds were carrying hays and stacks in their mouth to make nests on mansion house roofs but they were sometimes doing that from burning fields of hay and thus, they were placing on roofs also the pieces not put out properly yet.

The epigraphs on the wall beneath the pool in the courtyard are original pieces as well. The pool is original too and reminds of the Byzantine Period.

In the construction of İskender Efendi Mansion House, Turkish, Hebrew and Armenian artisans worked together and created that work of sheer beauty. The construction began in 1997 and ended in 6 years in 2003.