Women’s participation in dervish lodges: Koca Mustafa Pasha, Merkez Efendi and the Şah Sultan complexes

Abstract

This thesis examines women’s participation in dervish lodges in the late fifteenth and the first half of sixteenth centuries. For the issue, three mosque complexes of Ottoman Constantinople were chosen to be investigated: Koca Mustafa Pasha, Merkez Efendi and the Şah Sultan. Three dervish lodges are all representatives of Sünbüliye, a sub-branch of the Halvetiye order, have a significant place in the history of early modern Ottoman realm. So, the building projects are studied with reference to political, social, religious and urban contexts of their times. By looking at adventure of the Halvetiye in the after conquest period of Istanbul, three patrons and architectural plans of dervish lodges are analyzed. In addition, the ways of patronage, restoration projects and additional waqfs of women are evaluated as kinds of attempt to be visible, to be exist in history. This thesis tries to hear the voice of both elite and urban women who connected themselves to these dervish lodges regarding their class and status dimension. Women as relatively active figures of Sufism, their methods of representation, aims, the limitations that they came across and the meaning of all these are main points of this thesis.