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Karacaahmet Mezarlığı
Old gravestones in Karacaahmet Cemetery
Details
Established	Mid-14th century
Location	Üsküdar, Istanbul
Country	Turkey
Coordinates	41°00′40″N 29°01′34″E / 41.01111°N 29.02611°E / 41.01111; 29.02611
Type	Public
Owned by	Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality
Size	750 acres (3.0 km)
No. of interments	over 1 million
Website	İBB Mezarlıklar Md. website

The Karacaahmet Cemetery (Template:Lang-tr) is a 700-year-old historic cemetery, located in Üsküdar, the Asian side of Istanbul. Karacaahmet cemetery is the oldest in Istanbul and at 750 acres (3.0 km), the largest burial ground in Turkey.

The cemetery was named after a warrior companion of Orhan I, the second Ottoman sultan and is believed to have been founded in the mid-14th century. Karacaahmet Cemetery, which hosts many bird species, looks like a forest with trees such as cypress ,plane tree, oak ,laurel ,hackberry and various plants. The burial ground is covered by high cypress trees.

As a 700-years old burial ground of historical importance, Karacaahmet Cemetery was declared as a natural protected area and national historical landmark site in 1991, in accordance with the decision of the Istanbul Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board. According to this decision, the cemetery area can only be used for burial of the dead, the cemetery cannot be removed or used as a parking area in any way.

Karacaahmet Cemetery comprises 12 parcels, each dedicated to different religious groups. Many historical headstones can still be seen with inscriptions written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet, a version of the Arabic alphabet. The total number of burials is not known precisely, because no records were kept in the past, but it is estimated in millions. Because the burial registers of the Istanbul Cemeteries Directorate started to be kept only after 1937.

The shrine of Karaca Ahmet Sultan, a 13th-century physician and saint of Bektashis, a tariqah of Islam, is situated within the cemetery. There are also many other historical tombs and masjids, which is the Arabic word for mosques, built during the Ottoman period.

General information and history

The cemetery, which began to expand in parallel with the increase in the Turkish population during the reign of Sultan Murad I, expanded further after the conquest of Istanbul in 1453. Karacaahmet was officially turned into a cemetery in 1582. Mother of Murad III and Selim II's wife, Nurbanu Sultan, donated 124 hectares of land from her own property for a city cemetery and ordered the cypress trees to be planted there. In addition, she appointed 13 guards for the preservation of these cypress trees and 24 people as gravediggers for the burial of dead.

The name of the cemetery, which was first mentioned in official sources as the cemetery of Karacaahmet Sultan in 1698, is also "Usküdar Mekabir-i Muslimini".

This cemetery, which was originally an empty, vast and clean ground, has always been a favorite place for the people of Istanbul for centuries and has served as a burial ground without interruption since its foundation.

The famous English poet Lord Byron included Uskudar and the Karacaahmet cemetery in the following lines: «O Scutari! Your white houses look at thousands of graves, and above these graves rises that evergreen tree, that tender and dark cypress, inscribed in the foliage of eternal sorrow, like unrequited love». The cemetery has fascinated foreign travelers for centuries with its impressive view and architectural splendor, and many travelers have mentioned this cemetery in their memoirs. The French poet and writer Theophile Gautier, who was one of the first to describe the cemetery in his memoir, expressed his admiration, saying that Karacaahmet is the largest cemetery in the East. In addition, the Polish Count Edward Raczyński in 1814 in his book “Journey to Istanbul and Canakkale” and the German Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke in his book “Letters from Turkey” gave a large place to the Karacaahmet cemetery. Calculating that the underground population of Karacaahmet far exceeds the living population of Istanbul, Marshal Moltke said in 1836: "You can build a big city out of these gravestones."

The famous Danish writer and master of fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen, described the Karacaahmet cemetery, which was impressed by its size during his visit to Istanbul in 1841, just 5 years after Moltke, as if confirming Moltke: “The area of this cemetery is so vast that if sow wheat, it would feed the whole city, and if all the local tombstones were used, then a new wall could be built that would surround Istanbul."

As if in unanimous agreement, Western travelers and writers have argued that the cemetery does not receive much sunlight, because it is covered with cypresses, and looks like a forest in dark greenery. This is one of the rare cemeteries for which poetry has been written in history.

The oldest photographs of the cemetery were taken by Ernest de Caranza in 1852-1854, followed by the brothers Abdullah, Bergren and Photo Sabah. The Anglican clergyman Robert Walsh, who had been the personal chaplain to the British ambassador Lord Strangford in Istanbul since 1820, compared the place to a large forest divided by wide roads on sloping ground. The scene he depicts was engraved by the English artist Thomas Allom.

The excavation works in the tunnel for the Marmaray project caused little damage as by June 2007, a dent of 1.5 m diameter and 4 m depth occurred close to the cemetery wall. It was reported that some graves were damaged.

Gallery

• Thomas Allom's drawing from 1839
• Pascal Sebah Women in Karacaahmet, 1870
• William Henry Bartlett Cemetery of Scutari, 1838
• Karacaahmet cemetery, Hoca Sadettin Efendi Sebili, 1838
• Cemetery of Scutari, 1876
• Cypresses and road leading to the cemetery, Scutari, Constantinople, Turkey, 1890s

Notable burials

List is sorted in order of the year of death.

Historical

• Sheikh Hamdullah (1436–1520), calligrapher
• Benderli Ali Pasha (? - 1821), Sultan Mahmud II's Grand Vizier
• Jamaluddin al-Kumuki (1788-1869), a Naqshbandi tariqa shaykh and relative of Imam Shamil
• Mehmed Rauf Pasha bin Abdi Pasha (1832 - 1908), Ottoman Serasker and Vali

1940s

• Kaçı Vehip Pasha (1877–1940), Ottoman general
• Ali bey Huseynzade (1864–1940), Azerbaijani writer, thinker, philosopher, artist and doctor, and was the creator of the modern Flag of Azerbaijan.

1950s

• Mehmet Esat Bülkat (1862-1952), Ottoman general and Senior commander of the Gallipoli Campaign
• Reşat Nuri Güntekin (1889–1956), novelist
• Cafer Tayyar Eğilmez (1877–1958), an officer of the Ottoman Army and a general of the Turkish Army
• Osman Zeki Üngör (1880–1958), composer, initial conductor of the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, general
• Süleyman Hilmi Tunahan an influential Islamic scholar and Naqshbandi master, whose supposed followers are referred to as Süleymancılar

1960s

• Safiye Erol (1902–1964), female novelist
• Fikret Mualla Saygı (1903–1967), painter

1970s

• Nejdet Sançar (1910–1975), nationalist writer and ideologue
• Nihal Atsız (1905–1975), nationalist writer, ideologue, novelist, poet and philosopher

1980s

• Burhan Felek (1889–1982), journalist
• Oktay Rifat Horozcu (1914–1988), poet
• Ömer Boncuk (1917–1988), footballer and high school teacher

1990s

• Hamiyet Yüceses (1915–1996), female singer of Ottoman classical music

2000s

• Cem Karaca (1945–2004), rock musician
• Nezihe Viranyalı (1925–2004), female aviator
• Arif Mardin (1932–2006), Turkish-American music producer
• Nükhet Ruacan (1951–2007) female jazz singer
• Mustafa Şekip Birgöl (1903–2008), retired colonel and the last veteran of the Turkish War of Independence
• Saadet İkesus Altan (1916–2007), female opera singer, vocal coach and opera director,
• Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1914–2008), poet
• Gazanfer Özcan(1931–2009), actor

2010s

• Verda Ün (1919–2011), female classical pianist
• Esin Afşar (1936–2011), singer and stage actress
• Sait Maden (1931–2013), translator, poet, painter and graphic designer
• Muzaffer Tekin (1950–2015), captain, veteran of the Cyprus Operation
• Oktay Sinanoğlu (1935–2015), theoretical chemist
• Tahsin Şahinkaya (1925–2015), Air Force general and one of the five leaders of the 1980 military coup
• Halit Akçatepe (1939-2017), actor
• İbrahim Erkal (1966–2017), singer and songwriter
• Can Bartu (1936–2019), basketball player, footballer and columnist,
• Süleyman Turan (1936–2019), stage and film actor,
• Yaşar Büyükanıt (1940–2019), former Chief General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces,

See also

• Şakirin Mosque
• List of cemeteries in Turkey

References

1. Municipality of Üsküdar Archived 2007-12-11 at the Wayback Machine (in Turkish)
2. European Alevi Unions Confederation official website (in Turkish)
3. Istanbul News (in Turkish)
4. Fatma Mehlika Mısıroğlu, Semâmızda Bir Yıldız, Sebil Yayınevi, İstanbul, 2011
5. Program kapsamında, anma toplantısı öncesinde Ali Bey Hüseyinzade’nin Üsküdardaki Karacaahmet Mezarlığındaki kabri ziyaret edildi. Archived 2014-05-21 at the Wayback Machine
6. Whitney Smith. Flag Lore Of All Nations. — Millbrook Press, 2001. — P. 13. — ISBN 9780761317531
7. "Nükhet Ruacan öldü". Habertürk (in Turkish). 2007-05-07. Retrieved 2017-11-18.
8. "Hocaların hocası Saadet İkesus Altan öldü". Milliyet (in Turkish). 16 December 2007. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
9. Türk, Ümit (2015-04-26). "Oktay Sinanoğlu son yolculuğuna uğurlandı". Hürriyet (in Turkish). Retrieved 2015-04-26.
10. "Halit Akçatepe, Şakirin Camii'nden son yolculuğuna uğurlandı". www.ntv.com.tr (in Turkish). Retrieved 2021-07-29.
11. "Binlerce Kişi İbrahim Erkal'ı Son Yolculuğuna Uğurladı". Milliyet. 13 May 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
12. "Turkish football legend 'Sinyor' Can Bartu dies at 83". Hürriyet Daily News. 12 April 2019. Retrieved 16 April 2019.
13. "Yeşilçam'ın usta oyuncusu Süleyman Turan son yolculuğuna uğurlandı". Sabah (in Turkish). 11 September 2019. Retrieved 14 September 2019.
14. "Yaşar Büyükanıt son yolculuğuna uğurlandı". Sözcü (in Turkish). 23 November 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2019.

• Cemeteries in Istanbul
• Sunni cemeteries
• Shia cemeteries
• Üsküdar
• Muslim cemeteries