Graftombe van Osman Shah

Osman Shah Bey (Kara Osman Şah) was a grandson of Sultan Selim I through his daughter Hanım Sultan, and so a nephew of Sultan Süleyman I^2,6,7. His endowment deeds name his father as İskender Pasha, a vizier executed in 1515^6,7. The chronicler Peçevi, Evliya Çelebi and the Ministry's record name (Kara) Mustafa Pasha instead, which Ünal and Değerli reject^1,6,7. Made governor (sancakbeyi) of Bosnia at sixteen, he governed the Morea from 1520 and later Bosnia and Lepanto⁷. Evliya Çelebi, who visited Trikala in May 1668, tells a legend that Süleyman, uneasy at talk among the troops of making Osman Shah sultan, sent him and his mother to Trikala and granted him the province for life^6,7.

In Trikala he founded a complex that Machiel Kiel counts among the largest of the Ottoman Balkans, with a domed mosque, madrasa, school, soup kitchen (imaret), caravanserai, double bath, stone bridge and his monumental tomb^2,7. Değerli, from Ottoman decrees, dates his death to November or December 1570; the Ministry's record gives 1567/8, and Kiel shortly after September 1571^1,2,7. The endowment deed drawn up in 1571 by his nephew and heir Mustafa Bey says he built the tomb in his lifetime; it paid two keepers to guard it day and night^6,7. When Trikala was rebuilt in the 1930s, Franz Babinger and Anastasios Orlandos saved the mosque and the tomb from demolition; both were restored in the 1990s².

According to Orlandos, the tomb stands behind the mosque, 13.20 m from its east side; the Ministry's record places it south of the mosque^1,3. It is a regular octagon in plan and, like the mosque, is covered by a hemispherical dome sheathed in lead^1,3. Orlandos, who published its plan in 1929, noted roll mouldings marking the corners and framed wall faces; six of the eight faces have two tiers of windows, rectangular below and arched above³. Lead roofing gave the mosque its Turkish name, Kurşunlu or Kursum ('leaden'), and Evliya Çelebi saw every building of the complex covered in lead^4,6,7.

The attribution to Mimar Sinan rests on the mosque: the lists of Sinan's works (tezkires) include it, Evliya Çelebi named Sinan as its builder, and in 1929, as Orlandos reports, Franz Babinger presented it to the Academy of Athens as Sinan's only work on Greek soil^2,3,7. The title of an article by Babinger, as listed by the Ministry, also names the tomb: 'Moschee und Grabmal des Osman-Schah zu Trikkala. Ein Werk des Baumeisters Sinan' (Mosque and tomb of Osman Shah at Trikkala: a work of the master builder Sinan)⁸. Kiel (citing Evliya) and Değerli (citing the tezkires and Evliya) name Sinan for the mosque and say nothing of an architect for the tomb^2,7. The mosque is a square prayer hall under a hemispherical dome 18 m across, with walls of large green stones laid in courses that alternate with three rows of red brick^1,3.

In 1929 Orlandos could not establish how the interior was laid out, because the tomb was locked and in use, like the mosque, as a hay store and stable³. According to the Ministry of Culture, archaeological finds from the surrounding area are now kept inside it^1,4. The mosque beside it is used as an exhibition hall and hosts small cultural events^4,7.