Mausoleum of Umur Bey
Mausoleum of Umur Bey
This mausoleum is the mausoleum of Gazi Umur (Omur) Bey who died in 1461.
Umur Bey was the son of Kara Timurtash Pasha, a brother in arms of Osman Gazi. He had four brothers, Yahshi, Ali, Mehmed, Oruç, and Mahmud. He participated in the Istanbul siege by Yıldırım Bayezid, and when wounded in the Ankara War together with his father, Timurtash Pasha, he was taken prisoner by Timur. In the succession war, he stood by Musa Çelebi. Later, he defected to Çelebi Mehmed, to whom he rendered important services, and became governor-general of Anatolia. During the reign of Murad II, Umur Bey, both a soldier and a scholar, was granted the rank of a vizier.
Umur Bey, who was a charitable person, built waqfs in 25 different places, i.e. 6 mosques, 3 madrasahs, 8 hamams, 2 khans, 2 caravanserais, 1 “namazgah” (an open-air prayer place), 1 soup kitchen, and 2 neighbourhoods, bearing his name.
Inside this mausoleum, there is the sarcophagus of Umur Bey, one metre over ground. The “inscription on the tombstone written in sulus” script gives the information that Umur Bey had died August of 1461. Furthermore, there are hadiths written on these stones saying: “The faithful won’t die; on the contrary, they migrate from the mortal world to the eternal world”, “One may beweep the world’s past, but its middle and its end are eternity”, and “The world is the field of afterlife”.
