The tomb stands in the Eyüp Sultan Mosque precinct, between the ablution courtyard and the tomb courtyard, just left of the gate that joins them. Its inscription is the work of the calligrapher el-Hac İsmail Efendi.
Beşir Ağa rose through the palace household to become companion to Ahmed III and then his treasurer in 1707. He was exiled to Cyprus and Egypt, appointed sheikh of the Haram, and recalled to İstanbul as chief of the Gate of Felicity in 1716-17 — a post he held for thirty years, until his death in 1746.
He left buildings as well as a career. On Baba Haydar Caddesi in Eyüpsultan he had a darülhadis built in 1734-35, with a fountain, a primary school and a library beside it.
His name also appears at the outbreak of the Patrona Halil revolt in 1730: it was Beşir Ağa who took the seal of office from the grand vizier Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Paşa and led him to a room beside the middle gate at the entrance of Topkapı Palace. The Eyüpsultan municipality's biography remembers him as devout, a trusted adviser and a protector of scholars.
His other foundations are spread across the city. In Eyüp there is a fountain of 1738-39 on Nazır Ağa Çeşmesi Sokağı near Nişanca, and a sebil set in the window of the tomb itself; he gave the Takyeci mosque of Arakiyeci Cafer Çelebi a minbar, making it a Friday mosque, and rebuilt the Karağaç Camii. Near the Sublime Porte he founded a second complex in 1745-46, with a mosque, a medrese, a library, a dervish lodge, a sebil and a fountain. Two galleries he added outside the Eyüp Sultan Mosque did not survive: the author of the Hadîka recorded that they were entirely destroyed.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
