Guide
The tomb stands behind the mosque Defterdar Mahmud Çelebi built for himself in Eyüp, between Defterdar Street and the lane behind the potters' quarter. It is an open canopy rather than a closed chamber: a small dome on an eight-sided drum, carried by four marble columns with diamond-cut capitals, the spaces between them filled with scalloped marble arches and pierced marble screens above and below.
A marble sarcophagus stands inside under a broken headstone whose inscription asks a prayer for the soul of "Defterdar Mahmud Çelebi Efendi" and gives the year 953 (1546). The source notes the stone was probably renewed later. The tomb was roofed in tile until 1970, when it was rendered in cement.
Mahmud Çelebi was chief treasurer to Süleyman the Magnificent twice: appointed in 944 (1537) and dismissed in 949 (1542), then appointed again in 951 (1544) and holding the office until his death in 953 (1546). He had trained under the calligrapher Şeyh Hamdullah and was himself a calligrapher; the mosque is the work of Mimar Sinan, domed when first built, brought down by the earthquake of 1179 (1766) and rebuilt with a wooden ceiling.
The source offers a reason for the site: the tomb and mosque of Abdülvedûd stand about three hundred paces further along the same line, and Mahmud Efendi is thought to have built here to be near his father. The burial ground around the tomb holds further headstones, some undated and one of them unreadable past the first line.
