Ekmekçizâde Ahmed Paşa, who held the office of chief treasurer from June 1606 until the end of 1613, was buried when he died in 1618 in the tomb beside his own medrese at Vefa. The tomb was fitted into the gap between the street and the side wall of the lecture hall and is almost the same size as that hall; it is entered from Taştekneler Sokağı, covered by a single large dome, and holds nine cenotaphs of varying size. Whether he had it built himself or it went up after his death, once the medrese was finished, cannot be settled.
Where the burial-ground wall meets the tomb there is a very fine sebil. The burial ground itself, walled and fairly large, runs along Taştekneler Sokağı and holds a great many headstones; it is not well kept, an unauthorised wall has been put up inside it in recent years, and stones whose original positions are unknown have been stacked against the walls while others have been set in order. The canopy that stood over the tomb entrance has collapsed.
The medrese the tomb is attached to has a documented history of decline and rescue. The entry supposes Ahmed Paşa built it during his term as chief treasurer, noting that his caravanserai at Edirne is dated 1609-10. A survey report of 2 September 1914 describes what the building had come to: seventeen damp rooms, a few of which had back windows and so some movement of air while the rest were closed behind and all of them cut off from sunlight, with a bath cell, a washroom, a laundry, a fountain with no water and a classroom, the whole in a ruinous state, so that housing students there was not safe on medical grounds — though the report adds that the courtyard was large enough for repairs and alterations to make room for twenty. Damp and ruined as it was, the medrese was still carried within the establishment that year, and a note appended to the same document records that after the great fire of 1918 it was occupied by people whose houses had burned.
For decades after that nobody maintained it and it sheltered people with nowhere to go, until around 1963 the foundations administration set about clearing it and the architect Cahide Tamer repaired it between 1966 and 1968. Some time later the adjoining Nuri Bey mansion was demolished, a student hostel of the İlim Yayma Cemiyeti was built on its site, and the medrese became part of it; the entry, writing in 1994, records it as still in good order and in that use. Its own entrance is on Kovacılar Caddesi, and the plan is a regular rectangle. Facing the classroom, in the row opposite, are the lavatories and the bath cell. On the south side of the courtyard stands the mosque and lecture hall under a large dome, lit by two rows of windows, one above the other, which the entry describes as a handsome and well-proportioned building.
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).
