A few days ago, we went to an exhibition in the Cistern of Theodosius, which was recently reopened.
After spending some time in the exhibition, Ayşe and I walked around in Çemberlitaş, where the Cistern is located. There is a historical site (the courtyard of the Tomb of Mahmud II ) that contains many historical figures from the late Ottoman period, including the famous Abdulhamid II. We decided to stop by, and I was very surprised by what I saw.
First, I saw Ziya Gökalp‘s grave. Godfather of Turkish nationalism. He is buried here:
But I was very surprised by the grave of Sheikh Bedreddin
He is best known for his role in a 1416 revolt against the Ottoman State, in which he and his disciples posed a serious challenge to the authority of Sultan Mehmet I and the Ottoman state.
Some socialists in Turkey see him as a proto-communist in Anatolia in the early ages!
This might be the oldest person to be buried here. In fact, Bedreddin’s grave was brought here in the 1960s. I do not know why, as he is a very controversial personality in Ottoman history. I asked Perplexity why. Here is the story:
Sheik Bedreddin’s remains were moved to the courtyard of the Tomb of Mahmud II in Çemberlitaş in 1961 as a conscious act of re‑symbolization by the early 1960s political authorities: this was a Republican‑era decision to “reinsert” Bedreddin into an official Ottoman‑Islamic and national memory landscape, rather than a relocation motivated by his original 15th‑century context.[1][2][3]
What was actually moved, and where?
- Sheikh Bedreddin was executed and buried near Serez (Serres, in today’s Greece) in 1420, far from Istanbul.[3][1]
- In 1961, during the post‑1960 coup period, his bones were exhumed and transferred to Istanbul by state decision.[1][3]
- They were then reburied in the outer cemetery of the Mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II in Çemberlitaş, which is also where Abdülhamid II is buried.[2][1]
Why this location in the Mahmud II complex?
Historians of Ottoman funerary politics note that the Mahmud II mausoleum became, in the 19th century, a deliberately prominent site for burials of rulers and high dignitaries whom the regime wanted to honor and make symbolically visible in the urban fabric. By the 20th century this same physical complex had become a kind of “pantheon” of late‑Ottoman and early Republican historical memory, open to new symbolic insertions.[5][2][1]
Placing Bedreddin here in 1961 served several overlapping aims:
- To canonize him—after centuries of ambivalence—as a notable religious‑intellectual and political figure of “our” past, physically among sultans and major intellectuals.[3][1]
- To appropriate a once‑rebellious, heterodox, and later left‑romanticized figure into a more acceptable, state‑curated Ottoman‑Islamic heritage line.[1][3]
- To use an already prestigious and centrally located funerary complex, familiar to Istanbulites, to “stabilize” the narrative of Bedreddin as part of a national historical continuum.[5][2][1]
In short, the site was chosen because of its function as a high‑status, symbolically loaded cemetery space, not because of any personal relationship between Bedreddin and Abdülhamid II.[2][5][1]
https://www.ekrembugraekinci.com/article/?ID=1595&sheikh-bedreddin–son-of-the-qadi-of-simavna
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosya:Grave_of_Sheikh_Bedreddin_2.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grave_of_Sheikh_Bedreddin_2.jpg
Finally, inside the Şerefiye Sarnıç:
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