Guide
The tomb of Yahya Efendi stands in the Beşiktaş district of İstanbul, opposite the Çırağan Palace and adjoining the Yahya Efendi lodge. It dates from 1571 and is the work of Mimar Sinan.
Yahya Efendi was a well-known mystic, scholar and poet of the reign of Süleyman I. The tomb stands within a complex of lodge, ceremonial hall and medrese first built by Sinan, and it is a single-domed building on a square plan.
Yahya Efendi died on 4 May 1571 and was buried at the site of his lodge. Some time afterwards, by order of Selim II, who held him in great affection and respect, a tomb was built over his grave, together with cells for the dervishes and a small cell for the keeper of the tomb. The tomb was repaired by Mahmud II, by Pertevniyal Valide Sultan and by Abdülhamid II; it took the form it has today during Pertevniyal Valide Sultan's repairs. It was last restored by the Directorate General of Foundations between 2011 and 2013.
From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards a great many members of the mystical orders, statesmen, scholars, members of the dynasty and of the court were buried in the graveyard here. In the second half of the nineteenth century the ground around the tomb became first a burial place of the Ottoman upper class and then a family cemetery of the sultan, and the relatives of Abdülhamid II and of Adile Sultan in particular were buried here.
In 1903 Hacı Mahmut Efendi, a member of the lodge, had a single-storey library on a rectangular plan built at its gate, and the fountain on the slope was renewed. In the same period a building known as the tomb of the princes was put up in the northern part of the graveyard, and many members of the dynasty, men and women, were buried in it.
Inside the tomb, decorated with painted work in the manner of its time, are eleven coffins besides that of Yahya Efendi. Soon after his death the ground around the tomb and the lodge filled with the graves of those who wished to lie near him. At the entrance and outside are the graves of his descendants, of members of the court and the dynasty, of leading figures of their day, of the keepers of the tomb and of his followers. The numbered stones in the graveyard come to 2,141. A number of princes, consorts and sultans lie in a separate tomb built beside the lodge by Abdülhamid II at the end of the nineteenth century.
