Person in the Tomb
Abidin Paşa, born in Preveza in 1843, was of Çamlık Albanian origin.
He assumed various important positions in the Ottoman state organizations; he served as the governor of Preveza, Tekfurdağı, Varna, Sofia, Mamüretü'l-Aziz (Elazığ), Diyarbakır, Adana, Sivas, Ankara, Thessaloniki and Cezayir-i Bahr-i Sefid (Islands).
He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs for a short time in 1880. Abidin Pasha, a multilingual bureaucrat, knew Turkish, Albanian, Arabic, Persian, French and Greek.
Pasha, who is also known as a writer, has the most important work of his Ottoman translation and commentary on Rumi’s Mathnawi (Tercüme ve Şerh-I Mesnevi-I Şerif).
He died in Istanbul in 1906 and was buried in the tomb built to the south of the Gazi Osman Pasha Tomb in the Fatih Mosque Graveyard.
About the Mausoleum
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Featured Highlights
The tomb is an open structure with a square plan, in the baldachin style, covered with an eight-lobed dome.
It was built with marble material and is one of the few examples completely covered with this material.
The structure is supported by twelve columns. Four of the columns are square and the others are cylindrical.
Instead of arches, lintels were used to connect the columns, and on the lintels there are consoles resembling metopes (rectangular architectural elements) that are reminiscent of ancient Roman architecture.
A flat eave was placed on 24 consoles on each facade, and sculptures were added to the corners of the eaves.
The octagonal dome, which sits on an octagonal frame, ends with a marble finial; this form is a rare approach in Ottoman architecture, with Seljuk influence.
On the inside of the dome, verses 30 and 32 of the Surah Fussilat are written in eight cartouches in jeli thuluth script.
There are two coffins in the tomb: The coffin in the northwest belongs to Abidin Pasha, and the coffin in the southeast belongs to his brother Veysel Pasha.
The gravestones are cylindrical in shape, their lower parts are shaped with sixteen muqarnas and their upper parts are shaped with twelve prismatic triangles.
There are inscriptions on the gravestones of both pashas.
