Türbe del sultano Mahmud II

Mahmud II, a son of Abdülhamid I born in 1785, became sultan on 28 July 1808 after Alemdar Mustafa Pasha deposed his brother Mustafa IV². In 1826 he abolished the Janissary corps, which opened the way to the reforms of his last thirteen years². He died on 28 June 1839; the death was kept secret until 30 June for fear of unrest, and on 1 July his body was taken to Topkapı Palace for a funeral that became a procession of large crowds of Muslims and non-Muslims². On the same day he was buried, as his will asked, in the garden of Esma Sultan's palace on Divanyolu, under a tent^1,2.

In the reign of his son Abdülmecid I, Abdülhalim Efendi, director of the imperial building office (Ebniye-i Hâssa), was put in charge of the tomb and relieved of his post so that he could finish it quickly^1,2. The work began after 5 July 1839 and ended on 12 October 1840; Abdülhalim Efendi was then reappointed, and the master builders Ohannes and Bogos, the minister of pious foundations Mâhir Efendi and the calligrapher Mehmed Hâşim Efendi, who wrote the tomb's inscriptions, were rewarded¹. Abdülaziz was buried here after his death on 4 June 1876³. Abdülhamid II died on 10 February 1918 and was buried here the next day with a ceremony befitting a sultan⁴.

The tomb occupies the western corner of a funerary ensemble that also has a sebil (water dispenser), rooms, a fountain and a cemetery, behind a street wall on Divanyolu with grilled windows and two gates¹. TDV places it in the 19th-century tradition of dynastic tombs: an octagon in the Empire style, faced with marble and covered by a large dome on an octagonal drum¹. The door is on the north side, and the other faces have tall round-arched windows framed by pilasters with stylized Corinthian capitals, with a band of antique palmettes at the level of the arches¹. Shields bearing two swords, swelling plant ornament and a bracketed cornice crown the walls, and the finial of the dome is shaped to recall a radiating sun¹.

A single-storey annex on the north side leads to the tomb through a corridor between two rooms; burials were later made in the right-hand room¹. The sebil is round and projects from the wall, with four Tuscan columns between five rectangular windows under a plain architrave; TDV notes that the type is common in Europe and calls it the first and only one of its kind in Istanbul¹. At the corner of the street front stands a fountain about 2.5 m high, a square shaft on a square base that was topped by a globe¹. In TDV's survey of Islamic tombs, Mahmud II's tomb is where the Baroque and Rococo details seen in the tombs of Şah Sultan and Mihrişah Valide Sultan give way to an Empire style applied to the traditional scheme⁵.

Inside, the walls and dome carry plaster reliefs: floral compositions around medallions, pilasters with capitals, a band of inscriptions and a bracketed cornice¹. In the drum, the names of God, the Prophet Muhammad, the four caliphs, Hasan and Husayn are written between semicircular pediments, and the dome is divided into coffers with reliefs of coats of arms, wreaths and flower baskets¹. TDV sees a blend of Empire decoration and traditional ornament in the large crystal chandelier hanging from the centre of the dome and in the gold-embroidered covers on the cenotaphs¹. Among the 18 cenotaphs are those of Mahmud II, Abdülaziz and Abdülhamid II, and of Bezmiâlem Valide Sultan, Mahmud II's wife and Abdülmecid's mother¹.