Graftombe van Barbaros Hayreddin Pasja

Hızır, known as Hayreddin and in Europe as Barbarossa, was born around 1478, a son of Yakub, a cavalryman (sipahi) settled on Lesbos². Europeans first gave the name Barbarossa, “red beard”, to his elder brother Oruç, and Sultan Selim I named him Hayreddin². Received by Süleyman I in December 1533, he was appointed grand admiral (kapudan-ı derya) on 6 April 1534, and in September 1538 he routed the allied fleet of Andrea Doria off Preveza². After his last great campaign, to Nice in 1543, he died after a short illness on 5 July 1546 and was buried in his tomb beside the madrasa he had built in Beşiktaş².

The inscription over the door is dated 948 AH (1541-42), about five years before his death^1,3. Düzenli counts the tomb among Sinan's first works, the next after the Haseki Hürrem complex of 1538-1540, and it appears in the lists of Sinan's buildings^4,5. It stood on Deve Meydanı, now Barbaros Square, beside his mansion, madrasa and bath, of which only the tomb survives^1,3. A custom grew up for the fleet leaving for the Aegean to anchor off Beşiktaş by the tomb^2,3. A monument to Barbaros was unveiled beside it in 1944, after the graveyard around it had been partly cleared^1,3. Under a 1979 protocol the tomb is in the care of the Naval Museum³.

The tomb is a classical octagon of cut küfeki stone, plain on the outside, with a lead-covered dome on a low octagonal drum^1,3. All the faces are alike, and each, except the entrance side, has two windows: the upper one pointed and filled with a plaster grille and coloured glass, the lower one rectangular, with a marble frame and an iron grille^1,3. A porch with a mirror vault on pointed arches and marble columns with lozenge capitals shelters the door^1,3. Turgut Cansever, quoted by Düzenli, saw in these closely paired, framed windows the beginning of the facade style that Sinan developed up to the Selimiye Mosque⁴.

Over the door, a two-line thuluth inscription reads “Hâzâ türbe-i fâtih-i Cezâyir ve Tunus merhum gazi kapudan Hayreddin Paşa rahmetullâhi aleyh, sene 948” (“This is the tomb of the conqueror of Algiers and Tunis, the late gazi admiral Hayreddin Pasha, God's mercy be upon him, year 948”)^1,3. In the arch above it, a prayer in large thuluth script asks God to open for him the gates of His mercy^1,3.

Inside, the plain scheme of the facades continues, which gives the room a spacious feel¹. Four wooden cenotaphs stand on a raised platform within a wooden grille; from the right they mark Grand Admiral Cafer Pasha (d. 1608), Barbaros Hayreddin Pasha, his son Hasan Pasha, three times governor of Algiers, and Barbaros's wife Bala Hatun^1,3. The dome rests on muqarnas squinches, and its painted rumi scrolls, palmettes and medallions on a dark blue ground frame a central medallion with the basmala and part of verse 89 of Surat al-A'raf in gold^1,3. The upper windows have coloured glass in decorated plaster frames, and the door of interlocking wooden panels (kündekâri) was made by the craftsman Asaf Çakır during the 1958 restoration³.