Merzifon

Merzifon lies on a fertile plain west of Amasya, where roads from the Anatolian interior approach the Black Sea coast. Its markets served the surrounding farming country, and its position near Amasya brought it into the orbit of Ottoman princes educated there. Mosques, baths and schools gave the town a distinct place in the religious and commercial life of northern Anatolia.

Sultan Mehmed I commissioned a madrasa at Merzifon between 1414 and 1417. Built around an open courtyard with four vaulted halls, it continued a design familiar from earlier Seljuk architecture. Scholars taught and studied there during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the seventeenth century the traveller Evliya Çelebi described Merzifon as a fortified trading town; its native son Kara Mustafa Pasha became grand vizier and endowed buildings in his home town.