ZEKİ MESUD ALSAN’IN ANLATIMIYLA 20. YÜZYIL BAŞLARINDA AYDIN KENTSEL ÇEVRESİNİN TANIMLANMASI

The intention in this article is to provide an understanding of the urban environment and daily life in Aydın in the period between 1890 and 1905. By drawing upon the memoirs of Prof. Dr. Zeki Mesud Alsan (who used the first name ‘Mustafa’), entitled ‘Mustafa’nın Romanı: Memleket Çocuğu’ (The Story of Mustafa: The Child of Hometown), the lost urban memory of Aydın from the end of the 19th century will be re-discovered. In the first volume of his memoirs, Mustafa recalled his childhood observations and experiences in Aydın, up until the time he entered the Preliminary School of İzmir (İzmir İdadisi) (Alsan, 2002). Prof. Dr. Zeki Mesud Alsan (Mustafa) was born in Aydın in 1889. He was a student in the Faculty of Political Sciences in İstanbul (Mekteb-i Mülkiye) during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II. In 1913, he attended the ‘Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques’ in Paris with a scholarship from the Ministry of Education, and on his return from Paris in 1915, he was appointed at the Ministry of Finance. From 1927 to 1943, he was a member of the Turkish Parliament, after which he became a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences (Mekteb-i Mülkiye) in 1945, promoted to the position of Dean of the Faculty between 1946 and 1948. As a professor, he wrote several books, such as the General International Law Courses (Devletler Hukuku Dersleri, 1947), New Developments on General International Law (Devletler Hukukunda Yeni Gelişmeler, 1948) and New General International Law (Yeni Devletler Hukuku Dersleri, 1950), before retiring in 1956. He was not only a politician and a scientist, but also a member of various associations and institutions such as the Turkish University Solidarity Association (Türk Üniversiteleri Dayanışma Derneği), the United Nations Liberty Provision and Protection Turkish Group (Birleşmiş Milletler İnsan Hakları ve Ana Hürriyetleri Sağlama ve Koruma Türk Grubu) and the Anatolian Club (Anadolu Kulubü). He died in 1986 (Alaettin, 1936; Alsan, 2002). Mustafa’s memoirs was published in three volumes. The first volume, entitled ‘Mustafa’nın Romanı’, comprising his memoirs from 1897 to 1905 was first published by Vakit Publishers in 1942, and was re-edited by Prof. Dr. Ali Birinci and published by Vadi Publishers in 2002. Volume two, entitled ‘Hürriyet Pervanesi’, based on his memoirs between 1907 and 1910 was first published in 1943 and was also recently re-edited and published alongside the first volume. The third volume, entitled ‘Kavak Yeli’, unfortunately remains undiscovered at this time. The first volume, as the subject of this article, records Mustafa’s childhood memories of Aydın and İzmir. According to Birinci, when first published the book was considered to be a work of fiction due to its title ‘The Story of Mustafa’ (Mustafa’nın Romanı); but regardless of its genre, what the book does is provide a comprehensive description of the city of Aydın at the end of the 19th century (Alsan, 2002, xxvııı, xxıx). Although Mustafa did not write his recollections of the period between 1897 and 1907 until after his retirement, his first book offers a unique description of the urban environment, the architectural characteristics and social and daily life in Aydın at the time. What Mustafa has left for posterity is a record of the lost urban memory of the city from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Located on the west of Asia Minor (Figure 1), to the south of the Aydın Mountains (Figure 2)(1), Aydın was a significant commercial centre to the hinterland of İzmir harbour, to where it was connected by the first railway constructed in the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century it is known that Aydın’s population was made up of Muslims, Christians and Jews; however the shortage of written or visual records or studies relating to the city (2) makes Mustafa’s memoirs from the period all the more significant. Mustafa left Aydın in 1905 when he entered the Preliminary School of İzmir, but would return to visit his family and hometown during holidays when he was able to witness the social and educational life in the city in the declining years of the Ottoman Empire. The methodology of this study comprises three parts, and draws inspiration from the method used by N. Şahin Güçhan in ‘Tracing the memoir of Dr.Şerafeddin Mağmuni for the Urban Memory of Ayvalık’. The first part offers a brief history of Aydın, with particular focus on the 19th century; and the second part provides an interpretation of the urban texture, architectural characteristics, and social and daily life in the city using the memoirs of Mustafa and original visual documents as a source. This section presents a description of the route followed by Mustafa from his home in the Kozdibi Quarter to the Preliminary School of Aydın using old photographs and cadastral plans (known as ‘Yangın Haritaları’ in Aydın), which are overlapped and redrawn for producing city plan of Aydın by the author of this article, as an additional source of information. The buildings referred to by Mustafa, and the traces left behind, are investigated within the urban pattern of modern Aydın, and their locations shown on the partial city plan. The physical image of the city at the time is given, enriched using the descriptions of daily life provided by Mustafa. In the final part, the urban environment and some buildings are described in detail, and a short interpretation is made of how Mustafa’s descriptions reflect the spatial characteristics and daily life of Aydın.