Male tombstones have professional headgears while the female have flowers on the top them so it is easy to classify male and female tombstones at once. Male tombstones are classified into two main groups showing their titles while they used to be before death; Turban and Fes. Simple Turban- white cheesecloth- was used in the beginning of the foundation and the colors on the Turban used to define which profession they belonged to. When Constantinople was conquered, Mehmet II made a detailed protocol including the dressing code in all sections. Different metarials such as cardboard, cotton, felt, Indian fabric and etc. were used with Turban in order to create hundreds of professional headgears. The strict dress code has been implemented in the Ottoman empire for hundreds years. Everyone had to wear a hat and clothe for his job. Ottoman headgears would also indicate what type of religious sect he used to belong while he was alive ; Mawlavi, Bektashi, Rufai, Melami or whoever. When the Ottoman headgears are examined in deatils by looking at them , someone can understand his profession and his religious sect at once. The female tomsbtones have nice flowers and some symbols on the top of them because Ottoman ladies dressed groomed as flowers, used nice perfumes and wore elegant dresses in general.
Heading is the primary section of the Ottoman tombstones with written inscriptions stating that Allah is eternal so majority of Ottoman tomsbtones begin with Huve’l-baki that means only Allah is eternal. Hu is the short form of Allah especially used by Mawlavi and Bektashi derwishes & lovers on their tombstones as the beginning. Briefly, the Ottoman people bowed down only the authority of Allah on the way to lasting world and it was carved on his/her tombstone as the first sentence. There is a common proverb in Turkish language that has been used since Turks accepted Islamic faith, “ Someone who comes from HAY goes to HU.” This proverb expresses that I came from Allah and I go to Him now.
In this section, the detailed information is given about the death in grave such as the name of the family he belongs to, his titles when he was alive, his profession, his services, cause of death and so on. If the death in grave is a woman, Either her father’s or her husband’s name is stated saying the daughter of someone or the the wife of someone. These statements may include extremely long sentences as well as being too short in some tombstones. Ottoman tombstones, which have the finest examples of contemporary Turkish literature stone inscriptions, are the largest and the richest cultural herital treasures of Turkey. The language used on these tombstones is the main source of today’s Turkish.
REQUEST FOR PRAY & DATE OF DEATH
According to İslamic faith, the only thing that will be sent to a person in the grave is to pray to be forgiven in the day of judgement beacuse his life in this world was completed and if the visitors send blessings to him/ to her until the resurrection day, perhaps he/she will be sent to heaven after the judgement. The visitors also know that they will die one day so they begin to pray to the death person in grave.The most common sentence is as follow ; If the death is for me today, it will happen to you tomorrow. For this reason, all Ottoman tombstones want blessings from the visitors in this section ending with the request of Al-Fatiha. The date of the death is carved at the end of written inscription in Moslem calender of Hegira. The date is sometimes carved under the headings as well. The date of death is written either day- month- year altogether , or just the year of death. An intelligent method was used for giving the full date of death when government officials, the poets or writers died. In this method, each letter has a number value and a long sentence is carved on the tombstone. Then the visitor is invited to find the death date in the grave by calculating the letters in the sentence. It is known as Ebced in Turkish literature.