Tombstones signed by Assad bin Havend found in the Ahlat Selçuklu Square Cemetery

The Ahlat district of Bitlis, which has been the crossroads of many different civilizations throughout the ages, contains many cultural assets that still maintain their importance. This city, which is known by various civilizations with different adjectives such as "Oghuz Taifesi City", "Ata City", "Dome of the Rock", is an important center of science, culture, art and belief, especially in the Middle Ages. The main reason why Ahlat is such an important center is its concrete cultural values. Among these values, historical cemeteries and tombstones are undoubtedly in the first place. Tombstones, which are of great importance in terms of our cultural history as well as Turkish art history, are the belief systems of the society they belong to; They are historical documents that provide important clues about their social, cultural and economic characteristics. The first examples of tombstones, which have an important place in Turkish history, appear in Ahlat in Anatolia. The fact that these tombstones are dated to the first period when migrations came to Anatolia is an indication of the existence of a deep-rooted cultural tradition. There are approximately 1500 tombstones in the Ahlat Seljuk Square Cemetery, where the oldest examples of these historical documents in Anatolia are located. As a result of the examinations made on the inscriptions of these tombstones, the signatures of more than thirty artists were found. The artisan inscriptions on these works in Ahlat give these works greater importance. Since it would not be possible to deal with all of these works in a master's thesis, the works of the artist Esed Bin Havend, whom we have chosen, were determined and evaluated in terms of the discipline of Art History. During the preparation of our study, a detailed source review was made in the first place and the collected data were classified in order of importance. Field work was carried out in order to determine the works of the artist on site and to use the necessary measurements and photographs in the thesis. As a result of all the findings collected, during the writing phase of the thesis, first of all, general information about the name, geographical features and history of Ahlat was given, and then information about the tomb tradition of the Turks, historical cemeteries in Ahlat and tombstone masters were mentioned. In the catalog section, 26 works of the artist Assad Bin Havend, whom we have chosen, in the Meydan Cemetery were tried to be examined. In the catalog layout of the examined works, the inscription information, date, dimensions, ornamental features and typologies of each work were conveyed in a certain order. In the evaluation part, all works were evaluated in detail by considering the typological, construction and decoration techniques, dimensions, inscription contents, stylistic characteristics of the artist and the similarities of the works with each other. After this section, the alphabetical list of the sources we used throughout our thesis study is given in groups, and the drawings and photographs of these tombstones are listed according to the catalog order. In this way, it has been tried to emphasize that these tombstones, which are our cultural heritage, which are on the verge of being forgotten, are on the agenda again and how important they are in terms of both art history and cultural history. In addition, this study is intended to be a source for other theses and studies on tombstones.