Door knockers and rings of traditional Mardin houses

Door knockers and rings plays significant role in our cultural heritage. They are facing to disappear due to lack of public interest in them. In this thesis we aim to record and reveal this cultural heritage which is fading away. Exempt the introduction part, this thesis contains four main parts. In the first section we gave information about the geography, history, and the architecture of Mardin. We also gave general information about the traditional Mardin houses. In the second section we talk about the historical development of door knockers and door rings in Anatolia and also we gave information about the construction, decoration techniques and the materials are used. Additionally we evaluate the door knockers in a sociological point of view. At the third section we used the scaled Mardin city map to identify the houses that has door knocker and rings. We also photographed the door knockers and rings of these houses. With this information we classify Mardin's door knockers and rings and prepared a detailed catalog of them. In the fourth section we classify and evaluate the traditional Mardin's door knockers and rings. In this research we also interviewed the craftsmen who have interest in door knockers and rings and still make the door knockers and rings inspired from the traditional ones. We evaluate the information that we gathered in great detail. As a result we compare Mardin's door knockers and rings with Anatolian ones to finalize our research. Mardin's door knockers and rings that survived to present days are a few. But even for this few examples there is not any work to preserve them.