About the Prison

The prison building was most likely built around 1887 by Hacı Hasan Paşa (Di̇ken, 2010, p. 252).  In 1882, plans were submitted to the Ministry of Interior for building this prison due to the insufficient safety and adequacy of the old prison (Haspolat, 2013, p. 224).  Some scholars believe it to have been built in 1789-1790 supposedly according to an inscription on the building, but this inscription cannot possibly be true, given that the plans were submitted in 1882, and given that the building is certainly not present in Laurens’s 1847 drawing of the citadel, as well as that Nutting in 1854 describes the prison as being in the first courtyard of the citadel, further to the south (Kakdaş Ateş, 2018, page 62; Laurens, 1847; Nutting and Nutting, 1912, p. 59).

As of 1899, the prison held close to a thousand prisoners (Hartunian, 1968, p. 30).  The cells appear to have contained scores of prisoners in them, with Hartunian reporting his cell holding seventy men:

The particular place where my friends were contained and I was taken was a long and narrow cell, with only one door and two windows, containing about seventy prisoners, each of whom only had enough space to mark his grave upon—hardly enough to stretch out and sleep untouched by others.  The cell was always clouded with cigarette and coal smoke.  It was filthy.  Lice had freely built their nests on the prisoners and in the bedding.  Millions of bedbugs swarmed everywhere.  Riots, cursings, beatings, licentious speech, obscene Turkish songs, homosexual practices—these were the common happenings of the day. (Hartunian, 1968, p. 30)

Hartunian describes in more detail:

Often wild fights and prison riots would take place.  Fists clenched and objects flew.  Heads and bodies were torn and bloodied.  At such times, the safest place was the toilet—if it were possible to get there first, since many ran for it at the earliest sign of outbreak.

To protect ourselves from the bites of the attacking bedbugs, densely omnipresent, we sewed large muslin bags.  At night we took off all our clothes, got into these bags, and, tying the mouth from the inside, tried to sleep.  To bear the suffocating, putrid air of the bags, was easier than to be mercilessly eaten by the bedbugs. (Hartunian, 1968, p. 31)

During the Genocide, it was used to house and brutally torture Armenians (Մկունդ, 1950).

Ateş describes the architecture and layout:

The prison building was built of basalt stone, has a rectangular plan with an east-west orientation and an inner courtyard type. The south facade is designed as ground floor and upper floor, while the other facades are designed as ground floor. The entrance door is provided through the arched door located on the south façade. There is an iwan on the north facade of the courtyard. The iwan has a square plan and opens to a courtyard with spaces around it. There is an iwan on the north façade of the courtyard. This iwan structure has two round arches. The spaces around the courtyard have eight round arched windows facing the courtyard. The interiors of the spaces are divided into two parts by arches. The rooms on the ground floor have small windows opening outwards. On the south façade, there are six round arched window openings facing the courtyard and the outside. There is a reinforced concrete staircase in the iwan at the entrance of the ground floor. This staircase provides access to the upper floor. (Kakdaş Ateş, 2018, page 63)