The Abdal Mehmed Camii in Bursa has a date of 1451.  The mosque was constructed prior to the fall of Constantinople.  An interesting feature about this mosque is that it is both a Turbesi and a Tekke complex.  Tekkes are Sufi meeting places.  The mosque isn’t very big and it was built for a Sufi master by a man who believed in this Sufi.  It’s in a setting probably not different in scale as the original.  It’s strung along a slope as well as numerous villages.  The down draft of the mountain has a tendency to cool this place.  The sketch above is of the mausoleum.

It is important here to give you some background information.  Osman founded the Ottoman Empire in 1299.  In 1326 Orhan Gazi conquered the Byzantine fortification and began the Ottoman Empire in Bursa.  It became an important trading center during the Osmanli rule and the major capital was part of the Osmanli world.  It was the first capital and as such it was a religious and spiritual center.  The Sufi persuasion was quite strong as there were many different branches of Sufism.  The mosque was built for a Sufi teacher by a  very influential religious leader who was also a butcher.  The butcher sold sheep heads, which are used to prepare meals on special occasions and had a religious significance.  The practice is still important today.

The mosque is a Bursa type turned the other way.  The 2 domes are aligned in the east-west axis.  The qibla is perpendicular and in front of a 3 bay porch and the turbesi is across the street.  Another interesting feature is that the mihrab or niche is carved into the main structural support where the 2 pointed arches of the domes meet.  We thought it might have been a conscious act to destroy the support in the interior.  The mosque is indeed something of an anomaly in that there are 2 elliptical domes oriented to the qibla with flanking structural supports, and there is the 3 bay porch layout connected to a 2 bay mosque.  We thought it might be another type of Ottoman mosque that is a missing link to Sinan’s mosques.

Upon further reflection of this past thought, here is what I found today.  The smaller early 14th century funerary complexes of Orhan I and Murad I in Bursa followed and were grouped around the T-type convent-masjids.  The Turkish term ‘imaret’ is generally used in written sources for early Ottoman socio-religious complexes, grouped around T-shaped convent-masjids and hospices.  During the age of Sinan the term ‘imaret’ came to denote a hospice or soup kitchen built as a freestanding dependency of a Friday mosque complex.  It is believed that the transformation of the meaning of ‘imaret’ paralleled the displacement of early Ottoman complexes by Friday mosques with undivided interior spaces.