"Ebu İshak Kazeruni" Mosque

This mosque was built in the late 14th century by Yıldırım Bayezid for Ebu Ishak Kazeruni (died 1035), a Persian clergyman and founder of “Kazeruniye Tarikat” dervish order. The epitaph board placed over the entrance door, written in “sulus” script and consisting of three lines, reveals that this mosque was built by Yıldırım Bayezid, and that it was repaired during the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror.

This structure is one of those mosques built with a “⊥” plan (with lodging rooms for travellers, and a hermitage). Its walls are masoned using rubble stones. The spaces, however, are filled with bricks.

As to its plan, this mosque is similar to “Timurtash Pasha” mosque. Its main prayer hall is covered with a central dome. It consists of the lodging rooms at both sides, of an iwan and the portico for latecomers at the structure’s south and north, respectively.

The structure’s minaret with its square plinth block and its cylindrical body, bonded to the eastern wall of the portico for latecomers, was added to it in 1882.

The whole “kulliye” complex was built at the same time as the mosque, originally consisting of a soup kitchen, a school, a room with bathing cells, and this mausoleum, but only the mosque and the mausoleum survived to date.

When “Kazeruniye Tarikat” dervish order, with its many guesthouses in Persia, came to Anatolia, it was patronized by Yıldırım Bayezid. It is known that this order, which is based on work and mutual aid, influenced the “Ahilik teshkilat” in Anatolia (or Akhism, an organized brotherhood in Anatolia related to the trade guilds).

This mosque was renovated in 1479, 1655, 1760, 1764, 1844, and in 1882. Lastly, it was renovated in 1969 by the “Bursa Ancient Artwork Lovers’ Society”.

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