Yeldeğirmeni Mosque

Audio Narration

Construction Year:

1591 (1582 is also mentioned in different sources), 1889 (Reconstruction)

Location:

Beyoğlu, İstanbul

Ordered by:

Abdulkerim Efendi, the imam of Sultan Murad III (First Construction), Naval Minister Bozcaadalı Hasan Hüsn Pasha's daughter Sabiha Hanim (Reconstruction)

Architect:

Unknown

- Changes after its construction
  • Its first construction was on land used as a Jewish cemetery.
  • It was rebuilt in 1889, commissioned by Sabiha Hanım, the daughter of the Minister of the Navy Hasan Hüsnü Pasha, with masonry walls, a wooden roof and a brick minaret.
  • The first official records regarding the mosque can be found in Ottoman documents dated 27 April 1908.
  • In the photographs of 1876, there are two windows in the mihrab wall, a wooden roof covered with tiles, and a minaret with a lead cone.
  • In the 1900s, changes were made, the minaret was renovated with stone material, and the roof was covered with lead.
- Prominent Features
  • To the north of the mosque is a building used as a primary school, which was later converted into a residence.
  • There is a cistern and a fountain next to it on the lower floor.
  • It has masonry walls, a wooden roof and a single-balcony stone minaret.
  • There are windows on the mihrab wall.
  • After the Ottoman conquest of North Africa, a fashion for feeding monkeys started in Istanbul. The founder of the mosque did not approve of this and had the monkeys executed on the grounds that they were a means of entertainment. For this reason, he was known as “Maymunkeş (Monkeyslayer) Imam Abdülkerim Efendi”.