Karamani Piri Mehmetpaşa Mosque
- Changes after its construction
- When it was first built, the mosque was used as a lodge-masjid.
- It was severely damaged in the fires of 1660, 1693, 1718, 1782 and 1908 and was rebuilt each
time. - It was completely destroyed in the fire of 1918.
- Its construction began in the 1920s, but was stopped in 1925 when the lodges were closed.
- It was revived extraordinarily with the support of the public in 1976 and opened for worship.
However, since the building started as a tevhidhane (the name given to the place where Sufi
rituals and the daily prayers are performed in lodges that do not have independent masjids), the
mihrab wall is not in the direction of the qibla; for this reason, the mihrab was built in the left
corner.
- Prominent features
- Its founder Piri Mehmed Pasha is a descendant of one of the Companions and the Rightly-
Guided Caliphs, Abu Bakr, and goes all the way back to Davudi Kayseri or Cemaleddin
Aksarayi. - The fact that this mosque is known as the “Koruklu Tekke Masjid” comes from the fact that
Seyyid Mehmed Efendi, who was the sheikh of the zawiya, and his father-in-law Sheikh
Mehmed Fahri Efendi were from the people of the Koruklu Neighborhood. - It has a square plan, two floors; its walls are made of stone, its roof is tiled, its minaret and
women gallery are concrete, and its minbar and pulpit are wooden. - Its mihrab is positioned in the corner and is decorated with Kütahya tiles.
- The walls are covered with wooden paneling up to half a meter from the ground. There are
three square windows on the right and left walls and two square windows on the mihrab wall.
There is an oval window on the upper side above each window. - There is an exit staircase to the upper gallery from the muezzin's area to the right of the
entrance door. The upper gallery is made of concrete. - The minaret on the left side of the Piri Mehmet Pasha Mosque is built of cut stone and its
balcony is also made of stone. - In the graveyard opposite the mosque, Mehmed II’s teacher Molla Gürani (Şemseddin Ahmed
Gürani) is buried. The sheikh of the lodge, Cemaleddin Karamani, was brought from Sütlüce
and buried in the graveyard next to the mosque. - Karamanı Pîrî Mehmed Pasha, known by the pseudonym "Remzi", passed away in 1533 and
his grave is in Silivri.
