MAHPERI HATUN MOSQUE
Turkiye KAYSERİ 13th Century
HUAND / HUNADOlarak da bilinir.
1238
It is located to the southeast across the street from the Inner Castle downtown Kayseri. The mosque is part of a complex comprising a double hammam (baths), a madrasa partially adjoining the mosque, and a tomb within a small courtyard in the northwest of the mosque but accessed from the madrasa. The mosque is inferred to have been built after the madrasa built previously by Sultan Ala al-Din Kay Qubadh I.
Being the core structure of the complex, the mosque is entirely built with fine dressed stones; there are square and polygonal buttresses and corner towers rising to the roofline around the exterior; some gargoyles close to the roof cornice are designed as lion heads. It was claimed that there had been a parapet of battlements over the roof cornice.
One of the two portals is situated on the south part of the east façade; framed on the sides and top with a series of varying borders and mouldings the portal protrudes out and rises up to the roofline only. The portal niche is framed with a wide border of geometric composition; its ogee arch rises on round colonnettes with a dice-like capital and the hood is filled with seven rows of muqarnas; in the spandrels is a rosette with geometric décor. On the lateral sides of the portal niche is a mihrabiyya with a pointed arch and a hood of four rows of muqarnas. The location of this portal suggests, albeit there exists no in situ trace, that there was a wooden royal box for the sultan in the southeast corner of the prayer hall.
The main portal facing the city square is situated in the north part of the west façade; it is designed as a rectangular prismatic mass protruding out and rising over the roofline. The portal is shifted northward because there used to be a hammam on this side urging for this adaptation. Indeed, sondages dug in 1969 at the furnace part of the concerned hammam showed that its southeast corner lay under the foundations of the mosque. It is likely that the changing halls of the hammam were pulled down during the construction of this portal.
The portal mass is framed on the sides and top with a series of varying borders and mouldings with geometric composition; its ogee arch rises on round colonnettes and the hood is filled with eleven rows of muqarnas; in the spandrels is a boss in poor condition. On the lateral sides of the portal niche is a mihrabiyya with a pointed arch and a hood of five rows of muqarnas.
The minaret with single balcony adjoining the south end of the western portal was added in the first half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, the “kiosk-minaret” of hexagonal baldachin type rising on top of the portal is also known to have been added later. The western part of the north façade is shared with the east part of the south façade of the madrasa.
The prayer hall is arranged as ten aisles extending parallel to the qibla wall and separated by square piers interconnected to each other and the walls by pointed arches. The aisles are covered with east-west pointed barrel vaults; however, the three aisles in the northwest corner are covered in the axial directions because of the tomb added there later.
The square bay before the mihrab is a baldachin of two freestanding and two engaged profiled piers interconnected by pointed arches covered with a dome rising on pendentives; the windows in the axial directions on the foot of the dome are from later periods. Currently, the dome is covered with lead sheets following the profile but it is certain that it was concealed under a tall pyramidal roof originally.
A two-bay-long part covered with a pointed barrel vault connects the dome before the mihrab and the dome over the central bay in the middle; the middle dome resting on a tall polygonal drum was built in the late Ottoman period for illumination of the interior. This dome should have been covered with a pyramidal roof originally.
Two square bays to the north of the middle dome are covered with a groin vault.
The stone mihrab is designed as a rectangular mass framed with a series of varying borders and mouldings on the sides and top; it does not protrude out to the interior but protrudes out to the exterior. The colonnettes with spirally fluted shafts are crowned with two-tiered acanthus capitals and they carry an ogee arch framing a hood of five rows of muqarnas. The lower part of the mihrab is designed as three semi-circular niches with oyster-shell hoods.
The minbar of faux-kündekari technique displays exquisite woodwork in its floral compositions of palmettes and rumis as well as Qur’anic verses in thuluth script particularly on the door wings, side panels, and lower parts of the top kiosk. Currently, rectangular panels in the middle of side panels have been replaced with plain wooden panels.
The minbar was substantially repaired in 1717/18. The thuluth inscriptions on the side panels and lower parts of the top kiosk have become illegible due to deterioration. The minbar does not give a date but it should have been built about the same time as the mosque.
A flight of seventeen steps inside the wall by the eastern portal leads to the roof, which is currently a pitched roof sheathed with lead sheets. However, it is known that in the past the backs of the vaults were coated with lime mortar with slab stones placed in between.
On the other hand, it is likely that the tomb of the patron situated in the northwest corner was built in the place of a baptismal cell within a structure connected with the madrasa formerly.
The inscriptions on both portals refer to the monument as a masjid and state that it was built in May/June 1238 by Mahperi Hatun titled as Malika-t-al-Kabir Saffet al-Dunya, i.e. “the Great Malika, the purity of the world”, mother of Sultan Giyath al-Din Kay Husraw II during his reign.
