Bursa Green Mosque
Yeşil Camii
Interesting facts
- A Persian inscription in the royal loge names the artist who decorated the mosque's ceramics as Mehmed el-Mecnun, 'Mehmed the Mad'.
- The inscription 'work of the masters of Tabriz' above the mihrab is paired with a couplet by the Persian poet Saadi.
- The domes, now covered in lead, were originally clad in blue and green tiles that gave the outside of the building its colour too.
- Polychrome paintings once covered the upper walls and ceilings but were not recreated when the mosque was restored after the earthquake of 1855.
- The two minarets can be reached only through the sultan's private apartments, by winding stairs that climb up into the attics.
- A columned porch was planned for the front of the mosque but never built, leaving the carved marble facade exposed.
- Two side rooms off the central hall served as lodgings for travelling dervishes, each with carved plaster niches and a tall hooded fireplace.
- Léon Parvillée, who restored the mosque in the 1860s, went on to design the Turkish pavilion for the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris.
- Across from the mosque, the Green Tomb shelters Mehmed I together with three of his sons, several women of his family and his childhood nurse.
- The complex's madrasa, built around an arcaded courtyard in the Seljuk manner, now houses the Bursa Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art.
Why it is worth it
The Green Mosque takes its name from what waits inside: walls sheathed in deep green and turquoise tiles, many of them glinting with gold, framing one of the most refined interiors of early Ottoman art. Built in Bursa for Sultan Mehmed I, it is widely regarded as the culmination of the first Ottoman architectural style, the moment just before the empire moved its capital to Constantinople.
Mehmed I came to the throne after a long struggle with his brothers that reunited the Ottoman state, and he commissioned the mosque in 1412. The inscription over the portal dates its completion to the turn of 1419–1420; the work was directed by his vizier and former commander Hacı İvaz Pasha. Decoration continued after the sultan's death in 1421, and an inscription in the royal loge records that it was finished in 1424 by the artist Ali bin Ilyas Ali. Tiles around the mihrab are signed as the "work of the masters of Tabriz", a team that brought Timurid techniques westward from Iran. The mosque is the centre of a complex that also included a madrasa, a public kitchen, a bathhouse and the Green Tomb, the turquoise-clad mausoleum of Mehmed I raised by his son Murad II.
The plan is an inverted T: a vestibule opens onto a central hall under the highest dome, where an octagonal white marble fountain sits in a pool lit from a lantern above. Domed iwans open to either side, and a raised iwan beyond the fountain serves as the prayer hall, with a mihrab of twelve tiers of muqarnas set in black-line tilework in blue, purple, white and yellow. Above the entrance, the sultan's loge is lined with gilded tiles in star and polygon patterns. Outside, the carved marble portal crowned by a cascading muqarnas half-dome is a showpiece of early Ottoman stone carving. After the earthquake of 1855 the French architect Léon Parvillée restored the building from 1863, rebuilding the two minarets.
Bursa, at the foot of Mount Uludağ, the Mysian Olympus of antiquity, was the Ottoman capital before the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, and its early mosques, tombs and markets have formed a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014.
Getting there
The mosque stands in the eastern part of central Bursa, about 2 km from the city centre. The nearest airport is Bursa Yenişehir Airport (YEI), about 42 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Green Mosque, also known as the Mosque of Mehmed I, is a part of a larger complex in eastern Bursa, Turkey, the former capital of the Ottoman Turks before Constantinople was captured in 1453. The complex consists of a mosque, a mausoleum known as the Green Tomb, a madrasa, a public kitchen, and a bathhouse. The name Green Mosque comes from its green and blue interior tile decorations. It is part of the historic UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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