Divriği Great Mosque and Hospital

Divriği is a small town in the uplands of Sivas Province, and above its roofs, just below the citadel, stands one of the most astonishing pieces of stone carving in the Islamic world. The mosque and the hospital attached to it were raised together in 1228–1229 under the Mengujekids, a minor Anatolian dynasty whose Divriği branch ruled this valley. The mosque was commissioned by the local ruler Ahmadshah, the hospital by Turan Malik, daughter of Fakhr al-Din Bahramshah; an inscription names the chief builder as Khurramshah, a master from Ahlat on Lake Van. It is a rare case of a double foundation where a man and a woman each paid for one half of a single building, and the two halves share a wall.

What people travel here for is the portals. The north portal of the mosque is a towering niche so densely worked that it hardly reads as masonry: leaves, palmettes, rosettes and interlacing bands rise in deep relief, some almost free of the wall, as if the stone had been modelled rather than cut. Its exuberance has little parallel in the architecture of 13th-century Anatolia, which is why the building is often called the miracle of Divriği. The west portal, flatter and more textile-like, and the hospital portal, framed by a monumental pointed arch with a window at its centre, each have their own vocabulary. Local guides point out that as the sun moves across them in summer, the projecting ornaments throw shadows that resemble human figures, among them a man at prayer on the west gate in the late afternoon; whether intended or not, people gather to watch it.

Inside, the mood changes completely. The prayer hall is a forest of stout stone piers carrying vaults, every bay covered by a stone vault, and the wooden minbar, dated 1243, was signed by a craftsman from Tiflis. Next door the hospital, the dar al-shifa or "house of healing", gathers its rooms and iwans around a covered court with a small pool at its centre. The complex was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985, and a long restoration of the stonework was completed in 2024.

Getting there

The complex stands in the upper part of Divriği itself. The nearest larger town is Suşehri, about 88 km away as the crow flies, and the nearest airport is Malatya Erhaç (MLX), about 104 km. Divriği has a station on the Ankara–Kars railway, served by the Eastern Express (Doğu Ekspresi) via Sivas, the provincial capital, and the Touristic Eastern Express stops long enough for passengers to walk up to the mosque.