Ali Pasha Mosque, Bursa

The Ali Pasha Mosque stands on Eski Sokak in Bursa's Alipaşa neighborhood and was founded by Çandarlı Ali Pasha, who served as grand vizier under Sultan Yıldırım Bayezid. Its exact construction date is unrecorded, but the foundation deed of its endowment is dated to 1394, showing the mosque was already standing by then, which makes it one of Bursa's early Ottoman-period religious buildings. It was built as a zaviyeli mosque, a type combining a prayer hall with adjoining rooms for traveling dervishes, an arrangement common in fourteenth-century Bursa. The outer courtyard originally had five arches, traces of which show the bays were once domed, while the main prayer hall's central axis was covered by two domes, with barrel-vaulted side wings that have since been lost. A major nineteenth-century earthquake in the city destroyed the domes, the side wings, and the original minaret, and seriously damaged the mihrab; the mosque was substantially rebuilt afterward, and its present form largely reflects that later reconstruction.