Çilehane Mosque

The Çilehane Mosque in Amasya was built around 1412-1413 by the Ottoman vizier Yakub Pasha as a lodge for his spiritual guide, Gümüşlüoğlu Abdurrahman, and originally functioned as a dervish retreat of the Halveti Sufi order rather than simply a congregational mosque. It is also referred to as the Yakup Paşa Çilehane Mosque and Convent, and its surviving waqfiyya, or endowment deed, is considered the earliest written record describing the practices, organization and rituals of the Halveti order, making the building important to the religious history of early Ottoman Anatolia as much as to its architecture. Scholars studying the mosque have used its unusual T-shaped plan, typical of early Ottoman multifunctional buildings, to debate how far such structures should be classified by their form versus their original devotional function. The building has more recently undergone restoration as part of a wider programme to preserve Amasya's historic monuments.