Geyikli Baba Mosque

The Geyikli Baba Mosque, east of central Bursa near Kestel, commemorates a Turkmen dervish of the Vefai order active in the early 14th century, traditionally known as Geyikli Baba ("the deer-riding dervish") and said to have been born Hasan. According to Ottoman chronicles written generations later by writers such as Âşıkpaşazade and Neşri, he earned his nickname by living among wild deer and reportedly riding one into battle. He is remembered as a disciple of the dervish leader Baba İlyas and as a participant, alongside Orhan Gazi's forces, in the 1326 conquest of Bursa. When Orhan Gazi later offered him the governorship of İnegöl in gratitude, Geyikli Baba is said to have declined worldly office and asked instead only for land on which to build a dervish lodge, which Orhan Gazi granted at Babasultan, in present-day Kestel. The mosque and site today preserve the memory of this founding-era Ottoman holy man.