Grand Mosque

Known locally as the Ulu Camii, the Grand Mosque of Ayaş stands in the municipal square at the center of this district roughly sixty kilometers from central Ankara. No foundation inscription survives to fix its exact construction date, but its building materials and especially its wooden-pillar construction point to an origin in the fifteenth century, during the early Ottoman period. The mosque is best known for its timber craftsmanship: its wooden columns, beams and ceiling were assembled using traditional joinery without a single nail, a technique shared by several surviving wooden-pillared mosques in the wider Ankara region. A later inscription on the minaret records repairs carried out in 1739-40, and a further inscription inside the building documents a thorough renovation in 1840. Together these layers of repair show how the mosque has been maintained and adapted by the local community across several centuries while its historic wooden structural system has remained largely intact.