İremeti Camii

İremeti Mosque or İremit Mosque (Georgian: ირემითის მეჩეთი), in the historic Maçaheli region, is a historic mosque located today in the village of Maralköy, district of Borçka, Artvin Province. It bears this name because it is situated in the İremeti neighborhood of the village. İremeti Mosque is one of eight wooden mosques identified on the Turkish side of the Maçaheli valley.

In terms of design and style, as well as colorful interior and original motifs, İremeti Mosque shares characteristics with both other wooden mosques in the Artvin region and mosques in Georgia’s Adjara region.

History

İremeti is one of the settlements in the Maçaheli region. It is more commonly known as a neighborhood of the village of Mindieti, and in the 1920s it was one of the eight villages of the Macahel district. In the village recorded as İremet (ایرەمەت), the 1926 population register listed 23 households with 116 people, 64 men and 52 women. İremeti Mosque, the village mosque of İremeti, was built in 1851. Villagers, as in the case of Camili Mosque, claim that İremeti Mosque was on the Georgian side before the Turkey‑Georgia border was drawn, and that after the border was drawn it was dismantled by the local people and rebuilt within Turkish borders. However, this claim does not match historical facts. In the year 1851, when the mosque is believed to have been built, the whole of Maçaheli was within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.

Architecture

İremeti Mosque is a two‑storey wooden building with a square plan. According to information from the villagers, İremeti Mosque originally rested on wooden posts, and later a basement was constructed with stone walls on which the structure was placed. The mosque, built of chestnut wood, has a minaret without a balcony, covered with sheet metal. The entrance to the mosque is on the east façade and a single‑leaf wooden door is hung on this entrance. The last prayer space measures 7.13 × 1.30 metres. Access to the sanctuary is provided by a double‑leaf wooden main entrance door. The double doors are 90 cm wide and 1.65 metres high. Opposite this door, a wooden staircase on the west wall of the mosque leads to the upper floor. The upper floor measures 1.0 × 1.3 metres and is supported by four wooden columns. The wood inside the mosque and the plant and geometric motifs carved in wood are painted in red, turquoise, green, blue, black, white and pink.