Kızıl Bey Mosque

The Kızıl Bey Mosque traces its origins to a charitable foundation established in Ankara by Kızıl Bey, who held the title of Melik-ül Ümera, a senior regional military-administrative post, during the Anatolian Seljuk period under sultans İzzeddin Keykavus I and Alâeddin Keykubad I in the early thirteenth century. The foundation he endowed went on to support the city for more than seven centuries, funding not only the mosque but also a medrese, an imaret, or public soup kitchen, bridges and public fountains across Ankara. Ottoman administrative records from 1743 and 1765 confirm that the mosque and its attached medrese were still functioning as part of the Kızıl Bey vakfı centuries after its founding, illustrating the long institutional continuity of Seljuk-era charitable endowments into the Ottoman era. The mosque today stands as a reminder of Ankara's pre-Ottoman Seljuk administrative history, predating the city's better-known Ottoman monuments by roughly two centuries.