Merkez Cedidiye Mosque

The Merkez Cedidiye Mosque serves the Cedidiye neighborhood, one of the oldest and most central parts of Düzce, a provincial capital in Turkey's western Black Sea region. The Turkiye Diyanet Foundation's İslam Ansiklopedisi notes that, along with the city's main Merkez Camii, this mosque suffered significant damage in the earthquakes that struck northwestern Turkey in 1999, a disaster that left a lasting mark on Düzce's historic building stock. It was repaired in the years that followed and remains an active neighborhood mosque today, administered under the Düzce Provincial Mufti's Office. The neighborhood's own name, Cedidiye, comes from the Ottoman Turkish word for 'new,' a label commonly attached to settlements founded in the late Ottoman era, including a number of Black Sea towns that absorbed Muslim migrants arriving from the Caucasus and the Balkans during the nineteenth century.