Meydancık Mosque

Meydancık Mosque, also called Meydan Mosque or Hatuniye Mosque, stands in the Meydan neighborhood near the center of Bursa. An inscription over its entrance records that it was commissioned in 1485 by Gülbahar Hatun, mother of Sultan Bayezid II, with the complex's endowment deed dated 1492. Originally the mosque was the religious heart of a larger charitable complex that also included a madrasa and a public soup kitchen (imaret); the madrasa has vanished entirely and the imaret survives only as a ruin. Built of cut stone, the mosque has a square, single-domed prayer hall flanked by two smaller domed guest rooms (tabhane) on either side, a layout typical of early Ottoman multifunctional mosques. The ablution fountain in front of the building dates only from the early twentieth century, added long after the original Ottoman construction.