Murat Hüdavendigar Mosque, Behram

The Hüdavendigar Mosque in Behramkale, the village built over ancient Assos in Çanakkale's Ayvacık district, is an early Ottoman building traditionally attributed to Sultan Murad I, known by the epithet Hüdavendigar. Although its original foundation inscription has not survived, historians generally date its construction to 1366, in the years just after the Ottoman victory at the Battle of the Serbian Field in 1365, when spoils from that campaign are said to have helped fund the building, making it one of the oldest Ottoman mosques in the region at roughly six and a half centuries old. The mosque has a square prayer hall fronted by a three-bay portico closed on its sides, roofed outside with a flat covering and inside with a central barrel vault flanked by two small domes. Unusually, its western interior wall carries painted depictions of ships, a detail connected to Behramkale's position above an ancient harbor. The mosque originally formed part of a larger Hüdavendigar complex that also included a madrasa and bathhouses.