Musa Baba Mosque

This mosque and its attached minaret in Bursa are named for Musa Baba, a figure said to have come from Bukhara and to have taken part in Orhan Gazi's conquest of Bursa in 1326. The mosque itself was built much later, in the early sixteenth century during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, at the initiative of Abdulkadir Efendi, a senior Ottoman religious official, who endowed the building in Musa Baba's name and memory. Both men are buried in the mosque's graveyard, Abdulkadir Efendi having died in 1548. The building follows a rectangular plan with a portico for latecomers in front of the main prayer hall, which is covered by a single lead-sheathed dome rising from an octagonal drum, a modest but characteristic form for Bursa's smaller Ottoman neighborhood mosques. The mosque's garden continues to serve as a site for local commemorative gatherings.