Orhan Mosque

Orhan Mosque (Gazi Süleyman Pasha Mosque), a 14th‑century Ottoman mosque located in the Orhan neighbourhood of İzmit.

It is situated at the junction of Medrese Street and Camialtı Street. It was commissioned by Süleyman Pasha, the son of Orhan Gazi, the first sanjak‑bey of the city, in the name of the Ottoman Sultan Orhan Gazi. It is the first mosque built in the region after the city, then called Nicomedia, came under Ottoman rule in 1332, and it has survived to the present day.

The mosque, built as part of the Süleyman Pasha complex together with a hamam and a medrese, is a rectangular‑plan building with stone and brick walls, a wooden roof on the exterior and a suspended dome on the interior. It reached the present day after repairs ordered by Sultan Abdülmecid in 1843 and further restorations following the 1999 Gölcük earthquake. Its original inscription has not survived.

The mosque is one of the few in Turkey where the tradition of delivering the sermon with a sword is kept alive. The imam ascends the pulpit with a sword on Fridays and on holiday prayers, and after the sermon he descends again with the sword. This practice preserves the Ottoman tradition of delivering the sermon with a sword in the central mosque of cities conquered by sword. Because İzmit was not taken by conquest but surrendered during a siege through a treaty, the sword‑sermon tradition was not observed in its mosque in the past. The practice was initiated during the Young Turks period. The sword‑sermon tradition, which began as a reaction to separatist pressures in the Ottoman Empire at that time, continued into the Republican era.

Tomb

In the tomb located to the southeast of the mosque are buried the mosque’s imams and their relatives, the former teachers of the medrese, and some sheikhs.

Complex structures

The mosque, together with the adjacent medrese and hamam, was part of the Süleyman Pasha complex. After the region was placed under Ottoman administration, Süleyman Pasha, appointed as sanjak‑bey, had the medrese built together with the mosque. Sources from the 16th and 19th centuries indicate that the medrese, extending to the east and north of the mosque, was in active use. The double hamam located on Çukurçeşme Street in Akçakoca neighbourhood, at the lower part of the mosque, was one of the income sources for the mosque and the medrese. The hamam may date from the Byzantine period or from the time of Orhan Bey.

The madrasa was used as a night shelter until the 2000s, after which it was demolished for road widening. The bathhouse, however, remained in ruins for a long time after the Ottoman period, suffered major damage in the 1999 Gölcük earthquake; it was repaired by the Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality in 2013 and put back into operation.