Şirvanlı Mosque

The Şirvanlı Mosque, also known locally as the Azerbaijanis' Mosque, was built in Amasya between 1873 and 1895, funded by contributions from the communities of Karabağ and Şirvan as well as by Caucasian immigrants from those regions who had settled in the city, together with the religious leader Şeyh Hacı Mahmut Efendi. Unlike most of Amasya's historic mosques, which were founded and named by statesmen, this one honors a Sufi spiritual guide, Mir Hamza Nigari, rather than a political patron; his remains were brought from Harput, where he died in 1866, and reburied in Amasya according to his will. Architecturally the mosque is a square, single-domed building with one minaret, constructed from a combination of finely cut and roughly broken stone. Its construction reflects the migration of Muslim communities from the Caucasus into Ottoman Anatolia in the nineteenth century, and the mosque remains tied to the memory of the Nigari Sufi lineage.