Thomas' Talk Turkey: ISA BEY MOSQUE

The Isa Bey Mosque (1375), which stands just below the Basilica of St. John on Ayasuluk Hill, is a key work of the Seljuk Turks. Isa Bey was a prince of the Aydin Turks who briefly ruled Anatolia. His mosque was the first to be built in a non-traditional style, with a courtyard and vaulted ceiling. The mosque was ruined by an earthquake in the 19th century and remained an empty shell until 1975 when a new wooden roof was built. Only one of the two minarets remain. They took away the Ottoman addition of a balcony for women and now use panels between pillars to segregate the sexes. The large columns in the Prayer Room were brought in from Ephesus. Locals donated the colorful carpets that cover the floor.

Exterior views of the Mosque - The entrance; the lone minaret; Bust of Isa Bey; window with Arabic inscriptions

Interior views - the minbar; sample of the decorative tiles throughout; the wooden, vaulted ceiling; top of one of the Ephesus columns; example of the wooden panels segregating women from men at worship, the rest of the column and the rainbow of carpets donated by the local citizens used for prayer.

We stood outside the main door debating if we could go in, and if so, should we take our shoes off as is the custom, and should I cover my head, when a dapper little man came up and spoke to us in English. He was the Imam of the Mosque, Mustafa Kocyigit. He had visited the United States on a couple of occasions and England, and proudly showed us the newspaper articles of those visits and a photo of him in younger days. It happened that we were the only ones there and he invited us in and gave us a little tour and a history of his mosque, told us about the Iznik tiles (the blue tiles), the meaning of the 2 different sizes of "prayer beads" and generally answered any questions we had. Just as we were preparing to leave the inside of the mosque, a German tour arrived - our timing could not have been more perfect. He took us out to the gift shop outside the mosque that actually belonged to the mosque for income toward renovations and gave us a card upon which he wrote each of our names and his own in Arabic. We purchased some traditional prayer beads - the red ones, made of marble, are the actual prayer beads; the smaller set, made of iron ore, he told us are 1/3 the size of the traditional beads, but are really more "stress reducers" ie, equivalent to a worry stone, not at all a prayer bead.