Kebir Mosque

According to the Asar-ı Atika Book of Niğde Sanjak it is stated to have been built by someone named El-Hac İbrahim and it dates to 1601 according to the inscription of the mosque, though the exact date of construction is not known.

The mosque, open for worship today, is located in a central location in the village. It was built with the masonry technique and it has a hipped roof and a rectangular plan. It consists of two parts: a two-nave sanctuary/harim (praying area) with pointed barrel vaults and a winter space with a barrel vault in the east of the sanctuary. There are two independent gallery floors to the north of the sanctuary. There is a marble mihrab and a stone pulpit in the sanctuary.

Today, the mosque has two minarets; one of them is the old minaret, which must be original; the other is the modern one built in 1976.  There is a “pavilion minaret” with a steep staircase outside on the southeast of the building. It has a circular top cover with pointed arches surmounted on four pillars. Above it is a hexagonal cubic cone with a sideways crescent finial. These structures are also called “minbar minarets” because of their similarity to the pulpit. Such minarets can be found in many mosques and masjids built in the 19th century in the Cappadocia, especially in Kayseri, Nevşehir and Kırşehir.

 

Reference

Topal, N. (2012). Niğde Sancağı Merkez Kasabası Âsâr-ı Atika Defterine Göre Nevşehir ve Arabsun (Gülşehir). A. Öger (Ed.). I. Uluslararası Nevşehir Tarih ve Kültür Sempozyumu, 16-19 Kasım 2011, 6. Cilt (s. 5-34). Ankara: Nevşehir Üniversitesi Yayınları.

Altın, A. (2016). Nevşehir-Ürgüp’e Bağlı Mustafapaşa (Sinasos) Kasabasında Yer Alan Tarihi Camiler. F. Kılıç ve T. Bülbül (Ed.). “Muşkaradan Nevşehir’e” II. Uluslararası Nevşehir Tarih ve Kültür Sempozyumu, 2-3-4 Mayıs 2016 (s. 104-121). Nevşehir: Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli Üniversitesi Yayınları.