Esrefoglu Mosque

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Wooden Hypostyle Mosques Of Medieval Anatolia, 2023); Built 1296 1299 With Forty Two Cedar Columns Under An Earthen Roof · Beysehir, Konya

In 1299 a small Anatolian principality finished a mosque at Beysehir and roofed it in a way that should not have lasted a decade: forty-two cedar trunks standing on stone bases, carrying a flat roof of packed earth, with no dome and no vault anywhere. It is still standing, the columns still carry their original painted capitals, and the carved wooden minbar is dated to the year the building was finished. The problem with timber in central Anatolia is that it dries and splits, and the solution here is the thing nobody forgets: an opening was left in the roof and snow was shovelled in through it each winter, to melt slowly and keep the air damp through the summer. A snow well, built into a mosque. UNESCO inscribed it in 2023 with four other wooden hypostyle mosques of medieval Anatolia, and this is the finest of them by some distance. It is free, it is a working mosque, and there is nobody in it.

Ickale Mahallesi, Esrefoglu Camii, Beysehir, Beysehir, Konya, Turkiye

Open daily and free as a working mosque, closing to visitors around the five daily prayers and for longer at Friday midday. The interior is dim by design and is at its best in the middle of the day when light comes through the roof opening. Winter in Beysehir is cold and snowy, which is precisely what the building was designed around.

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