A madrasa upstairs
The only Ottoman mosque with its college cells wrapped around an upper floor above the prayer hall.
Hukukçu — CC BY-SA 4.0 · HALUK COMERTEL — CC BY 3.0 · Carl Ha — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Carl Ha — CC BY-SA 4.0
Nowhere else in Ottoman architecture did anyone build a religious college on top of a mosque. In Çekirge, on the western edge of Bursa, Sultan Murad I put up a two-storey building between roughly 1365 and 1385: the prayer hall below, and twelve student cells ranged along a U-shaped corridor on the upper floor, whose arcaded gallery above the entrance looks out over the plain. From the street the facade, with its paired arches and slender columns, looks more like a Byzantine palace or an Italian loggia than a mosque; travellers of past centuries took it for a converted church or monastery, and that is exactly why it is worth the stop. Early Ottoman Bursa was still borrowing and experimenting before it settled on a house style. A few steps away, on a terrace overlooking the plain, stands the tomb of Murad I, the only Ottoman sultan to die on a battlefield. He was killed at Kosovo in 1389; his internal organs were buried there, in a tomb that still stands, and his body was brought back to rest beside the mosque he had built. The building you see today was rebuilt by Sultan Abdülaziz in 1863 after the 1855 earthquake devastated Bursa. Inside, next to the sultan's sarcophagus, lie his son Yakub Çelebi, his grandson Süleyman Çelebi and several other princes. It is small, quiet and watched over by a custodian; fifteen minutes is enough. The whole complex, with its mosque, madrasa, imaret and little hammam, was inscribed in 2014 as part of the UNESCO World Heritage site 'Bursa and Cumalıkızık', and it is the reason the city grew westward towards the Çekirge hot springs. Entry to both mosque and tomb is free; the mosque opens outside prayer times and the tomb roughly from morning until late afternoon. Practically: it sits about 3.5 km from the city centre along Çekirge Caddesi, fifteen minutes by bus or taxi. Because the historic Eski Kaplıca bath, with separate men's and women's sections, and the thermal hotels are a few minutes' walk away, treat the mosque and tomb as a stop before or after a hammam rather than a trip in its own right. The square in front of the tomb is flat and fine for a pushchair, but the madrasa floor is normally closed, so you see the building from outside and from the prayer hall only.
The only Ottoman mosque with its college cells wrapped around an upper floor above the prayer hall.
Paired arches and slender columns that look more Byzantine or Italian than Ottoman.
Murad I, the only sultan killed in battle, lies here while his organs stay in Kosovo.
Çekirge, I. Murat Caddesi, Osmangazi
On its own, no; it is smaller and quieter than either. But if you are heading to the Eski Kaplıca bath or staying in the Çekirge thermal hotels, it is a few minutes' walk away and worth half an hour.
Usually not; the upper floor is closed to visitors and is barely perceptible from inside the prayer hall, so you see its arcaded gallery from the square in front of the entrance.
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