In my last piece for this newspaper, I wrote on the Ottoman minaret. I pointed out in that piece, that this is the standard minaret design found in Türkiye and throughout the ex-Ottoman lands of the Balkans, which were brought into the fold of Islam by Ottoman expansion. However, I also noted that the minarets of Türkiye are not exclusively of one design. In this piece, focusing on just one walk that I took through the city of Konya, I wish to illustrate that fact. For that walk revealed two elements of interest concerning the Turkish minaret. The first is that there are minarets in Türkiye that substantially differ in style from the standard Ottoman minaret. The second is that even within the parameters of the standard Ottoman minaret, variation will become apparent, if one bothers to look.
It is possible that the inception for the idea of this piece had been laid in my mind about half an hour before I was even consciously aware of it. What I mean by this will become clear later on. All I wish to reveal for now is that in my long planning for my trip to Konya, I had no thoughts of minarets at all. For my intended aim was to revisit the Tomb of Rumi, the preeminent sight of the city. The trip by car from Afyonkarahisar to Konya was a pleasant easy drive of roughly three hours in duration. As much as I enjoy driving between cities though, this feeling is inverted once I enter the hectic traffic and complex road systems within them. Thus, whilst I had originally intended to park the car in a car park I had earlier located online as lying close to the Tomb of Rumi, once I felt I had already got far enough into the city, I pulled off the main road and turned into a small residential street.
Having parked, I rechecked the GPS on my phone to find that I was actually further from my destination than I had thought. Yet seeing the plus side to this slight annoyance, I realized that I now had the opportunity to wander on foot to it through a part of Konya I otherwise would not have seen. I have often found in Turkish cities that it is good to get off of the beaten track and so it proved in this case as well. For a few minutes into my walk and in an otherwise unremarkable residential neighborhood, I was arrested by a sight in front of me. It was a small neat neighborhood mosque with large rectangular windows, whitewashed walls and a red slate roof. What stopped me in my tracks though was its charming minaret.
This pierces the roof on the entrance side of the mosque. It is extremely short, but is attractive not only for its design but also for its relatively unusual material, being made of wood. Moreover, the gallery of the minaret is enclosed giving it the exquisite appearance of a Ramadan lamp. Then each segment of the polygonal screen around the gallery has a simple yet effective lozenge design, and above this, a simple yet powerful representation of the Islamic arch. Then the top of the enclosed gallery forms the base of the tip of the minaret which is sloped rather than severely pointed.
By approaching the mosque, I could see from a plaque placed on the front that this minaret belongs to the Kuzgun Kavak Mosque that was originally built in 1904 but has been recently restored – in 2016 – by the General Directorate for Religious Foundations. This delightful minaret gave me the first conscious idea for this piece, which in turn led to the more general piece on Ottoman minarets put out last week. For this minaret heralded, though I was unaware of it at that time, the diversity of minaret styles to be found in Konya. That pleasing revelation was to wait until after I had been to the Tomb of Rumi.
Once I had finished visiting the tomb and feeling I still had adequate time before I wished to return to the car, I decided to also walk across the city in order to see the old Ottoman-era train station. Yet, it turned out that Konya Station, at least in the form in which it was originally built has either been moved or sacrificed to the new High Speed Train network of Türkiye. However, the trip was not wasted for I still discovered a building there that clearly belonged to the railway of Ottoman days, and more significantly, it got me, through walking across the city, to see some of the beautiful varied minarets Konya has to offer. Actually, there being such minaret variation in Konya ought not to have surprised me. For Konya was not founded as a Turkish city by the Ottomans. On the contrary, Konya as the first great capital of the Turks in Anatolia established as the seat of power for the newly Seljuk Turks in the late 11th century predates the Ottoman incorporation of this city by just under four hundred years. So among the many minarets of Konya there are Seljuk ones. Moreover, whilst there are also many later Ottoman-style examples, for instance gracing the sixteenth-century Sultan Selim Mosque that neighbors the Tomb of Rumi as well as one in the tomb complex itself, even the Ottoman-era minarets, as that of Kuzgun Kavak Mosque suggested, are not exclusively of a single design. This would become clear in my walk.
Walking westward from the Tomb of Rumi, I soon noticed the matching pair of minarets of the late 19th-century Aziziye Mosque. In belonging to an Ottoman-era mosque, these minarets unsurprisingly have the Ottoman characteristic of slender airy height. Nevertheless, in their lace-like delicacy, they are clearly of a different architectural style to that perfected by Mimar Sinan. For these minarets, and the mosque to which they are attached, are a much later Baroque work. Although it may be imagined that Baroque architecture is limited to Western European countries and their former overseas dominions, in fact, the Baroque style also impacted mosque architecture in the late Ottoman Empire, most evidently in Istanbul, but manifestly in this mosque in Konya as well.
The minarets are fluted enhancing the impression of their soaring height. But what is particularly striking about them is, once again, closed galleries. However, unlike the earlier wooden example, these stone galleries are enclosed by marble. The galleries are also proportionally more slender and elongated and, surmounted at the top of the minarets, they give to the whole minaret the impression of Baroque lighthouses of the faith. The vaults of the galleries of these minarets appear almost classical. Then, surrounding the base of the galleries are square sections of latticed marble screen. At each point at which the screens meet, a simple marble column ascends and is topped by a delightful mini Corinthian capital. This in turn holds up a tiny pointed lancet arch, itself decorated with a jagged symmetrical edge. Then the tops of the minarets are of a gently sloping kind.
Close to the Konya Archaeological Museum which I have written on before, one of the most arresting minarets in the whole of Türkiye can be seen. It is set on the monumental decorated gateway to the 13th-century Sahib-i Ata Mosque.
Originally one of what must have been a matching pair, what makes this minaret so alluring is that it has something of everything. With its base in the gateway, it leaps out of a panel of diagonal inscription in a tiled revetment that spells out the name of Abu Bakr and is matched on the east by that of Ali, representing the first and last of the “Rightly Guided” or Rashidun Caliphs. Then the first section of the minaret proper remains square but is highly fluted and decorated with geometric cuttings. Next, this fluting sharpens into a sharp tiled geometric type of star replete with geometric arabesques. Surmounting this is a short simple conical Ottoman-style minaret part that then explodes as we reach the gallery into a multileveled vaulting, the bottom part of this consisting of small arches reminiscent of those inside the Mosque of Cordoba. Surmounting this is some seriously weathered stalactite-like design before the screen around the gallery which is disappointingly plain and in a fairly bad condition. The final part is a standard red brick Ottoman minaret topped by a lead-pointed cone.
Continuing in a westward direction, I came upon the Hoca Hasan Mosque, which has a particularly striking minaret. Built in the 12th century, it is a work of early Seljuk architecture. The square minaret has a castle-like heaviness and solidity that makes it seem almost martial, reflecting both the recent settlement of the city by the warrior Seljuks and their intention to permanently establish their presence.
Whilst solidity can be grim, in this case, it is not. For the minaret is granted lightness through its coloring. At the base of the minaret are large roughly hewn but flatly polished blocks of veined white marble above which warm sandy yellow brick has been used. Then, decoration has been used sparingly yet effectively – the gallery with its stalactite star vault rising just over a line of turquoise tile being a particular delight. The gallery is rendered a geometric flower in bloom.
The top of the minaret presents a picture of grace rising from strength in that it is considerably thinner than the section below and it is curvaceously fluted allowing for a constantly changing interplay of light and shadow during the sunlit hours of the day. Atop all of this is a small half-spherical dome, just like the skullcap of the Muslim believer.
It is not only the “must see” architectural works hallowed by age and visitor guidebooks that attract my attention though. For there are also points of interest with the minarets of newer mosques in Türkiye which can be seen if a person just takes the time to stop and look for them. As I circled my way back through another untouristed residential area to the car, I saw more striking minarets. The first was at the edge of the site where the Konya City Library is being constructed. The minaret here is of the standard Ottoman style save for two differences. The first is that it is made in the same soft yellow brick of the minaret of the Hoca Hasan Mosque from earlier. And the second is that rather than being covered in lead, the sharp conical top of the minaret is made up of narrow triangular sheets of glass. This use of glass for the tips of Ottoman-style minarets is not uncommon at least in western Anatolia where I am familiar with them. In this case, the glass is clear, but there are examples elsewhere of blue or green which can be particularly enchanting.
The next minaret that I saw was also of the Ottoman type. It is attached to the Hacı Kemal Onsun Mosque. At a distance, this minaret came across as the least attractive of all the minarets I had seen that day. Part of the reason was that it appeared entirely monochrome. It is not only of a darker more mustardy yellow than the warm yellow of the previous minaret, but its color goes all the way to the conical top, which is neither of lead nor glass but simply a continuation of its cylindrical body. Furthermore, this minaret in being attached to a cream-colored mosque with parallel red stripes gives it an air of incongruity.
Yet, what I have described is the first impression. A closer and more careful observation reveals three pleasing elements to it. The first is that the general monochrome effect is in fact produced in the same way pixels works, for closer up, the minaret is clearly seen to be made up of squared blocks of stone of slightly varying tints. To invert an adage by “seeing the trees rather than the wood,” the minaret in its slight color heterogeneity becomes more appealing, especially in the now more evidently darker conical top. Then there is its delightful gallery. If we ignore that instead of a muezzin there is a mobile phone base station attached to it – making calls other than those of the adhan possible for the neighborhood – the rest is architecturally lovely. The vault of the gallery is decorated with the beautiful geometric murqana work usually associated with the most impressive imperial Ottoman mosques. Above this, and rather harmoniously, the simple screen that runs around the gallery gives an appearance of lightness due to its being of cream marble, with three tasteful little open slats puncturing it on each of its polygonal sides.
The reason that at the start of this piece, I considered the possibility of its inception prior to my seeing the minaret of the Kuzgun Kavak Mosque is because when I was finally, with extremely tired legs, about to complete my long somewhat circular walk of Konya by returning to the car, I could now see, even from a distance, that the minaret of the mosque across from which I had parked was a slightly unusual one, though I had not consciously noticed it when I set out earlier in the morning.
Now, though, I could clearly discern that this minaret, poking above the trees of the cemetery that lies to its west, was unusual in having at least two enclosed gallery galleries much like that of the Kuzgun Kavak Mosque though these with simple slats and roofed in what appears to be lead. Moreover, as with the earlier example, this roof of the top gallery connected straight to the top of the brick minaret, which rather that being a sharp cone was made of soft undulations ending in a tip with the gentle shape of an inverted urn. Then, as I continued into the street itself, and the minaret came fully into view, the second covered gallery came fully into view and its necessity in providing harmony to a minaret that would otherwise seem too tall also became evident. This effect is amplified by the brickwork of the whole structure being of an endearing sandy-creamy color. Now when I looked properly at this minaret, which incidentally belongs to the 1993 Murşit Pınar Mosque and which I had obviously been oblivious to earlier in the morning, my eyes were able to appreciate its beauty.
Indeed, with minarets now on the mind, I could not help, as if in some kind of monomania, seeing further distinctive examples of them lining the road as I left Konya and headed back to Afyonkarahisar. But those lie outside of the intended scope of this piece so here I will leave them be.
