Guide
The Abdüllatif mosque — also called the Latifiye mosque — stands south of Cumhuriyet Meydanı in central Mardin. It was built in 1371 by Abdüllatif bin Abdullah, who served under the Artukid sultans Melik Salih and Melik Muzaffer. Inside, a very long endowment inscription runs around the mihrab wall and above its windows.
The portal names two different people for the minaret — Muhammed Ziya Tayyar Paşa, governor of Egypt, and Gürcü Mehmet Paşa, governor of Mosul, who is said to have had the present minaret built in 1845. It does not reconcile the two, and neither is preferred here.
This is among the last Artukid works in Mardin: a building on a wide rectangular plan with a dome in front of the mihrab, whose portal is well preserved. That portal, in two-coloured stone under a three-lobed arch, carries geometric motifs with interlacing and star ornament.
The main space develops crosswise. The dome before the mihrab, on squinches, opens to either side in two aisles under pointed barrel vaults. Three doors side by side lead from the courtyard into it; the eastern one is the main door and is among the best preserved in Mardin, while the western entrance is plain. On the north of the courtyard an eyvan with a selsebil fountain keeps an old tradition alive, and the north wing is covered by cross vaults opening through pointed arches on cut-stone piers. The east and west wings hold the medrese section on two floors.
Important changes were made to the courtyard in 1968, and the north wing was walled in and turned into rooms. The minbar, of late date, stands out for its woodwork and its lobed canopy dome, and the entrance doors, the minbar and the gallery are distinctive examples of late Seljuk woodwork.
