Guide
The complex was built around the cave known as the Eshab-i Kehf, held sacred since antiquity, seven kilometres north-west of the Afşin district. The cave was treated as a holy place and an important place of visit by Christians and Muslims alike, in the Byzantine period and from the Seljuk conquest down to the present.
The buildings went up in stages to serve the people who came. Nusretüddin Hasan Bey, the Seljuk emir of Maraş, had a ribat, a mosque and a han built between 1215 and 1234. The complex was enlarged by Alauddevle Bey, ruler of the Dulkadir beylik, who added a medrese, and by his father Süleyman Bey, who added a buk'a — that last building has not survived. Şems Hatun, the wife of Alauddevle Bey, had a prayer house built, known as the women's mescit, and the final addition was the Paşa Çardagi, built under the Ottomans in 1531. Besides being an important place of pilgrimage in its time, the complex served as the centre of learning and culture for the district.