Guide
In the Seviller quarter of Gerede, in Bolu province, a mosque, a tomb and a small burial ground share one garden. The date the Aşağı Tekke Mosque was first built is not known. What stands now is a rebuilding: the mosque collapsed completely in the earthquake of 1944 and was put up again with local means, opening for prayer in 1957. It is rectangular under a dome, with arched windows in the walls and in the drum, a cylindrical minaret at the northeast, and a women's gallery on the north side whose balustrades are carved woodwork.
The tomb is the older and more interesting of the two. It was built by Gazi Ahmet Muhtar Pasha over the grave of Şeyh Hacı Halil Efendi of Gerede, founder of the Haliliyye branch of the Sabaniyye order, who died in 1843. It is rubble stone with an octagonal body under an octagonal sheet-metal cap, with a rectangular entrance space on the east and an arched door in a carved stone frame with plant ornament in relief. Above the arched windows on either side of the entrance, painted flower bouquets, cypresses and trees fill rectangular cartouches. Over the door is an Ottoman Turkish inscription in talik script dated 1259 in the Hijri calendar, 1844 — a verse by Muhammed Rıfat, mourning Halil Efendi as a guide on the road of God and a pole of the knowers, and closing with the line whose letters give the date of his death.
