Guide
The Mevlevi lodge in Tokat goes back to the spread of the order itself. The Menakib ul-Arifin, the oldest source on the Mevlevis, records that while Mevlana was still alive he sent his deputy Fahreddin-i Iraki to Tokat at the request of Muineddin Süleyman Pervane, and the order began to take root here through the lodge Pervane had built in the thirteenth century. That first lodge was probably destroyed at the end of the fifteenth century when Uzun Hasan burned Tokat. A second was built on the plot at the entrance to Bey Sokağı by the janissary commander Sülün Mustafa Pasha; the Ministry's page places this in the reign of Ahmed III and gives the year as 1638, two statements that do not agree, since Ahmed III reigned in the eighteenth century.
That building has not survived intact either. What remains from its period are the Mevlana bath next door, now in private hands, the stone gateway at the entrance, and the bath inside the mansion with the room adjoining it. After its most recent restorations the building shows the architecture of a nineteenth-century Tokat house. It has two storeys: the ground floor is planned as rooms around an L-shaped corridor, while the upper floor is a single large hall. That hall was the semahane, where the ceremony was performed, and it is covered by a dome whose centre is decorated with plant motifs. The construction is bagdadi — a timber frame with mudbrick infill. The lodge is at Behzat, on Bey Sokağı, in the centre of Tokat.
