Guide
The tomb of Şeyh Edebali stands in the Cumhuriyet quarter of Bilecik. It holds the body of Edebali, the teacher and father-in-law of Osman Gazi, who founded the Ottoman state.
Osman Gazi himself buried Edebali and, after him, Rabia Bala Hatun. Orhan Gazi later had a tomb built over the places where they were laid and added a dervish lodge to it.
The tomb was once domed. It was damaged by Greek attacks during the war of independence and a tiled roof was put over it. It consists of a hall and two separate rooms: the larger room is a prayer room with a mihrab, and the room on the other side served for conversation and for receiving guests.
The building stands on the old ground abandoned after the town burned in those attacks, on a hill that commands the country around. It was repaired a number of times under Ottoman rule, the last time known to be in the reign of Abdülhamid II. The lodge has carried its original form down to the republican period and follows the design typical of Turkish-Islamic buildings of the dervish orders.
The tomb adjoins the Şeyh Edebali prayer room. It has no inscription of its own, but from the inscription of the lodge it appears that the last repair was made in 1889, and the prayer room and the tomb are assumed to have been built at the same time.
In the part holding Şeyh Edebali and those close to him, the domed section is rectangular and contains seven large and four small coffins. The last and largest coffin as one enters belongs to Şeyh Edebali himself; whom the others belong to has not been established.
