Guide
Before planning a visit: the Great Mosque of Sivas has been closed to worship and to visitors since restoration work began in 2025, and the provincial directorate of culture and tourism is the place to ask about its current state. The mosque was built in 1196-97, under the Anatolian Seljuks, by Kizilarslan bin İbrahim, who had it made by Kul Ahi. It was repaired in 1212 by İzzeddin Keykavus, and in 1213 its minaret was built — brick, on an octagonal base, and leaning, which is why it is compared locally to the tower of Pisa.
It is a flat-roofed, rectangular mosque of the kufe type, of which few examples survive. Built at a time when the idea of the dome had not yet developed here, it has eleven aisles in which fifty masonry piers are linked to one another by pointed arches, and it is among the first large mosques in Anatolian mosque architecture to have a porch and a courtyard, with entrances on three sides. The interior measures 54.70 by 33.70 metres, and the main door and the other doors are without ornament. The original mihrab, uncovered during repairs in 1955, carries a geometric interlace of intersecting octagons, two octagons set one within the other and crossed by arms springing from their sides to form squares. In that restoration the mihrab ornament was arranged plainly in stone, and apart from the seven rows of muqarnas narrowing upwards in its hood there is no other decorative element. The mosque has an Ottoman burial ground of 23 graves.
