Description of the attraction
When you first get to Erzurum, you involuntarily notice a lot of small mosques that can be found here literally at every step. This is due to the fact that the city was built in a seismically dangerous region of the Asia Minor peninsula. By the end of the twentieth century, the development of Erzurum consisted mainly of one- and two-story stone buildings. In the absence of an opportunity to build one large mosque, the local population built many small ones.
The Ibrahim Pasha Mosque, also known as the Middle Mosque, is located at the intersection of Osmanpashi Street and Ali Ravi Avenue. An interesting fact is that six more mosques are located within a radius of one hundred meters from Ibrahim Pasha.
The mosque seems to be built of the same stone as the Erzurum fortress. The black color lends extraordinary beauty to the buildings in this region. Basalt is a hard rock of volcanic origin that is easy to work with. Widespread in the earth's crust, it has become one of the main building materials in the area. Due to their durability (the rock does not collapse from time to time), buildings erected from basalt many tens of centuries ago have survived in very good condition to this day.
The mosque was built, as the four-line inscription above the entrance says, in 1748 by order of Haji Ibrahim Ethem Pasha as a library and darulhadis (school of Tradition). In the southern part of the courtyard of the ensemble are the graves of Damat Ibrahim Pasha and his sons. The rooms with terraces located in the same part were intended for students of the madrasah. It is known that when this small ensemble acted as a madrasah, many people worked here.
In 1865, a spring and a drinking fountain were located here, which were damaged during road construction work. In the years when the primary school of the ensemble was transformed into a mosque, a minaret with one sheref was added to it. Among the trees in the center of the courtyard of the mosque there is a shadyrvan. Floral motifs on the walls of the premises coincide with the architectural traditions of the Tulip era and increase their artistic value.
The one-domed square-shaped mosque has three domes connected by arches. A conical roof is hidden outside the dome. The mihrab of the mosque is made of marble. The minaret is made of a large stone with one balcony carved into it.
