Guide
The Balabanbey Mosque at Kığı, in Bingöl province, appears in the endowment records as the Cami-i Kebir. The three-line inscription over its door gives the date of construction as 1402, and beside it is a two-line repair inscription. It is a mosque of the Akkoyunlu period with a single minaret of one balcony. The main entrance is on the north under an arched doorway, and there is a second entrance on the east front. In the three-arched porch are two cenotaph-type graves. The mihrab carries a decoration in which three red tulips are incised on a green ground.
The roof is hipped and covered with sheet metal. The walls are regular cut stone at the corners and rubble stone elsewhere, laid with horasan mortar, and the windows are horseshoe-shaped above. The minaret at the northwest corner is cut stone, conical at the top with a wooden ceiling inside, and its door is in the porch on the base of the minaret. Be aware of what the repairs over the years have cost: apart from the minaret, the mosque has been losing its historic character. In the old cemetery to the west, gravestones lie scattered — twelve-lobed, turban-shaped and slab-shaped, carrying inscriptions in Ottoman Turkish.
