This tomb stands at the southeast corner of the courtyard of the Ali Pasha Mosque in Tokat and goes by several names — Bulgac or Burgaç Hatun, and also Bibi Hatun and Dudu Hatun. It has no inscription, and the researchers do not agree on its date: some place it in the thirteenth century on the evidence of its architecture and ornament, others in the fourteenth on the evidence of its alternating stone and brick construction. One practical point: the building now sits below ground level, so it is entered through the window on the north front rather than through its door, which is also on the north.
The tomb has a hexagonal body under a dome on pendentives. Its facades are arranged in stages with triangular pediments, and each face carries a window set within a blind arch. That triangular-pedimented arrangement is accepted as unique in Anatolia. The whole building is constructed in alternating courses of roughly dressed stone and brick, with brick used for the pendentives, the arches and the triangular pediments, and decorative pots are set into the facades above and below the arches as ornament.
Getting there
- Access
- The tomb is near the provincial government building in central Tokat, uphill along GOP Boulevard, and the city-centre buses serve it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Tokat as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2 °C in January to 22.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (59 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
