Guide
The mosque is one of two buildings still standing from the Hatuniye complex, which also held a medrese, a public kitchen, a school, a bath and a school for Qur'an reciters; the other survivor is the tomb. It was built west of Ortahisar, near the Zağnos bridge, in memory of Gülbahar Hatun, mother of Selim I. There is no foundation inscription, but the sources point to 1514.
It belongs to the group of zaviye mosques, which form a plan type of their own in early Ottoman architecture. The masonry is careful: dark grey and yellowish white stone used at the windows, the porch, the arches and the minaret.
The mihrab is marble, its border bands plain and its crest decorated with plant ornament, the five-sided niche finished by a muqarnas hood with two bosses in each spandrel. The minbar is also marble and left plain. The classical-period decoration of the mosque has been lost; what is there now was done in the recent repairs.
The tomb stands east of the mosque and is the oldest building of the complex, built in 1505 by Selim I for his mother and repaired many times since. It is an octagonal prism under a dome, with windows on every face but the north. The window arches are worked in coloured stone, and above each is a relief medallion filled with rich ornament. Over the door on the south-east are the foundation inscription and two invocations set within rumi ornament.
