The lodge of İsmail Hacı stands on a sloping hill 29 kilometres from Karaman, on the Ereğli road, at a place recorded in endowment deeds and archive documents as the village of the descendants of İsmail Hacı. According to the account given here, İsmail Hacı was the grandfather of Yunus Emre; he came from Khorasan with his community and settled after buying the district called Yerce from İbrahim Bey II of the Karamanids. The provincial survey register of the Karaman province kept in the name of Selim I describes the arrival in the same terms — that the sheikh İsmail Hacı came from the land of Khorasan with the dervishes of his community and settled here. Later documents call the place the village of the sons of Hacı İsmail.
İsmail Hacı's grave is in the lodge. The section with the mihrab, resting against the wall at the exact centre of the lodge and on four wooden columns, is the prayer room. To its right are the room used for dhikr, the guest room and the coffee hearth; to its left are the stables. The tomb was restored in 2007 with support from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. You need your own vehicle.
Getting there
- Access
- On the Karaman-Ereğli road 29 km from Karaman, reached by private car.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Karaman as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.7 °C in January to 23.5 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (47 mm) and lightest in August (6 mm). Long-term means for 1951-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
