The Kale Mosque stands on the historic town square in Sivas. It was built in 1580, and its founder was Mahmut Pasha, the governor of Sivas at the time. The plan is square, and the building makes its effect through restraint: cut stone walls with blind arches, a dome on pendentives, windows in the dome and drum, arcades, a marble mihrab and minbar, and a slender single-balcony brick minaret rising from cut stone.
Two stones in the mosque are worth knowing about because of what they were for. The sadaka tasi, the alms stone, is where charity could be left by those who had it for those who needed it, without either meeting the other; the yitik tasi, the stone of lost things, is where found money and objects were displayed for their owners to claim.
Getting there
- Access
- The mosque stands on the town square in the middle of Sivas.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Sivas as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -3.3 °C in January to 20.3 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (60 mm) and lightest in August (7 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
