Inside the large cemetery named after him on Talas Caddesi, the domed tomb of Seyyid Burhaneddin is among the most visited shrines in Kayseri. Burhaneddin was the teacher of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi. According to Ahmet Eflaki, his real name was Hüseyin and he was born in 1165 in the city of Tirmiz, in Özbekistan. He taught Mevlana in Konya for nine years, then returned to Kayseri, where he spent the last nine years of his life and witnessed the occupation and plundering of the city; he died in 1244.
Eflaki tells how, as his end approached, the Seyyid had hot water prepared and the door shut, performed his ablutions, dressed and lay down in a corner of the house, asking Allah to take back what had been entrusted to him. After the forty days of mourning, Kayseri's governor Sahib Şemseddin wrote to Mevlana, who came with his companions, visited the grave and held another mourning ceremony; they took the books they wanted from the Seyyid's library and left a few treatises with Sahib Şemseddin as keepsakes.
The present tomb was built in 1892 by Mehmet Nazım Paşa, mutasarrıf of Kayseri, with the help of Abidin Paşa, governor of Ankara. Although it dates from the end of the 19th century, it follows the Seljuk style: square, of cut stone, with an inscription over the door and a dome supported by vaults on every side but the entrance. Under the dome lies the Seyyid's half-cylinder sarcophagus, with a verse work about him by the Kayseri Mevlevi sheikh Ahmed Remzi Dede at its head. Seyyid Zeynelabidin, who died in Kayseri in 1414, is also buried inside, and the tomb of Emir Erdoğmuş adjoins it on the south.
To the left of the entrance stand Mevlevi gravestones, among them those of the Kayseri Mevlevi sheikh Süleyman Turâbi (1835), his son Hacı Remzi Efendi (1865), Ahmet Remzi Efendi's son Süleyman Ataullah (1904) and Ahmet Remzi Dede himself (1944). In later periods rooms for the tomb keepers were built around the tomb, and since 1981 it has been managed by the Kayseri museum directorate.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kayseri as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -1.5 °C in January to 22.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (52 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1931-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
