Set expectations before going: the Sultan Murat Mosque at Honaz is a ruin. Most of its walls and its covering have collapsed, and the prayer hall is now full of rubble. It is accepted as having been built in the fifteenth century by the Ottoman sultan Murad II. The mosque stands on ground sloping from south to north, and in its present state consists of a square prayer hall.
What survives of the squinch and the curve of the dome at the northwest corner of the hall shows that the covering was a dome. Rough-dressed stone, rubble stone and brick were used in the walls, brick in the squinches, and alternating courses of rough-dressed stone and brick in the drum and the dome. Traces on the walls at that northwest corner show that they were plastered and whitewashed. The mihrab in the middle of the south wall is built of rough-dressed stone, with a five-sided niche under a pointed-arched hood. The mosque is in the upper cemetery of Honaz, twenty kilometres east of Denizli; minibuses run to Honaz from the Denizli bus station.
Getting there
- Access
- In the upper cemetery at Honaz, twenty kilometres east of Denizli. From the Denizli–Ankara road turn south at Pınarkent or at the industrial zone and go five kilometres to the centre of Honaz. Minibuses run there from the Denizli coach station.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Denizli as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6 °C in January to 27.5 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (90 mm) and lightest in August (11 mm). Long-term means for 1957-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
