Behind a white marble portal on Tokat's Gazi Osman Paşa Bulvarı stands a dervish lodge and tomb whose inscription dates it to 1291-92 and names its builder as Sümbül, son of Hacı Abdullah, who called it Darü's-Süleha. According to Evliya Çelebi, it was used at different times by the Rufai and Bektaşi orders.
Over the centuries repairs have blurred the original architecture, and in one of them, at the end of the 19th century, a timber house was built against the east front right beside the portal. The portal leads into a corridor-like entrance; opposite it is a near-square room under a vault, and to the north are three rooms of different sizes under wooden ceilings. A door on the south side of the entrance opens into the domed central hall, which works like a courtyard; the lantern of its dome was later closed. From a vaulted iwan to the east of this hall you reach the square, domed tomb chamber, lit by a window in its east wall.
The lodge is built of rubble masonry and the tomb of rubble and cut stone, with cut stone in the arches and brick in the domes and their transitions. All of the decoration is on the portal: a muqarnas hood over a pointed-arched door, prayer niches on either side, slender columns with foliate capitals, plain borders, and a thick band of acanthus leaves framing it on three sides.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Tokat as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2 °C in January to 22.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (59 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
