Guide
Aslanapa dated the mosque to the beginning of the fourteenth century, but its history and the character of the building point to the Seljuk period. That the endowment register of the province of Van for 1571 records the great mosque among the endowments of the Şah-i Ermen confirms it. In this light the Ulu Cami is accepted as the work of Sökmen I, who ruled from 1100 to 1112, or of Sökmen II, who ruled from 1128 to 1185, of the Ahlatşah dynasty that held the country around Lake Van.
The mosque is rectangular in plan and belongs to the group of many-piered mosques with a dome before the mihrab. It is entered through a portal opened in the western corner of the north wall, and a section was added on the north side in the Ottoman period.
Inside, a muqarnas dome covers the space before the mihrab, and around it on either side are bays roofed with cross vaults. The minaret that survives rises at the north-west corner; it has a cylindrical brick shaft and has fallen above the balcony.
Old photographs show that the interior was once remarkable for its ornament and architecture, even though little of it has come down to us. The decoration is concentrated on the walls of the interior, on the mihrab and on the portal of the outer front, and the work in brick and plaster is made up of geometric and plant patterns and of inscriptions.
