The mosque on the main square of Zile stands on the site of the Ulu Camii of the Seljuk period. A Seljuk inscription on the portal records that a man named Mehmet Zaluli built the earlier mosque in 1267, in the reign of Gıyaseddin Keyhüsrev. After a repair in 1591 it took the name Nasuh Paşa Camii.
The building you see today dates from 1904. Two inscriptions set facing each other in the niches of the portal record that the old mosque was enlarged and renewed on the initiative of the district governor of the time and Süleyman Necmi Bey, one of the local notables. A domed, three-part late-comers' porch runs along the north front. Just inside it, a second section with the same arrangement, three domes with a larger one in the middle, was added in the enlargement and turned the prayer hall into a square. That square is covered by a large dome on an octagonal drum carried on squinches, ringed by small domed octagonal weight turrets.
On the north, east and west, doors lead into the prayer hall, which is lit by double rows of windows in the walls and further windows in the drum. The minaret at the north-west corner rises from the walls on an onion-shaped base, with a cylindrical shaft, a single balcony and an onion-shaped cap. The mosque is built of cut stone, with two-coloured stonework on the north front of the porch and on the portal; the plainly decorated mihrab is stone, and the minbar, studded with bosses, is marble.
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).
