MALATYA MOSQUE
Malatya︎ 2012 ︎ Construction Area: 9.215 m2 ︎ Site: 12.000 m2 ︎ Religious ︎ Metehan Kahya, Nevzat Sayın, Sami Metin Uludoğan, Serheng Dellal








When I asked, “What would a mosque for 5000 people signify in Malatya?”, “You should regard it as a ceremonial mosque,” Mehmet Bey had replied. “We have no place for the funeral of someone important, Eid prayers, prayers for martyrs, or for Fridays,” he had added, upon which I began to reconsider my initial negative reaction and decided to go ahead with the project when he stressed, “it shall only function as a mosque—to pray or to sit quietly when not praying; it should not serve a place for Qur’an courses, or even for the sale of books and prayer beads.”
The Persian-style “ulu cami” (great mosque) typology with an inner courtyard built in the 12th century during the Anatolian Seljuks in Malatya was a good stimulant for us to research multi-columned mosques. It. Appearing full even when empty, it was impressive and apparently simple how these great mosques made room for individuals. Bursa Great Mosque, Eşrefoğlu Mosque, Edirne Old Mosque, Divriği Great Mosque, Afyonkarahisar Great Mosque, Eskişehir Sivrihisar Great Mosque were mosques built with the same understanding even though they were very different in terms of material and style. When we visited all of them and reviewed them with this intention, we decided that a multi-columned mosque would be right approach. a. Following the meeting in which all the design steps and demands were understood and approved, we also met with the mufti and employees of his office, members of the city council, the mayor, and his officers, received their approval and completed our work. Meanwhile, the construction site was set up and construction had begun.
While everything was going well, everything came to a halt when the prime minister of the time, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, found the mosque ‘too modern’... When my client asked, "Can't you just put a dome on it?" I replied, "No, but we can work on another project with a dome”. The Chamber of Architects organized a competition, but we were not invited, and it was announced that the winning project would be built. I never went to Malatya again nor heard anything more. In Malatya, where the Abdurrahman Erzincani Mosque, designed by architect Şerif Akkurt in the 1960s, stood, we were unable to build the mosque that followed the almost anachronistic old traces because it was deemed "too modern."
Related maganizes
︎︎︎ XOXO, 2014
︎︎︎ Sermimar, 2019