EONpediaARCHITECTURE

From the first stone to the present.

The portal motifs are not incised on the surface but drawn from the mass at sculptural depth; the portals' proportions are deliberately asymmetric.CC BY-SA 3.0

1228 – 1242 CE · Divriği, Sivas, Turkey

Divriği Great Mosque: stonework and mosque-hospital

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Asymmetric portal proportions and three-dimensional high-relief stonework; an adjoining mosque + hospital. Anatolian Seljuk; master: Hurrem Shah of Ahlat.

The Great Mosque and Hospital (Darüşşifa) complex in the Divriği district of Sivas was built under the Mengüjekid principality and is the most extraordinary work of Anatolian Seljuk stone architecture. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1985, chiefly for its stonework.

The building unites two functions in one mass: a mosque and an adjoining hospital — an early complex where medicine and worship sit side by side. Inside, the vault system carrying the mihrab and the variously designed column capitals show the structural solutions of the period. But what makes the building unique is the stonework of its facades.

The crown portals are not ornament incised on a flat surface but three-dimensional high reliefs drawn out of the stone to an almost sculptural depth: large palmettes, geometric knots, and vegetal interlace spill from the mass. Some of the motifs on the North (Castle) Portal are so plastic that they seem to hang free of the surface. Moreover, the proportions and axes of the portals are deliberately asymmetric — each crown portal sets up a different composition. Divriği is thus a masterpiece of Anatolian Seljuk architecture that shows, less through structural monumentality than through the limit at which a building's surface turns into sculpture, how far stone can be worked as a material; the master is remembered as Hurrem Shah of Ahlat.

Location

Divriği, Sivas, Turkey · © OpenStreetMap

Sources