Doğla Village Mosque
The Doğla Village Mosque stands in the centre of Doğla, a village in the Mecitözü district of Çorum. According to Çiğdem Karaçay’s 2021 article, the village is 47 km from Çorum and 18 km from Mecitözü, and the mosque is owned by the village’s legal entity. Karaçay writes that the mosque had not been the subject of any publication before her study.
Date
The mosque has no foundation inscription. An inscription is set into a wall at the south-west corner of the courtyard; its text has been read as “owners of good works and deeds: Molla Musa son of Abbas, Muhammed son of Muhammed”. Karaçay says it is not known whether the inscription belongs to the building and that it was quite probably placed in its present position later. Above the door opening of the two-storey entrance annexe there is a sign dated 1881; according to oral information reported in the article, this date was formerly written on a cartouche in the dome, before the painted decoration was renewed.
The records of the General Directorate of Foundations (hurufat registers) hold two documents on the mosque: a preacher’s appointment dated AH 1255 / AD 1839 and a second preacher’s record dated AH 1264 / AD 1848. In the abstract of her article Karaçay writes that the mosque was built in the middle of the 19th century to meet the needs of the villagers, and she notes that it existed long before 1881.
Architecture
The mosque stands in a courtyard. Its prayer hall is a near-square rectangle, with interior dimensions given in the article as 11.37 x 9.80. A two-storey entrance unit was added later to the north façade and the original entrance was removed; there is no last-congregation porch. The minaret is at the north-west of the hall. It has been renewed through repairs: its base is of cut stone, its shaft of brick, and it has a single balcony.
The walls are of cut and rubble stone, plastered and whitewashed. The hall is covered by a hipped roof outside and, inside, by a flat timber ceiling with a bağdadi (lath-and-plaster) dome in the middle, carried on six wooden supports painted in oil paint. The north, east and west sides of the hall are surrounded by a U-shaped gallery that was widened later. The stone mihrab is painted in oil paint and bears part of verse 37 of the Qur’anic chapter Āl ʿImrān on its pediment. The wooden pulpit (minbar) stands in the south-west corner, against the west wall; the old wooden preaching chair is kept on the gallery level.
Karaçay notes that repairs made by the villagers over the years have largely changed the original character of the mosque: the original entrance door was replaced with a wooden door of no artistic value, the window frames were renewed, and the walls were covered with wooden panelling up to half their height.
Painted decoration
The painted decoration (kalem işi) inside the hall was left untouched during the repairs. According to Karaçay, motifs were drawn on parchment paper, transferred to the surface and then coloured with a brush. The decoration covers the dome, the ceiling surfaces outside the dome, and the south, east and west walls, with plant motifs, inscriptions, architectural depictions and geometric patterns.
- Dome: Two circular medallions sit one inside the other at the centre; the inner, bowl-shaped medallion holds a still life, and the medallion around it has curling branches and flower bunches. Radiating lines reach the base of the dome. The inscription cartouches carry “Bismillahirrahmanirrahim” and a verse from the chapter Ash-Shuʿarāʾ together with the date 1946. The inscription medallions in the pendentives bear the names Abu Bakr, Ali, Hussein, Hasan, Uthman and Umar.
- South wall: Between the windows are two depictions of mosques with two domes and one minaret each, and bouquets in vases; there are also medallions reading “Allah” and “Muhammad”.
- East and west walls: These have stylised trees, including a cypress, spring branches and flower bunches; the medallions bear the names Adam, Hud, Bilal al-Habashi, Idris and Noah.
In Karaçay’s oral-history work, villagers said the mosque had been decorated with painted work before the date on the cartouche; 1946 is taken as the year the decoration was renewed.
The painter
The cartouche does not name the craftsman, and the interviews did not yield any information about the painter. Karaçay names Zileli Emin and Nakkaş İbrahim as the painters most often mentioned in the region. The wall paintings of the mosque in Alören, in the same district, resemble the Doğla decoration in motifs and composition; at Alören the decoration was made in 1942 according to the inscription read by Murat Çerkez. Karaçay considers it possible that the same painter decorated both mosques. The article also reports, from an oral source, the name of the painter Mehmet Sebil, known as “Şişko Mehmet”, who decorated the Söğütönü Village Mosque in 1965; that decoration was later painted over in white.
Sources
- Çiğdem Karaçay, “Gelenekçi Duvar Resminde Kültürel Kodların Çözümlenmesi: Doğla Camii Örneği” (Analysis of Cultural Codes in Traditional Wall Painting: The Doğla Mosque Example), Hitit İlahiyat Dergisi, 20/2, December 2021, pp. 589-622. DOI: 10.14395/hid.952747. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/hid/article/952747
- Murat Çerkez, “Mecitözü’nde Mütevazı Bir Külliye: Alören Köyü Külliyesi” (A Modest Complex in Mecitözü: The Alören Village Complex), History Studies, 11/2, April 2019, pp. 495-533. DOI: 10.9737/hist.2019.728