Çorum Guide
Home ›Districts ›Merkez

İnayetullah Mosque

MerkezHistoric BuildingsHistoric BuildingsMosque

The İnayetullah Mosque (İnayetullah Camii) is a neighbourhood mosque on Karakeçili Street in the Karakeçili quarter of central Çorum. According to the 2020 listing decision of the Ankara Regional Board for the Conservation of Cultural Property, it stands on block 523, plot 1, and is owned by the İnayetullah Foundation (İnayetullah Vakfı). The contract for its restoration, coordinated by the Tokat Regional Directorate of Foundations, was signed in September 2026 and the site was handed over to the contractor.

Date and foundation

According to a 2026 article by Serap Sevgi and Mesut Yılmaz, the mosque has no foundation inscription and no endowment deed. Sources give different construction dates. The stained-glass window above the mihrab bears the date AH 1318 / AD 1900, and the 1973 Çorum Provincial Yearbook also records that the mosque was built in 1900. Sevgi and Yılmaz read the Turkish inscription on the building as “İnayetullah Camii, Y. Tarihi 1902” (the Kültür Envanteri database also gives 1902 on the basis of this plaque), while a 2024 study by Zeynep Tanrıverdi and Rabia Sena Keçelioğlu renders the same inscription as “İnayetullah Cami Y. Tarihi 1903”, the date also given in the 2026 news reports. In the comparative section of their study, Tanrıverdi and Keçelioğlu date the mosque to the 18th century. Sevgi and Yılmaz, comparing it with similar mosques in Çorum, suggest that it may have been built before 1902.

The yearbook states that the mosque was built by the local people; its architect is not known. The restoration reports likewise describe it as a building that the residents of the neighbourhood put up through communal work (imece) in the late Ottoman period and that was later turned from a mescit (a small prayer house without Friday sermons) into a cami (a mosque where Friday prayers are held). According to Sevgi and Yılmaz, the İnayetullah Foundation was registered with the General Directorate of Foundations in 1926; one of the records they cite places the mosque in the Hacı Nasrullah quarter, and the records show that an endowment was set up for the imams serving there.

Architecture

Sevgi and Yılmaz place the building among the longitudinally rectangular, single-nave mosques with timber ceilings, which they describe as the most common mosque type in Çorum. North of the almost square prayer hall is a two-storey gallery section carried on timber posts: the muezzin’s gallery below and the women’s gallery above, whose central part projects into the prayer hall in a curve. The walls are timber-laced mud brick on a stone foundation; the east and north façades of the gallery section are half-timbered (hımış). The walls, originally plastered and whitewashed, were later covered with cement-based plaster and paint. When the article was written, the timber hipped roof was covered with Marseille-type tiles.

The façades have flat-lintelled rectangular windows in the lower row and pointed-arched windows above. Sevgi and Yılmaz describe stained glass with geometric motifs in orange, green, yellow and burgundy in the upper windows; according to Tanrıverdi and Keçelioğlu, the upper windows have plaster grilles on the outside and the stained glass is on the south façade. The mihrab, in a rectangular timber frame, is a semicircular niche with a quarter-sphere hood. The five-step timber minbar to its west was made in the early 20th century, according to Tanrıverdi and Keçelioğlu. The timber ceiling is divided into squares and rectangles in the çıtakâri lath technique, with a fan motif in each corner. The walls are panelled in wood up to a height of 1.25 m.

The timber minaret northeast of the gallery section is about 21 metres high; its steps are reinforced with iron strips, and it is entered from the gallery floor. The polygonal shaft has a single balcony with an openwork railing of square motifs, and the conical cap is topped by a finial with five knobs. Sevgi and Yılmaz compare the building in plan and technique with the Abdülbaki Paşa, Çakır, Kellegöz and Kunduzhan mosques in Çorum, and among rectangular-plan mosques they also mention the mosque of the Alören Village Complex in Mecitözü. For an overview of the listed timber mosques in the city centre, see Registered Wooden Mosques of Central Çorum.

Changes over time

From traces in the fabric and from Abdülkadir Dündar’s photographs taken before 2002, Sevgi and Yılmaz describe four phases:

  • The first building: they propose an open porch for latecomers (son cemaat yeri) on timber posts north of the prayer hall.
  • An undated repair after 1902: the porch was enclosed and the gallery extended over it, the timber minaret was added against the east wall of the former porch, and the gallery staircase was moved to the west. The authors link the change from mescit to mosque with repairs of this kind.
  • Before 2003: a glazed entrance was added in front of the north door and a toilet in the courtyard; an octagonal timber ablution fountain was built in the courtyard in 1963.
  • The 2003 repair: according to oral sources it was paid for by local tradesmen. An annex covering the whole north façade, with a women’s section and toilets, was built, the fountain was moved to the west side of the courtyard, and a shoe store was added on the west side.

The article recommends removing the non-original additions that block the north entrance, carefully removing the later plaster and paint on the façades without damaging the original fabric, and keeping the second-phase interventions.

Listing and restoration

Following an inquiry opened by a letter of 13 December 2019 from the Tokat Regional Directorate of Foundations, the Ankara Regional Board for the Conservation of Cultural Property listed the mosque as an “immovable cultural property to be protected” by decision no. 50 of 4 June 2020 and placed it in conservation group I. The decision designated block 523, plot 1 and block 141, plot 57 as a protection zone and made any physical intervention subject to permission.

According to Çorum Hakimiyet, the restoration of the mosque together with the Han Mosque was agreed in August 2024 at a meeting of Governor Zülkif Dağlı and Mayor Halil İbrahim Aşgın with the Director General of Foundations, Sinan Aksu. In January 2026 Sabahattin Erdoğan, the Tokat Director of Foundations, announced that the İnayetullah and Han mosques and the İmaret Mosque in Osmancık would be restored under the investment programme. The contract for the “Çorum-Merkez İnayetullah Camii 2026-2027 Yılları Restorasyonu İşi” (Restoration of the İnayetullah Mosque, Çorum Centre, 2026-2027) was signed on 23 September 2026; the 420-day work is planned to be completed on 17 November 2027.

According to the news reports, the restoration will remove later additions to reveal the original architecture, strip the plaster inside and out, replace rotten timber elements, and clean the oil paint from the timber surfaces and from the mihrab and minbar. The roof will be covered with Ottoman-style (alaturka) tiles, the timber joinery and the floor will be renewed, and the timber minaret will be dismantled and rebuilt to the details in the project; the electrical installations will be renewed and gas-fired underfloor water heating fitted.

Sources

With AI

Explore Çorum by asking

All tools and setup

Ask a question

Type a sentence such as “Where was the Hittite capital?” and get the closest pages by meaning.

Open search ⌘K

Connect your assistant

With the MCP server, Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code can search the site and answer with sources.

Setup steps

llms.txt

A site map written for AI models, plus summaries of all content in a single file.

See the files

Install as an app

Add it to your home screen; pages you have visited open even with no signal at the ruins.

How to install

Type a place, dish or topic — or ask something like “Where was the Hittite capital?”