Velipaşa Mosque (Abdülbaki Paşa Mosque)
The Velipaşa Mosque, also known as the Abdülbaki Paşa Mosque, stands on Velipaşa Street in the Gülabibey quarter of central Çorum. According to the 2009 Çorum Cultural Inventory it belongs to the General Directorate of Foundations (Vakıflar), was registered as a monumental building by decision A-4063 of 21 January 1983, and is in use as a mosque. For the buildings of the same name, see the separate pages on the Veli Paşa Han and the Veli Paşa Mansion.
Date
The mosque has no foundation inscription. A plaque above the door that opens onto the last-congregation porch on the north façade reads “Abdülbaki Paşa Camii 1060/1650”, and the Cultural Inventory considers that the mosque was probably built in the first quarter of the 17th century. The 2023 book Gelenekten Geleceğe Ahşap Camiler by Hüseyin Tuncay and Ercan Yavuz, by contrast, gives the date on the entrance sign as AH 1060 (AD 1652). The sources used do not name the patron.
Architecture
According to the Cultural Inventory the mosque:
- has a single-aisled, rectangular prayer hall extending laterally to the mihrab, with a room at its north-west and the porch at its north-east, giving an almost square plan overall;
- has a flat timber ceiling and a hipped roof;
- is built in the timber-frame technique on a stone foundation;
- has lower windows with flat lintels, rectangular and fitted with iron grilles, and upper windows with pointed arches and plaster tracery;
- is entered from the north through a double-leaf iron door with a flat lintel into the porch, then through a double-leaf wooden door into the section arranged as a lower gallery and the prayer hall;
- has a wooden, polygonal-shafted minaret with a single balcony.
Tuncay and Yavuz write that the plastered walls make it impossible to see the structural elements, and that the gallery and the timber ceiling are carried on four wooden posts. They single out the original ceiling rosette and the decoration of the wooden pulpit (minbar) and describe the prayer hall as “quite plain”.
In her 2024 article, Çiğdem Karaçay lists the Abdülbaki Paşa Mosque among the central Çorum mosques with stained-glass decoration in their upper windows, and also among the Çorum mosques with a mihrab niche in the form of a half circle under an eyebrow arch. She takes that mihrab type from Abdulkadir Dündar’s Çorum Cami ve Mescitleri (2004).
Sources
- Çorum Kültür Envanteri (Çorum Cultural Inventory), Çorum Governorate Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism Publications No. 3, Çorum 2009, Religious Buildings / Mosques, p. 274 (Velipaşa Mosque). https://www.kulturportali.gov.tr/medya/dokuman/dokumandetay/6074
- Kültür Portalı (Turkish Culture Portal), inventory entry “Velipaşa Camii (Abdülbaki Paşa Camii) - Çorum”. https://www.kulturportali.gov.tr/turkiye/corum/kulturenvanteri/velipasa-camii-abdulbaki-pasa-camii
- Hüseyin Tuncay - Ercan Yavuz, Gelenekten Geleceğe Ahşap Camiler (Wooden Mosques: From Tradition to the Future), Tuncay Yayıncılık, Ankara 2023, p. 283. https://cdn.vgm.gov.tr/yayin/dergi/muhtelif/ahsapcamiler.pdf
- Çiğdem Karaçay, “Bir Devir Üslubunun Bir Bölge Karakterine Dönüşü: Çıkrık Camii Kalem İşi Süslemeleri” (From the Style of an Era to the Character of a Region: Çıkrık Mosque Hand-Drawn Decorations), Motif Akademi Halkbilimi Dergisi, 17/45, 2024, pp. 275-290 (p. 288). DOI: 10.12981/mahder.1372933