Darülhadis Mosque, Edirne

Darülhadis Camii belongs to a külliye Murat II founded in 1434; the sultan first meant the main building to be a darülhadis, a school of sacred tradition, then had his architect Koçu Ahmet convert it into a mosque ¹. The külliye also had a large medrese, imaret, hamam and hospice; the hospice, minaret and porch were destroyed in the 1912 Balkan Wars, leaving the cross-vaulted canopy and six ancient marble columns ¹.

The mosque is a cut-stone rectangle 15.40 by 9.85 metres: a deep three-bay vestibule under ellipsoidal vaults, then a square domed prayer room — Kuran notes the main dome 'is not a hemisphere but a domical vault with rounded corners like a hassock' ¹. Behind stand two tombs: the open hexagonal Açık Türbe dated 1434 and the octagonal Şehzadeler Türbesi of 1449, holding Murat II's sons Hasan and Orhan plus children of Mustafa II and Ahmet III ². The külliye's bath, Tahtakale Hamamı, also dated 1434, still functions — Edirne's oldest working hamam ³.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 96–97 (Darülhadis Camii).
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