Kayseri -- desperately seeking Selçuks

The Selçuks were a warrior clan who emerged in Central Asia in the 10th century and moved steadily westward, grabbing Baghdad from the Abbasids in 1055 before running into the Byzantines at Manzikert (Malazgirt) near Lake Van in 1071. That conflict was one of the turning points in history with the Byzantines defeated and much of Anatolia absorbed into the Great Selçuk Empire. Such success was not long-lived, however, and that empire speedily crumbled into principalities, one of them, the Selçuk Sultanate of Rum, based in Konya, which remains the Anatolian town with the finest collection of buildings from this era.

So where does Kayseri come into the picture, you may be wondering, and certainly as you drive into what appears nowadays to be a very modern city, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d been sent on a wild goose chase. However, the best known of all Kayseri’s historic monuments is the iconic Döner Kümbet (Revolving Tomb), an elaborately carved 12th century building that served as the last resting place for the Selçuk Shah Cihan. It’s a reminder that the Selçuks managed to capture Kayseri in 1084 and then battled it out for supremacy with the Danishmends, a rival Turcoman group, until 1243 when the Mongols poured across Anatolia seizing everything in their path.

Once you start looking, it’s astonishing how many reminders of the Selçuks can still be found in Kayseri. Sometimes they show the input of both the Selçuks and the less familiar Danishmends. Take the Ulu Cami (Great Mosque), for example, that lurks in the back streets behind the Covered Bazaar. Work on this was begun by the Danishmends, whose great leader Melek Mehmed Gazi was buried here in 1143, and then finished off by the Selçuks in 1205. Inside it’s a strange building that feels, with its pointed arches and low ceilings, like something the Crusaders might have constructed. The end result is curiously congested and dark -- it’s not hard to understand why the lighter, airier Ottoman style that incorporated a dome eventually won the architectural day.

The Ulu Cami keeps a low profile, which is hardly the case with the Hunat Hatun Cami that stands right on the main road gazing over at the black basalt walls of the inner city (themselves repaired by Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad in the 13th century). Kayseri is unlucky in that the stone available locally was of a grim color that tends to become even more oppressive when caked with dirt from the traffic and viewed under a lowering winter sky. As a result, the Hunat Hatun Cami can look rather uninviting despite its magnificently decorated entrance, a match for anything in Konya. But that impression melts away the minute you cross the threshold and spot, hidden from external view, a densely decorated kümbet that far outstrips in beauty the more famous Döner version. It was built in 1238 to serve as a tomb for Mahperi Hunat Hatun, the wife of Alaeddin Keykubad. And where else could you spread yourself out on a marble slab and have yourself scrubbed clean inside a hamam (Turkish bath) that has been welcoming bathers since the mid-13th century?

The quantity of medreses dotted about town suggests that Kayseri was an important center for theological education in the Middle Ages. There’s one medrese attached to the Hunat Hatun Cami, which opens its doors intermittently as a collecting station for charities, and another, the Sahabiye Medresesi (1267), immediately across the road from the Almer shopping center and the Hilton Hotel complex, which houses several bookshops. But the most impressive such building is the Çifte Medrese (Twin Seminaries Complex) that stands in Mimar Sinan Park behind the Hilton (Sinan was born in the nearby village of Ağırnas and was responsible in 1584 for the Kurtuluş Cami with its soaring dome, so unlike the hunched-up Selçuk legacy). Built in 1205, the conjoined seminaries were paid for by a brother and sister, the Selçuk sultan Gıyaseddin I Keyhüsrev and his sister Gevher Nesibe Sultan. At the time, they served as a hospital and madhouse, and until recently visitors were able to inspect the grim, top-lit operating theaters and poky little six-person cells inside. Today the museum doors stand firmly closed.

Also in the park is the 12th century Avgunlu Medresesi, which has been converted into a wonderful plant-filled book and stationery shop with a cafe occupying the upstairs gallery. It’s also worth walking to the far end of the park where, beside Mehmet Akif Caddesi, you’ll find another beautiful Selçuk mosque with twin portals second only in elaboration to those on the Hunat Hatun Cami. This is the Halı Kılıç Cami, built in 1249 for one Ebul Kasım İbn-i Ali Eltusi during the reign of Sultan İzzeddin Keykavus II.

It doesn’t take much hunting around to find these reminders of the Selçuks, but you need to walk right out on Talas Caddesi to find the newly reopened 13th century Zaviye Ahi Evran. A zaviye served a function much like that of a dervish lodge, in this case acting as a base for the religious community that grew up around the Persian mystic Ahi Evran, who arrived in Kayseri from Persia and was eventually killed by the Mongols in Kırşehir in 1261. It now houses a small museum of local artifacts of minimal interest, although the building is very appealing. On the way here you might also want to pause for a look at the 13th century Han Cami, which started life as a han, or early business center, and then transformed into a mosque.

Before leaving Kayseri you should also take a quick turn around the area between Sivas Bulvarı and İstasyon Caddesi, which seems to have acted as a large Selçuk graveyard dotted with multiple kümbets, some of them richly decorated, others equally plain. Just as the low, arched Selçuk mosque interiors are unexpectedly evocative of Gothic churches, so some of the kümbets are decorated with blind arcading or with tiny paired windows that evoke Romanesque architecture at the same time as their circular shape and drum-like domes also call to mind the Armenian buildings that the Selçuks will have encountered as they crossed Anatolia. On the other hand, romantics will see in these same circular buildings with their conical domes the nomadic tent given permanent shape in stone. Finest of all these all-but-forgotten tombs is the Şah Kutluğ Hatun Türbesi that shelters the remains of a mother and her two sons. It dates back to 1349 and loiters unloved in a car park behind the Hunat Hatun Cami.

So strong a grip did Selçuk architecture assert on Kayseri that for many years after they had been expelled the locals continued to build in the same style. Not far from the Ulu Cami you’ll come across the Şeyh Cami, which houses the tomb of the 15th century Sufi poet Sheikh İbrahim Tennuri. Despite its late date -- 1484 -- it boasts the same pointed dome as all those much older kümbets. It wasn’t until the Ottomans stamped their own seal on the city that Kayseri architects could finally put their Selçuk past behind them.

WHERE TO STAY

Hilton Hotel:

Tel: 0352-207 5000

Grand Eras Hotel:

Tel: 0352-330 5111

Hotel Almer:

Tel: 0352-320 7970

HOW TO GET THERE

There are daily flights from İstanbul to Kayseri Airport as well as frequent buses from Ankara and all the surrounding cities. The new tram doesn’t run to the bus terminal -- to get there from the city center you should catch bus number 130.