Imaret of Nilüfer Hatun, İznik

The Imaret of Nilüfer Hatun was erected in 1388 by Murat I in honour of his mother Nilüfer Hatun — the Greek noblewoman who became Orhan Gazi's favourite wife and his regent during campaigns, and the first woman in Ottoman history to hold the title Valide Sultan ¹. The traveller Ibn Battutah was her guest in İznik in the 1330s and called her 'a pious and excellent woman' ¹.

The building first served as a hostel for the Ahi Brotherhood of Virtue, the religious and fraternal society formed by the Anatolian craft guilds in the Seljuk period — the book quotes Ibn Battutah's account of their hospitality ². It later became an imaret serving free food to the poor of İznik, and today it houses the İznik Museum with its archaeological and ethnological collections and the exhibition of the famous İznik kilns ³.

Built in alternating courses of stone and four of brick, it is preceded by an open-ended five-bay porch on alternating piers and columns ³. Inside, a square main hall rises to a lofty dome on Turkish triangles, flanked by two lower-domed rooms with great hearths that served as kitchens and dormitories; a further hall, split by a great arch, served as the mescit, as its mihrab niche shows ³.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 73–74 (Imaret of Nilüfer Hatun).
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