Bursa's Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami) is built

بناء الجامع الكبير ⁦(أولو جامع)⁩ ببورصة

1396 CE · 798 AH – 1399 CE · 801 AH

Bursa

Bayezid I built Bursa's Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami) in 1396-1399 CE, financed with the spoil of his victory over the crusader army at Nicopolis on 24 September 1396; it is the grandest Anatolian mosque of the two centuries before the conquest of Constantinople 1.

Depth

At a glance

Era
The Mongol and Post-Mongol Era
Region
Anatolia

In time

1380139014001410
The Crusades, Ayyubids and Mamluks · The Mongol and Post-Mongol Era

In space

Bursa

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Overview

Bayezid I built Bursa's Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami) in 1396-1399 CE, financed with the spoil of his victory over the crusader army at Nicopolis on 24 September 1396. 1

The grandest mosque of Anatolia

Freely calls it the grandest of all the great mosques erected in Anatolia in the two centuries before the conquest of Constantinople in 1453; twelve great piers divide its vast interior into twenty domed bays, and its two minarets rise from the north corners, the first carrying an inscription naming Bayezid I. 1

Connections

Explore the connections

Occurred at
Bursa Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami)· Bursa
Had participant
Bayezid I Yildirim
During the reign of
al-Mutawakkil ala Allah Muhammad ibn al-Mu'tadid

People and things also explored

The battle of Ankara and the capture of Bayezid the Thunderbolt· The capital moves from Bursa to Edirne· Timur seizes Bursa· The Yıldırım Bayezid külliye at Bursa· Bayezid I Yildirim· Bursa· Yesil Mosque, Bursa· Death of al-Maqrizi's father, 779/1378

Sources

  1. John Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011) , p. 42
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “Bursa's Grand Mosque (Ulu Cami) is built”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/event/ulu-cami-bursa-1396/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-09.

Improve this page on GitHub · Report an error · Help complete it · JSON

Wing

Time

Eras, timelines, this day in history, any year in the Islamic world.
Related

The battle of Ankara and the capture of Bayezid the Thunderbolt

The armies of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, called the Thunderbolt, and of Timur met near Ankara on the Cubuk plain in 804/1402; the Encyclopaedia of Islam gives 20 July in its articles on Timur and Ankara and 28 July in its article on Bayezid. Timur won and Bayezid was taken prisoner, dying in captivity in 805/1403 as his hastily founded empire collapsed. Al-Sallabi's account says many of Bayezid's soldiers died of thirst in the summer heat, that Tatar and recently conquered Asian levies went over to Timur, and that Western kings congratulated Timur. An interregnum among the Ottoman princes followed, 804-16/1402-13, during which they acknowledged Timur's suzerainty.