Etlik Ahmet Yesevi Cami

Etlik Ahmet Yesevi Camii bears the honoured name of Aḥmad Yasawī (c. 1093–1166), the great Turkic Sufi master of Central Asia whose Hikmet — collections of devotional poetry in Turkic — shaped the spiritual imagination of the Turkish-speaking world for centuries and whose tomb in the city of Turkistan in modern Kazakhstan was built on the orders of Timur and remains one of the great monuments of Central Asian Islamic architecture. Aḥmad Yasawī is often described as the founder of the Yasawiyya Sufi order, from which other Turkic Sufi lineages trace elements of their spiritual inheritance, and he is revered among Turkish Muslims as a patriarch of the broader Turkic Islamic devotional tradition. To name a mosque after him in Ankara is to express the continuity between the Muslim life of modern Turkey and the long Central Asian heritage from which it partly derives. The Etlik mosque bearing his name is a substantial neighbourhood structure, with a single minaret, a central dome, and a stone-paved forecourt. Inside, the prayer hall is carpeted in warm tones, and the mihrab is carefully finished with Kütahya tile. Calligraphic panels along the walls include verses from the Qur'an and, in some cases, selected lines from the Hikmet of Aḥmad Yasawī himself in Turkic script. The imam's Friday sermons often engage with the legacy of the great Turkic Sufi masters, and the atmosphere of the mosque is marked by a quiet attention that befits its name. Women pray in a comfortable upper gallery, and Qur'an classes for children run throughout the year. Ablution facilities are clean and heated. During Ramadan the mosque runs a full programme of tarawih. A small framed panel of Yasawī's Hikmet, in a Turkic calligraphic hand now rare in Anatolia, hangs near the mosque's entrance, and worshippers with knowledge of the older Turkic idiom sometimes pause to read the verses before entering the prayer hall, the poetry of the distant Central Asian steppes still exercising its quiet authority over the religious imagination of the modern Turkish capital. For Muslim visitors to Ankara with an interest in the Central Asian roots of Turkish Islam, Etlik Ahmet Yesevi Camii is a particularly fitting place to pray.