Wooden Column Mosques of the Seljuk Period in Anatolia

This paper will introduce and discuss a very specific type of mosques mainly to be found in Anatolia and in a few examples in Central Asia. Going back to the earliest scholarly contribution concerning this topic; an article in German by the eminent scholar Katharina Otto-Dorn (1908-1999), during her period as first professor of Islamic Art at Ankara University (1954-67) and which can still serve as an excellent overview, this contribution will first describe the main features of some of the most impressive examples from the 13th and 14th centuries in Afyon, Ankara, Beyşehir and Sivrihisar.

In the second part several questions will be addressed:Why this type of mosques is mainly found in Anatolia, and there during the Seljuk and Emirates (Beylikler) periods? Is there any continuation of this mosque type into the Ottoman period? Are there any predecessors, e.g. in Central Asia, and how influential are they?Given that wood is needed for such mosques, why do we not find them e.g. in the wooden rich mountain areas of Mazandaran or Gilan to the south of the Caspian Sea in Iran?