Ali Gazi Pasha Mosque, Babadag

The Ali Gazi Pasha Mosque, also called the Babadag Mosque, stands in the centre of Babadag, Tulcea County, at 2 Geamiei Street. Next to it is the Panaghia House, home of the Museum of Oriental Art. The construction date is uncertain. The List of Historic Monuments dates it to 1618-1619, other sources give 1609-1610, and a copy of the foundation deed (vakfiye) was registered in 1610. The founder, Gazi Ali Pasha, died in 1620, according to the inscription on his tomb. The mosque was damaged in the Russo-Turkish wars of the 18th century, burned in the 19th century and was repaired in 1907-1910. It served as a museum until 1989 and was restored between 1990 and 1999 with the support of a foundation from Turkey. The building has a square plan, walls of dressed stone and a wooden roof covered with tiles. At the entrance is a porch with three pointed arches resting on piers, and the minaret, over 20 m high, was added later, attached to the corner of the wall facing Mecca. Inside there is a U-shaped wooden gallery and a wooden ceiling with a central medallion (şemse) decorated with crescent-and-star motifs. The hexagonal, domed tomb of Ali Gazi Pasha stands in the courtyard. The Turkish art historian Semavi Eyice, in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, considers the mosque the largest surviving Ottoman-period building in Romania. The mosque is listed as a historic monument under code TL-II-m-A-06000, and the tomb of Ali Gazi Pasha, separately, under code TL-IV-m-A-06041. Did you know that the tomb in the courtyard carries a bilingual inscription, in Turkish and Romanian? It was placed by the member of parliament George Lamandi and records, besides the founder's date of death, the repair of 1910. Inside there is only a wooden sarcophagus.