Mahmutseydi Mosque

In the inland neighbourhood of Mahmutseydi stands a mosque clad in stone outside and built of wood throughout inside. The building rests on twenty wooden columns, and the door leaves, the minbar and the preaching chair are wooden too. The door carries the date 1252, yet its true age is debated: accounts place it in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The plain exterior keeps its surprise for the moment you step inside.

The mosque's age will not fit into a single number. The Turkish Ministry of Education's guide to learning outside the classroom notes that, despite the 1252 on the door, the exact construction date is unknown. One tradition holds that Seyyid Mahmud Seydi, who gave the neighbourhood its name, arrived in 1320 and that the mosque was built that year. An Ottoman inscription over the inner door, meanwhile, records a repair in the Ottoman period, in the Hijri year 1252.

The same inscription shows there was once more here than a mosque: a dervish lodge, an inn and a soup kitchen stood beside it. Nothing of them is left, and only the mosque still stands. The tomb of Mahmut Seydi lies about five hundred metres away.

The building has changed over the centuries. In later years a minaret, a separate section for women and an outer porch for worshippers were added. It took its present form in a repair carried out by the villagers in 1976, so the survival of the wooden interior also owes something to the people who live here.

We do not run a tour that stops at the mosque. If you want to see the mountain side of Alanya in a single day, the jeep safari below follows Taurus village roads and stops for a swim at Kadıpınarı Waterfall.

• 20 wooden columns
• 1252 on the door
• Last repair 1976