The Ulu Cami, or Grand Mosque, is the masterpiece of early Ottoman architecture in Bursa, completed around 1399 for Sultan Bayezid I, who is said to have vowed to build twenty mosques after his victory at Nicopolis and settled instead on one mosque with twenty domes. Those domes, arranged in four rows of five and carried on twelve great piers, give the interior a vast, calm, cathedral-like space. Its most unusual feature sits right in the middle of the prayer hall: a working ablution fountain (sadirvan) beneath an open skylight, so daylight and the sound of water fall through the heart of the building. The walls and piers carry a celebrated collection of monumental Ottoman calligraphy, nearly 200 panels by master calligraphers, making the mosque a living gallery of Islamic script. It remains an active place of worship in the busy commercial centre, steps from the silk market.
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