İnebolu Tevfikiye Mosque tiles

The first examples of tile art, which has an important place in the history of Turkish art, are encountered in the Uyghurs period. Later on, with the adoption of Islam, Karakhanids, Ghaznavids, Harzemshahs, Great Seljuks, Anatolian Seljuks, Anatolian Principalities, Ilkhanids, Timurids, Akkoyunlular, Karakoyunlular, and Ottomans used tiles. During the Ottoman Period, this art was further developed with many techniques and continued until today. Tevfikiye Mosque tiles in Kastamonu's İnebolu district are among the important works made in the late Ottoman period but bear the traces of the Early Period Ottoman style.The most important finding reached within a thesis study is that the tiles of Tevfikiye Mosque are a hitherto unknown work of Hafiz Mehmed Emin Efendi, the famous tile master from Kütahya, who left his mark on the last period Ottoman buildings with his tile works. It was known that copies of the Karamanoğlu İbrahim Bey Imaret mihrab, the original of which was built by Sultan Murat II in 1432 and exhibited in the Tiled Kiosk in Istanbul, have been made in four different places of worship so far. The tiled mihrab in Tevfikiye Mosque was compared with the previous copies during the examinations and it was determined that the artist of the mosque tiles was Hafiz M. Emin Efendi. The tile analyzes of the İnebolu Tevfikiye Mosque, carried out one by one, not only bear the traces of the last period of the Ottoman Empire but also show documents that it is the work of an important artist.