Şeyh Necdi Masjid

Şeyh Necdi Masjid stands within the market district of Yozgat's central Nohutlu neighborhood, on Lise Street. Although the building carries no inscription, a copy of its endowment deed (vakfiye), dated to the Islamic month of Jumada al-Awwal 1326 (June 20, 1908 CE), survives. Its founder was Şeyh El-Hac Salih Sabri Dede Efendi bin Hasan of Konya. Long used as a public library, the masjid is named after its last resident sheikh, Şeyh Necdi; the building is said to have originally been a Mevlevi (Whirling Dervish) lodge. The prayer hall is transversely rectangular in plan, flat-ceilinged and hip-roofed. On the south side stands a cylindrical mihrab beside a newer wooden minbar. The hall is entered through a door shifted north from the axis of the east wall; to the east of this transitional space are two nearly square, flat-ceilinged rooms. The south-facing wall of the southern room carries three lower windows, round-arched and molded like those of the main hall. A now-enclosed porch section, said to date from the building's time as a Mevlevi lodge, also remains visible. As a tangible trace of the Konya-based Mevlevi Sufi order's historic presence in Yozgat, the building holds significance for both religious and Sufi cultural history, standing among the few surviving structures of its kind and era in the city.