A small place of worship in the centre of Söğüt. It takes its name from the well in the floor of the prayer hall — the well is not beside the building but inside it.
Mescit or mosque?
A mescit is a neighbourhood building below the scale of a mosque, built for daily prayer. In founding-period settlements like Söğüt these small buildings tell you more about everyday life than the great mosques: where there was a mescit, there was a neighbourhood.
This building, however, has a carved wooden minbar, and according to the sources Friday and tarawih prayers are held here alongside the five daily prayers. The imam who has served here for many years nonetheless stresses that the building is a mescit, not a mosque.
The well inside
The well was lost for centuries. It was found by chance during the restoration carried out by the Bursa Regional Directorate of Foundations in 2011. After the work the mescit reopened to visitors with the Friday prayer of 29 July 2011.
Visitor numbers rose after the well was found. A building few had called at became one people seek out once its story is told.
The problem of dating
The building is said to have been put up before 1280; the plaque by the door likewise reads "Date of construction: before 1281". But no detailed record survives.
According to Taner Bilgin, a historian at Şeyh Edebali University, the reason is simple: Ottoman historical writing begins only after the 1300s, so no exact date can be given for anything older. The same account notes that art historians point to several churches in the area and suggest the site of the mescit may earlier have been an ayazma, a sacred spring.
So the description "the first Ottoman building", widely repeated, rests on tradition rather than on documents. As with the other founding-period buildings on this site, there is no certainty here.
The story of the well
The tale told with the building runs as follows — it is tradition, not record:
Ertuğrul Gazi comes to the area with four hundred tents. The settled non-Muslims are unhappy at this and poison the stream from which the community draws its water, enough to leave people weak and ill. Ertuğrul Gazi looks for a remedy and finds none. One day he falls asleep after prayer and dreams that the trees beside the mescit are putting out shoots. On waking he has a well dug at that spot and reaches water after three days.
The point of the story lies in what follows: he tells no one that he has found water. For three days he drinks it himself, and for three more he gives it to his horse. Only once he is sure it is not poisoned does he open the water to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Those who tell the tale count this as an early example of Ottoman justice.
By the same tradition, building the mescit for forty people and placing it in the Greek quarter were deliberate choices. The building's proper name is the Ertuğrul Gazi Mescit; "Kuyulu Mescit" — the mescit with the well — is the name that stuck in common use.
Repairs
The building suffered heavy damage during the Greek occupation. The repairs made between 1402 and 1902 are said not to have followed the old fabric, while a restoration faithful to the original was carried out under Abdul Hamid II. As with the tomb, much of what you see today is the work of the late nineteenth century.
Today
The mescit is open for worship; the five daily prayers, Friday and tarawih are held here. One further custom survives: on every hundredth Friday a communal meal is given, descended from the old toy tradition.
Source
The details of the well, the tradition and the repairs on this page come from: Osmanlı'nın ilk mescidi ve hikayesi: Kuyulu Mescit — Yeni Asya, 3 July 2017 (AA). The text here is written in our own words.
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