NEVSEHIR

 

The road to Nevsehir and Cappadocia passes through Hacibektas, the town where Haci Bektas Veli settled and established his Bektas Sufi order in the 14th century. The dervishes who followed the sect’s tenets of love and humanism were housed in the monastery which includes a mausoleum and mosque. The complex is now a museum open to the public.

 

Onyx, plentiful in the region, was used by the disciples of this order and has come to be called Hacibektas stone. In town there are many onyx souvenirs for sale. It is worth stopping to wander through the interesting Archaeological and Ethnographical Museum. Nevsehir, a provincial capital, is the gateway to  Cappadocia. In the town itself the hilltop Seljuk castle, perched on the highest point in the city, and the Kursunlu Mosque, built for the Grand Vizier Damat Ibrahim Pasha, are among the remaining historical buildings. The mosque forms part of a complex of buildings which includes a medrese, a hospice and a library. An ablution fountain in the courtyard still bears its original inscription. The Nevsehir Museum displays local artifacts. Violent eruptions of the volcanoes Mt. Erciyes (391 6 meters) and Mt. Hasan (3268 meters) three million years ago covered the plateau surrounding Nevsehir with tufa, a soft stone comprised of lava, ash and mud. The wind and rain have eroded this brittle rock and created a spectacular surrealist landscape of rock cones, capped pinnacles and fretted.