Mersin Mamure's Castle

Mamure Castle is one of the Turkish castles that have survived to our time on the Mediterranean coastline. The Castle, which was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2012, is within the borders of Bozdoğan Village, on the Antalya-Mersin highway, 6 kilometers from Anamur, east of Anamur. Mamure Castle, which is built on high cliffs and plains on the beach, was built on ancient foundations like many Anatolian castles. The ancient foundations are especially on the coast and it has not been determined which date and by whom they were built. According to the history of Shikari, after Anamur and Taşeli were captured and destroyed by the infidels, Karamanoğlu Mahmut Bey (1300-1308) defeated the enemy with his beys and an army of 36 thousand people, captured the castle, and built a mosque. He built the castle and named it Mamuriye; the record is passing.

The only inscription still in place in the Mamure castle reads the date of the time of İbrahim Bey in 1450. The castle was later renamed the 16. mid-century and 18. there are documents that it was repaired again a century later and new additions were made. It was partially repaired by the Regional Directorate of Foundations in 1960 and lastly, parts A and B of the Castle were restored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism between 2015 and 2018. The entrance place used today is not the main entrance of the castle. The main entrance door is located in the north of the inner courtyard, between two towers with a four-Decked plan. There is an inscription on it. There is a 5-meter wide moat for defense and protection surrounding the north and north-west of the castle. At the time, there is a bridge over the ditch connecting the main entrance to the outside. But today it has been Decimated, the environments that make up the inner castle and the outer castle are connected to each other, and there is a road between the bastions that completely circulate the castle, and there are 39 towers on this road. There are surveillance windows protected from the outside in order to prevent attacks from the sea and land. The workmanship and construction of the castle were made with stones of various kinds and Khorasan mortar. Block stones were used at the entrance and door edges with some window edges. It is estimated that Mamure Castle and its surroundings were used as a Roman settlement of little importance in the 3.4 century BC. Our excavations in the citadel at the end of Anamur Museum in 1988 by Directorate; built between Khorasan mortar and rubble stone, mosaic tiled floors, bath and housing in places thought to be was found. These ruins are believed to belong to the ancient city of “Rigmonai”. During the rescue excavation, a large number of ceramic fragments belonging to the Late Roman period were found. Mamure Castle Mosque: It is inside the Mamure Castle. The building is entered through a narrow arched stone door in a deep niche with a pointed arch made of fossiliferous limestone within a stone frame. The transition to the octagonal drum in the central dome was achieved with pendant mounts resembling the Seljuk triangle. The mihrab, located directly opposite the entrance, is in a rectangular niche made of stone and has stalactite. On the north, the facade is the last parish hall carried by wooden poles. Those pillars and covers of the narthex are not original. The first construction of the mosque, which carries the classical elements of 16th-century Ottoman Architecture, belongs to the Karamanoğulları.