Tekke of the Three Men

The tekke was located along today’s Nikolaos Plastiras Avenue, on the inner slopes of the Martinengo Bastion. During the Venetian period, the site was occupied by an Orthodox church known as Panagia Phaneromeni. The church was initially converted into a prayer hall and, in 1672, with imperial permission, into a mosque. Shortly afterwards, the mosque was transformed into a tekke belonging to the dervish order of the Three Men (Üç Er), whose first sheikh was Haydar Baba.

Today, from the tekke of the dervishes of the Order of the Three Men—known as Otsleria—survive the mausoleum (türbe) of the first sheikh, Haydar Baba, a fountain, a well, the foundations of rooms and sections of pebble-mosaic floors. In the early 20th century, a nursery school operated in the mausoleum, with a Muslim woman teacher serving the children of working women from the neighbourhood. In 1922, following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the mausoleum and the fountain were converted into dwellings.