The Fatih Paşa Mosque was founded by Bıyıkıı Mehmet Paşa in 1522, Sultan Selim I’s warrior who conquered the town for the Ottomans and became4 its first governor. It has 8 domes and its walls are covered in fine faïence. In 2014 I found the entrance to a small yard with a türbe (burial monument) opened, though I do not quite know who was buried there. There is another grave elsewhere in the courtyard of the mosque which I took to be the founders grave.

On December 7 2015 I read the PKK had managed to set it afire..The politics of destruction are beyond my comprehension. In 2024 I visited a, then restored, mosque and was shown several aspects by the imam. The surrounding area had suffered a lot during a struggle that started in 2015. Between 8 November 2015 and 15 May 2016 large parts of Sur were destroyed in fighting between the Turkish military and the PKK.