The Yeşil Türbe is with its height of 25½ m the tallest of all Ottoman rulers’ tombs. Furthermore, since it was built on a small mound south of the Yeşil Mosque, it looks even bigger and dwarfs the entire neighbourhood with its green/blue mass.

This mausoleum, with its setting of a sarcophagi room above a burial cellar, is an early-Ottoman application of an older scheme: during the 11th-14th century, many Seljuk (and later Seljuk-style) mausolea were a stone evocation of the pre-islamic funeral hills of the nomads of Central Asia. During their lives, prominent clan members had their funeral hill (‘kurgan’) prepared; when death came, a circular tent was erected on top of the kurgan, and the deceased’s body was laid out, in order to be greeted a last time by the clan members. After this greeting period, the body was placed in the burial chamber inside the kurgan.
A ‘tent-style’ Seljuk Türbe has two parts: a circular or polygonal room with a pyramidal or cone roof (and in Iran sometimes a dome), where a cenotaph sarcophagus can be visited and honoured; this is the part referring to the funeral tent. Beneath this ornamented construction the real burial chamber (‘cenazelik’ or ‘mumyalık’) is to be found, where the deceased’s remains were buried; this is the part referring to the burial hill.

Correspondent: J.M.Criel, Antwerpen.
Sources: Website of ‘liveinbursa.com’ - ‘Bursa - Turquie’ – booklet of the Bursa Müzeleri, 1980
& Several personal visits to the Yeşil Complex (between 1979 and 2002).