Hala Sultan Tekke
Ottoman mosque and shrine of Umm Haram beside Larnaca Salt Lake, in palm and cypress gardens.
Hala Sultan Tekke stands on the western shore of the Larnaca Salt Lake, among date palms, cypresses and olive trees. The complex grew around the tomb of Umm Haram bint Milhan, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad who, by tradition, died on Cyprus during an Arab raid in the middle of the seventh century. A mausoleum was raised over the grave in 1760 under the Ottoman governor, and the domed mosque, minaret and surrounding lodgings were completed in 1787. The name combines the Turkish honorific Hala Sultan with tekke, a dervish lodge.
The mosque is a compact square building with a single dome and a slender minaret, entered through a portico facing the lake. Behind the prayer hall a small chamber holds the tomb, sheltered by three great stone slabs said to have been placed there in antiquity. The site remains in religious use and is administered with the Department of Antiquities, which maintains the gardens, cemetery and the adjacent Bronze Age settlement mound excavated since the 1970s. Flamingos gather on the lake in winter.
Highlights
- Domed eighteenth-century mosque and minaret reflected in the salt lake
- Tomb chamber of Umm Haram beneath three massive stone slabs
- Walled gardens of date palm, cypress and olive with an Ottoman cemetery
- Bronze Age settlement mound excavated beside the complex
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