1971 ROMANIA (Constanţa) - Esmehan Sultan Mosque in Mangalia

For almost 500 years, from early 15th century to 1878, Mangalia belonged to the Ottoman Empire, together with all of Dobruja. During this period, the area, and implicit the town, were colonized by Muslim Turks and Tatars, who in time became a majority. Although Dobruja has been extensively colonized with Romanian after 1878, when it became part of Romania, so that in 2011 more than 82% of the population of Mangalia was Romanian, the town maintained a significant minority (7.52%) of Turks and Tartars Muslims.

Esmehan Sultan Mosque in Magalia is the oldest mosque in Romania, and serves a community of 800 Muslim families, most of them of Turkish and Tatar ethnicity. Constructed in 1575 by its namesake, Esmehan, the daughter of Ottoman sultan Selim II and wife of Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, was renovated in the 1990s and includes a graveyard with 300-year-old tombstones. At the construction of the mosque was used stone taken from the walls of Callatis. The ritual fountain in the courtyard of the mosque was built with stone coming from an old Roman tomb.

About the stamp
The stamp is part of the third set of a very extensive series, entitled Romanian Pottery, about which I wrote here.

References
Mangalia - Wikipedia
Mangalia Mosque - Wikipedia

Sender: Marian Irimia
Sent from Chirnogeni (Constanţa / Romania), on 06.09.2011
Photo: Martin Eichler