Oğuz Turk village Population: 750
Market: Sunday
If you’re staying in Bursa it’s well worth doing what the locals do of a Sunday which is head out to the pretty village of Cumalıkızık at the foot of Uludağ to while away the morning round a samovar of tea and a copious köy kahvaltı (village breakfast) at the Mavi Boncuk Pension or one of its competitors.
The village they head for was founded in the early Ottoman period as a ‘Waqf village‘ to provide for the upkeep of one of the külliyes (mosque complexes) in Bursa itself – in this case for the Orhan Gazi külliye. For this reason it is included in the UNESCO world heritage site listing for Bursa.
Cumalıkızık itself is a pretty little Safranbolu in miniature with lovely old Ottoman houses straggling up a hillside. Most have stone-build ground floors with half-timbered upper floors. If you don’t mind foregoing the breakfast the best way to appreciate it is midweek when you may have the narrow cobbled streets to yourself. Otherwise there’s a danger of thinking that it has succumbed to “Şirince Syndrome” with every other local now selling organic fruit and vegetables or locally-made handicrafts from their doorsteps.
Cumalıkızık’s attractiveness combined with its accessibility attracted television producers who used it as the setting for Kınalı Kar (Henna in the Snow), a series whose success in the early 2000s brought the village to the attention of the outside world.
A small and very dusty local museum resembles someone’s rummage cupboard but contains some vaguely interesting local artefacts.
The portico of the local mosque features frescoes of the Sultanahmet Cami in İstanbul from the Hippodrome side and the Selimiye in Edirne (I think). In 2014 the mosque was slated for renovation. It looked as if a new museum might be on its way too.
In an area with strong links to the early Ottomans, Cumalıkızık is one of a cluster of villages whose name contains the “kızık” suffix denoting their original link with the Kızık clan, one of 24 clans that are called collectively the Oğuz Turks. The “Cumalı” part of its name suggests that it was the village where people tended to congregate for Friday prayers. Nearby Hamamlıkızık was so named because it was the village with the local bathhouse (hamam), while Değirmenlikızık had the local mill (değirmen). Fidyekızık and Derekızık form part of the same group of villages.
Sleeping
Abbas-ı Aba Butik Pansiyon Tel: 0533-094 3380
Mavi Boncuk Pension
If you’re after a taste of rural Anatolia on the outskirts of Bursa then this nine-room pension should fit the bill perfectly. Expect rustic simplicity and quaintness rather than designer modernity, and perhaps try and avoid Saturday night if you want a lie-in as the crowds arriving for breakfast will wake you even more certainly than the roosters.
Tel: 0224-373 0955
Konak Pansiyon
Housed in a much grander building in the centre of the village than the Mavi Boncuk, the Konak Pansiyon is still great if you want to play Ottoman for the night and then feast on a sizeable breakfast in the morning.
Tel: 0224-372 3325
Transport info
It’s easy to get to Cumalıkızık by public transport from Bursa using bus No 22 which departs from Atatürk Caddesi, the main thoroughfare.
