AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Selam Camii is a modest neighborhood mosque in Saraykent, a district on the northern edge of Antakya (ancient Antioch) in southern Türkiye's Hatay Province. It is a place of local worship rather than a celebrated monument, and for visitors its story is really the story of a community house of prayer caught in one of the worst natural disasters the region has seen.↗↗↗
The original mosque was destroyed in the devastating 6 February 2023 earthquakes that flattened much of Antakya. In the aftermath a temporary container-and-makeshift prayer space was raised on the site so the neighborhood could keep worshipping, and authorities have since signed a protocol to rebuild Selam Camii as part of Hatay's ongoing recovery of its lost mosques.↗↗
A quiet community mosque
Before the earthquake, Selam Camii was the kind of unassuming local mosque that defines daily life in a Turkish neighborhood: roomy, airy and calm, easy to slip into for the Friday prayer or a quiet afternoon service. Visitor reviews remembered it as a peaceful, well-kept space with open ground around it, used by a varied local community that included long-time residents and newer arrivals. None of this made it a sightseeing destination in itself—it was, and remains, first a working place of worship for the people of Saraykent.
