Among so many peaceful and dreamy places which make up Bursa, there is another which is particularly exquisite: the funerary grove around the Muradiye mosque. There, under cypress trees as high as towers and the ageold plane trees as large as Nubian baobab trees, are sheltered pavilions, serving as the last place of rest for several past sultans. Rose branches like climbers run from tree to tree and flower in astonishing profusion along paths overrun with weeds. Water gushes everywhere from ancient fountains and birds have their nests in all the branches. It is a shady grove full of roses. But there is no view and one can only guess, without being able to see, that there are plains below, and we are closed in under a green vault between green walls, more peaceful sacred and sorrowful than elsewhere.

Of all these ancient pavilions, which have just been opened up for us by a meditating imam, the most delightful is that of Prince Mustafa (1472). The interior is covered with the most wonderful Persian tiles. On a blueish background, it is a display of flowers of two shades of blue, lapis lazuli and turquoise, alternating with coral flowers, enamelled in relief. Above this fairy tapestry-work, runs a frieze also in tiles, with a black background and white religious inscriptions, crossed with bunches of pink flowers. Today, you can but search for the secret of such colouring, lost three centuries ago. The prince asked for his tomb the be sown with grass and watered by water from the sky and his faithful successors left an opening in the vault of his priceless kiosk where the rain falls. The white marble catafalque, in the form of a large open coffin, has been filled with reddish soil, where in the shade pale sickly grass grows between the wonderfully tiled walls.

In the evening, something lured us back to our friends from this morning, towards the beautiful Green Mosque.

At the same time as us, a small funerary cortege was arriving: a young man, carried by stretcher on the shoulders of other serious young men. The rigid body was covered in embroidered cloths which showed its outline, but the face was hidden by a veil and could not be seen. There was nothing really sad in this death scene, this young procession, with vivid-coloured costumes, walking under the plane trees on a spring evening, with flowers all around; there was rather a quiet gentle melancholy.