Karabali Baths

The Karabali Baths are a historic Ottoman hammam in Karamürsel District of Kocaeli Province on the southern coast of the Gulf of İzmit in northwestern Turkey, in a maritime district that has been associated with shipbuilding and naval activity since the Byzantine period. Karamürsel's name derives from the famous Ottoman admiral Kara Mürsel (Alp), one of the earliest sea commanders of the Ottoman state who established the naval base here in the late 13th or early 14th century and whose activities marked the beginning of the Ottoman maritime tradition on the Marmara Sea. The Karabali Baths served the seafaring and shipbuilding community of a coastal town whose naval heritage is embedded in its very name, in a maritime district where the hammam served crews and workers in the yards as much as the resident civilian population.