Atik Mustafa Pasha Mosque

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The mosque in a drawing by AG Paspates in 1877

The Atik Mustafa Pascha Mosque ( Turkish Atik Mustafa Paşa Camii , also Hazreti Cabir Camii ) is a former Byzantine church in Istanbul that was rededicated as a mosque during the Ottoman Empire .

location

A smaller side apse and the minaret

The mosque is located in the Çember Sokağı in the Ayvansaray district in the Fatih district of Istanbul within the Theodosian Wall and not far from the Golden Horn .

history

The attribution of the church is unclear. For a long time the church was considered to be the Saint Peter and Mark Church, but this could not be proven and the assignment is considered unlikely. The church is now referred to as Saint Thekla of the Blachernen Palace , but this assignment is also unlikely. In the middle of the 9th century AD, Princess Thekla , the eldest daughter of the Byzantine emperor Theophilus , enlarged a small chapel dedicated to St. Thekla and was east of the church of the Blachernen Palace. Other sources claim that Thekla is said to have added a bedchamber to the palace, which also contained a chapel. However, this was hardly possible without blocking the entrance to the Blachernen Church. More recent ideas also see the possibility that the church could have been dedicated to St. Elias.

In 1059 the Byzantine Emperor Isaac I built a larger church here to thank him for surviving a hunting accident. The church was known for its beauty, and Byzantine historian Anna Komnena reported that her mother Anna Dalassene often prayed here. After Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans, the church was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1509 and the dome collapsed. The commander of the palace guard and later Grand Vizier Koca Mustafa Pascha had the damage repaired and converted the church into a mosque. Until the end of the 19th century, the mosque also had a hammam opposite the church. In 1692, Şatir Hasan Ağa built a fountain in front of the mosque. The mosque was badly damaged again in a major fire in the Balat district in 1729, but was rebuilt a few years later. The building was damaged again in an earthquake in 1894 and the minaret was destroyed, then reopened for church services in 1906 with a new minaret. The last major renovation took place in 1922. On this occasion, a marble Christian inscription was uncovered and taken to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum . In the southern apse is the Makam-Türbe of Jabir ibn Abdullah al-Ansari , a companion of the Prophet Mohammed , who died in 678 during the first siege of Constantinople (674-678) . This is where the Turkish name Hazreti Cabir Camii (German: Mosque of Saint Jabir) comes from .

architecture

The exterior of the mosque
View into the central apse with mihrab

The rectangular building is 15 meters wide and 17.5 meters long and the church hall was built over the plan of a Greek cross . The cross-domed church had three polygonal apses on the southeast side and a narthex on the northwest side. Galleries are missing. The dome without a drum is Ottoman, although the supporting arches and pillars are of Byzantine origin. The side arms of the cross with pastophorion , prothesis and diakonicon are covered by barrel vaults and connected by arches. The north and south walls on the ground floor are each decorated with three arches, which have a window in the lower area, three windows above and another window at the end. The roof, cornice and wooden narthex are Ottoman. Today the mihrab sits in the large central apse . For this, a window on the first floor was bricked up and a new window was broken through.

A cross-shaped inscription in the baptistery of the church is now in the city's Archaeological Museum. The pillars of the dome are L-shaped. Remnants of frescoes have been preserved. During restoration work on the ground in 1990, several tesserae were discovered , which prove the existence of one or more mosaics. Despite its architectural importance, the building has so far hardly been studied and researched.

literature

  • Raymond Janin: La Géographie ecclésiastique de l'Empire byzantin . (= 1st part: Le Siège de Constantinople et le Patriarcat Oecuménique , Volume 3: Les Églises et les Monastères ), Institut Français d'Etudes Byzantines, Paris 1953
  • Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Image lexicon on the topography of Istanbul: Byzantion, Konstantinupolis, Istanbul up to the beginning of the 17th century . Wasmuth, Tübingen 1977, ISBN 978-3-8030-1022-3
  • Mehmet Tunay: Byzantine Archeological Findings in Istanbul . In: Nevra Necipoğlu: Byzantine Constantinople: Monuments, Topography and everyday Life . Brill, Leiden / Boston / Cologne 2001, ISBN 90-04-11625-7

Web links

Commons : Atik Mustafa Pasha Mosque  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Alfons Maria Schneider: The Blachernes . Oriens, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1951, pp. 82-120.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Müller-Wiener (1977), p. 83.
  3. ↑ a b c d Thomas F. Mathews, Ernest JW Hawkins: Notes on the Atik Mustafa Paşa Camii in Istanbul and Its Frescoes . In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers , Vol. 39 (1985), pp. 125-134 ( JSTOR 1291520 ).
  4. ↑ a b Janin (1953), p. 148.
  5. ^ Semavi Eyice : Istanbul. Petite Guide a travers les Monuments Byzantins et Turcs . Istanbul Matbaası, Istanbul 1955, p. 92.
  6. ↑ Çelik Gülersoy : A Guide to Istanbul . Istanbul Kitaplığı, Istanbul 1976, p. 248.
  7. ↑ Müller-Wiener (1977), p. 82.
  8. ↑ a b c d Alexander van Millingen: Byzantine Churches of Constantinople . MacMillan & Co, London 1912, p. 193.
  9. ↑ a b Tunay (2001), p. 229.

Coordinates: 41 ° 2 ′ 19 ″  N , 28 ° 56 ′ 38.4 ″  E