Church of the Assumption (Usundschowo)
The Church of the Assumption ( Bulgarian Успение Богородично Assumption Bogorodichno ) is a Bulgarian Orthodox church in the village Usundschowo , near Haskovo in southern Bulgaria . She is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary into heaven .
The building was donated as a mosque with a surrounding complex including a caravanserai in the late 16th century by the Ottoman Grand Vizier Koca Sinan Pascha and was named Koca Sinan Pascha Mosque. Bulgarian historians doubt that the architect was Sinan , as Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall assumed. The traveler Evliya Çelebi mentioned the mosque in the 17th century.
After the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878 and the departure of the Muslim population, the mosque was abandoned. In 1906 it was converted into a church - against the resistance of the residents of Usundschowo, who wanted its destruction and use of the mosque's materials for a new church.
Today the church is a cultural monument of national importance. On September 9, 2007 the church was consecrated again by Metropolitan Nikolai von Plovdiv after a necessary restoration.
literature
- Klaus Schwarz: The foundations of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Koga Sinān Pascha (d. 1596) in Uzunǧaova, Bulgaria. Schwarz, Berlin 1983. ISBN 3-922968-25-2 .
- Steven Lewis: The Ottoman architectural patrimony of Bulgaria revisited: Infrastructure, intentionality, and the genesis and survival of monuments. In: Maximilian Hartmuth, Ayşe Dilsiz (ed.): Monuments, patrons, contexts. Papers on Ottoman Europe presented to Machiel Kiel . Netherlands Institute for the Near East, Leiden 2010. pp. 153–170 Fig. 1 PDF pp. 8–9 Fig. 1 .
- Dimana Trankova, Anthony Georgieff, Hristo Matanov: A guide to Ottoman Bulgaria. Vagabond Media, Sofia 2011, ISBN 978-954-92306-5-9 , pp. 82-85 images .
Web links
Coordinates: 41 ° 57 ′ 46.2 " N , 25 ° 39 ′ 18.4" E