Zeyrek Mosque
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Zeyrek Mosque (full name in Turkish: Molla Zeyrek Camii), is a mosque in Istanbul, made of two former Eastern Orthodox churches.
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[edit] History
Between 1118 and 1124 Byzantine Empress Eirene Komnena built on this site a friary dedicated to Christ Pantokrator.[1] The monastery comprised a main church, also dedicated to the Pantokrator, a library and a Hospital.[2]
After the death of his wife, shortly after 1124, Emperor John II Komnenos built to the north of the first one another church dedicated to the Virgin Eleousa ("the merciful"), and finally (the terminus ante quem is 1136) connected the two shrines with a chapel, which became the imperial mausoleum (heroon) of the dinasties of the Komnenos and the Palaiologos.[3] Besides many byzantine dignitaries, Emperor John II and his wife Eirene, Empress Bertha of Sulzbach (also known as Eirene, and wife of Manuel I Komnenos), and Emperor John V Palaiologos were buried here.[4]
Short after the Fall of Constantinople the building was converted into a mosque by the Ottomans, and named after Molla Zeyrek, a scholar of that time who was teaching in the near Medrese. The Medrese occupied the rooms of the monastery, but these rooms vanished later [5].
Up to some years ago the edifice was in a desolate state, so that it was added to the UNESCO Watchlist of the endangered monuments. During the last years it underwent extensive (albeit still unfinished) restoration, financed by the Koç Holding.
Today Zeyrek Mosque is - after Hagia Sophia - the second largest extant religious edifice built by the Byzantines in Istanbul.
To the E lies the Ottoman Konak (Zeyrek Hane), which has also been restored and is now opened as a restaurant and tea garden.
The complex is placed in the district of Fatih, in a popular neighborhood which got its name (Zeyrek) from the Mosque. It is pictoresque but (as in 2007) decayed and dangerous in the night hours.
[edit] Description
The masonry has been partly built adopting the tecnique of the rear brick, typical of the byzantine architecture of the middle period [6]. In this tecnique, alternate rows of bricks are mounted behind the line of the wall, and are plunged in a mortar's bed. Due to that, the thickness of the mortar layers is about three times greater than that of the bricks layers.
The south and the north church are both cross domed with polygonal apses having seven sides, and not five as was typical in the Byzantine architecture of the previous century. The apses have also triple lancet windows flanked by niches [7].
The southern church is the largest. To the East it has an esonarthex, which later was extended up to the imperial chapel. The church is surmounted by two domes, one over the naos and the other over the matroneum (a separate upper gallery for women) of the narthex. The decoration of this church, which was very rich, disappeared almost completely, except for some fragment of marble in the presbyterium and, above all, a beautiful floor in opus sectile made with colored marbles worked in cloisonné technique, where human and animal figures are represented [8]. Moreover, fragments of colored glasses suggest that the windows of this church were once covered with windowpanes bearing figures of Saints [9].
The imperial chapel is covered by barrel vaults and is surmounted by two domes too.
The north church has only one dome, and is notable for its frieze, carved with a dog's tooth and triangle motif running along the eaves line.
As a whole, this complex represents the most typical example of architecture of the Byzantine middle period in Constantinople [10].
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Gülersoy, Celik (1976). A guide to Istanbul. Kitapligi, Istanbul.
- Krautheimer, Richard (1986). Architettura paleocristiana e bizantina. Einaudi, Turin.
