| Kalenderhane Mosque | |
|---|---|
 The Mosque viewed from the southeast in 2012 | |
| Religion | |
| Affiliation | Sunni Islam |
| Year consecrated | 1746 |
| Location | |
| Location | Istanbul,Turkey |
  Location in the Fatih district of Istanbul | |
| Coordinates | 41°00′47″N28°57′37″E / 41.013132°N 28.960304°E /41.013132; 28.960304 |
| Architecture | |
| Type | Church withGreek cross plan |
| Style | Middle Byzantine - Comnenian |
| Completed | 12th century |
| Minaret | 1 |
Kalenderhane Mosque (Turkish:Kalenderhane Camii) is a formerEastern Orthodoxchurch inIstanbul,Turkey, converted into amosque by theOttomans. With high probability the church was originally dedicated to theTheotokos Kyriotissa. The building is sometimes referred to as Kalender Haneh Jamissi and St. Mary Diaconissa. This building represents one among the few extant examples of aByzantine church with domedGreek cross plan.
The mosque is located in theFatih district ofIstanbul,Turkey, in the picturesque neighborhood ofVefa, and lies immediately to the south of the easternmost extant section of theaqueduct of Valens, and less than one km to the southeast of theVefa Kilise Mosque.
The first building on this site was aRoman bath, followed by a sixth-century (the dating was based on precise coin finds instratigraphic excavation)hall church with anapse laying up against theAqueduct of Valens. Later – possibly in the seventh century – a much larger church was built to the south of the first church. A third church, which reused thesanctuary and the apse (later destroyed by the Ottomans) of the second one, can be dated to the end of the twelfth century, during the lateComnenian period.[1] It may date to between 1197 and 1204, sinceConstantine Stilbes alluded to its destruction in a fire in 1197.[2] The church was surrounded by monastery buildings, which disappeared totally during the Ottoman period. After theLatin conquest ofConstantinople, the building was used by theCrusaders as aRoman Catholic church, and partly officiated byFranciscan clergy.[3]
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After theconquest of Constantinople in 1453, the church was assigned personally byMehmed II to theKalenderi sect of theDervish. The Dervishes used it as azaviye andimaret (public kitchen), and the building has been known since asKalenderhane (Turkish:"The house of the Kalenderi").
TheWaqf (foundation) was endowed with several properties inThrace, and manyhamams in Istanbul andGalata.[3] Some years later, Arpa Emini Mustafa Efendi built aMektep (school) and aMedrese.[3]
In 1746, Hacı Beşir Ağa (d. 1747), theKizlar Ağası of theTopkapı Palace,[4] built amihrab,minbar andmahfil, completing the conversion of the building into a mosque.[3] Ravaged by fire and damaged by earthquakes, the mosque was restored in 1855 and again between 1880 and 1890.[3] It was abandoned in the 1930s, after the collapse of theminaret due to lightning, and the demolition of the Medrese.[3]
The conservation of the building dates from the 1970s, when it was extensively restored and studied in a ten-year effort by Cecil L. Striker andDoğan Kuban, who restored its twelfth-century condition.[5] Moreover, the minaret and the mihrab were rebuilt, which allowed the mosque to reopen for worship.[6]
The restoration also provided a solution to the problem of the dedication of the church: while before it was thought that the church was named afterTheotokos tēs Diakonissēs ("Virgin of theDeaconesses") orChristos ho Akatalēptos ("Christ the Inconceivable"), the discovery of a donorfresco in the southeastern chapel and of another fresco over the main entrance to thenarthex both bearing the word "Kyriotissa" (Greek forEnthroned), makes it highly probable that the church was dedicated to the Theotokos Kyriotissa.[7]
The building has a centralGreek Cross plan with deepbarrel vaults over the arms, and is surmounted by adome with 16 ribs. The structure has a typically middle Byzantinebrickwork with alternating layers ofbrick and stone masonry. The entry is via anesonarthex and an exonarthex (added much later) in the west side.
An upper gallery over the esonarthex, following the same plan of the one existing in theChurch of the Pantokrator, was removed in 1854.[1] Also the north and south aisles along thenave were destroyed, possibly during the nineteenth century too. The tall triple arches connecting the aisles with the nave are now the lower windows of the church.
The sanctuary is on the east side; however, the reconstructed mihrab and minbar are in a corner to obtain the proper alignment withMecca.
Two small chapels namedprothesis anddiakonikon, typical of the Byzantine churches of the middle and late period have survived.
The interior decoration of the church, consisting of beautiful colored marble panels andmoldings, and of elaboratedicon frames, is largely extant. The building possesses two features which both represent a unicum in Istanbul: amosaic, one meter square, representing the "Presentation of Christ", which is the onlypre-iconoclastic exemplar of a religious subject surviving in the city, and a cycle of frescoes of the thirteenth century (found in a chapel at the southeast corner of the building, and painted during the Latin domination) portraying the life ofSaint Francis of Assisi.[7] This is the oldest known representation of the saint, and may have been painted only a few years after his death in 1226. Both have now been detached and partially restored, and can be seen in theArchaeological Museum of Istanbul.
As a whole, the mosque of Kalenderhane represents – together with theGül Mosque in Istanbul, theChurch of Hagia Sophia inThessaloniki and the Church of the Dormition in (Koimesis) inIznik (Nicaea),[8] one of the main architectural examples of a domed Greek cross church from theByzantine middle period.[9]
