Bodrum Mosque (Turkish: Bodrum Camii, or Mesih Paşa Camii after the name of its founder) is a former Eastern Orthodox church converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. [1] The church was known under the Greek name of Myrelaion (Greek: Eκκλησία του Μυρελαίου).[2]
Contents
1 Location
2 History
3 Architecture
3.1 Building
3.2 Substructure
4 References
5 Sources
6 External links
Location
The medieval structure, rather incongruously choked on three sides by modern blocks, stands in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighbourhood of Laleli, one kilometre west of the ruins of the Great Palace of Constantinople.
History
The mosque in 1877Some years before 922, possibly during the wars against Simeon I's Bulgaria, the drungarius Romanos Lekapenos bought a house in the ninth region of Constantinople, not far from the Sea of Marmara, in the place called Myrelaion ("the place of myrrh" in Greek). After his accession to the throne this building became the nucleus of a new imperial palace, intended to challenge the neighbouring Great Palace of Constantinople, and the family shrine of the Lekapenos family.
The palace of Myrelaion was built on top of a giant fifth century rotunda which, with an external diameter of 41.8 meters, was the second largest, after the Roman Pantheon, in the ancient world.In the tenth century the rotunda was not used anymore, and then it was converted - possibly by Romanos himself - into a cistern by covering its interior with a vaulted system carried by at least 70 columns. Near the palace the Emperor built a church, which he intended from the beginning to use as burial place for his family.
The first person to be buried there was his wife Theodora, in December 922, followed by his eldest son and co-emperor Christophoros, who died in 931. By doing so, Romanos interrupted a six-century old tradition, whereby almost all the Byzantine emperors since Constantine I were buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles.
Later the Emperor converted his palace into a nunnery and, after his deposition and death in exile as monk in the island of Prote in June 948, he too was buried in the church.
The shrine was ravaged by fire in 1203, during the Fourth Crusade. Abandoned during the Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204–1261), the building was repaired at the end of the thirteenth century, during the period of the Palaiologan restoration.
After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Myrelaion was converted in a mosque by Grand Vizier Mesih Paşa around the year 1500, during the reign of Bayezid II. The mosque was named after its substructure (the meaning of the Turkish word bodrum is "subterranean vault", "basement"), but was also known under the name of its founder. The edifice was damaged again by fires in 1784 and 1911, when it was abandoned.
In 1930, an excavation led by David Talbot Rice discovered the round cistern. In 1964-1965, a radical restoration led by the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul replaced almost all the external masonry of the edifice, and was then interrupted. In 1965, two parallel excavations led by art historian Cecil L. Striker and by R. Naumann focused respectively on the substructure and on the imperial palace. The building was finally restored in 1986 when it was reopened as mosque. In 1990, the cistern was restored too, and it has hosted a shopping mall for a few years. Now the cistern is used by the women to pray.