ATİK MUSTAFA PAŞA MOSQUE

Ayvansaray, Fatih - Istanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°02'19.0"N 28°56'39.0"E / 41.038611, 28.944167



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The building lies in the district of Fatih, in the neighborhood of Ayvansaray, in Çember Sokak. It lies a few hundred meters inside the walled city, at a short distance from the shore of the Golden Horn, at the foot of the sixth hill of Istanbul.

The Mosque viewed from southwest.Atik Mustafa Pasha Mosque (also named Hazreti Cabir Camii) is a former Eastern Orthodox church in Istanbul, converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. The dedication of the church is obscure. For a long time it has been identified with the church of Saints Peter and Mark, but without any proof. Now it seems more probable that the church is to be identified with Saint Thekla of the Palace of Blachernae, Hagia Thekla tou Palatiou tōn Vlakhernōn). The building belongs stylistically to the eleventh-twelfth century.

History
Towards the middle of the ninth century, Princess Thekla, eldest daughter of Emperor Theophilus enlarged a small oratory lying 150 m east of the Church of Theotokos of the Blachernae dedicated to her homonymous Saint. In 1059 on this site, Emperor Isaac I Komnenos built a larger church, as thanks for surviving a hunting accident. The church was famous for its beauty, and Anna Comnena writes that her mother, Anna Dalassena, used to go often and pray there.

Actually, there is no clear information about the church, in Çember Street in Ayvansaray. Some researchers suppose that the first church was built by Byzantine Emperor Leon Flavius I in 458 and dedicated to the apostles. However, some sources say, that the church was dedicated to Emperor Theophilus’s daughter Thekla, who was later proclaimed a saint, between 829 and 842. It is known from the book of Anna Komnene that the quincuncial plan shaped (cross-in-square) church was restored in 1059, the daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081 - 1118).

After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, the building was heavily damaged during the earthquake of 1509, which destroyed the dome. Shortly after that, Kapicibaşi (and later Grand Vizier) Koca Mustafa Pasha, executed in 1512, repaired the damages and converted the church into a mosque. Up to the end of nineteenth century, a Hamam, placed 150 m south of the building, also belonged to the mosque's foundation.

In 1692, Şatır Hasan Ağa built a fountain in front of the mosque. In 1729, during the great Fire of Balat, the building was heavily damaged and repaired some years later. It was damaged again during the earthquake of 1894, which destroyed the minaret, and reopened for worship in 1906. A last restoration occurred in 1922. In that occasion, a marble christening font was brought to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. Inside the south apse of the building there is the tomb attributed to Hazreti Cabir Ibn Abdallah-ül-Ensamı, one of the companions of Eyüp, fallen nearby in 678 during the first Arab siege of Constantinople.

The church was converted into a mosque by the Grand Vizier Koca Mustafa Pasha in 1490. The original roof, fell down in 1894 earthquake, was replaced with its current dome. The building was restored beween 1906 and 1922, after the fire of 1729 and the earthquake of 1894. Atik Mustafa Pasha Mosque is also named as the Cabir Mosque because of the belief that here is the grave of Cabir, who was from the sahaba (the companions of Prophet Muhammad).

In 1729, during the great Fire of Balat, the building was heavily damaged and repaired some years later. It was damaged again during the earthquake of 1894, which destroyed the minaret, and reopened for worship in 1906. A last restoration occurred in 1922. In that occasion, a marble christening font was brought to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

Hazreti Cabir Tomb
Inside the south apse of the building there is the tomb attributed to Hazreti Cabir Ibn Abdallah-ül-Ensamı, one of the companions of Eyüp, fallen nearby in 678 during the first Arab siege of Constantinople.

Architecture
The building is 15 m wide and 17.5 m long, and has a domed Greek cross plan. It is oriented in a northeast - southwest direction. It has 3 polygonal apses, and the narthex has been destroyed. The edifice has no galleries, and the dome, which has no drum, is almost certainly Ottoman, although the arches and the piers which sustain it are Byzantine.

The arms of the cross, the pastophoria, the Prothesis and Diaconicon are covered with barrel vaults, and communicate through arches. The north and south walls have a floor level with three arcades, a first level with three windows, and a second level with a window with three lights. On the southeast side, the three apses project boldly outside with three sides. The roof, the cornice and the wooden narthex, which replaced the old Byzantine narthex, are Ottoman.

A cruciform font which belonged to the baptistery of the church and lied on the other side of the street has been moved to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The dome piers, which form the internal side of the cross, are L-shaped. They are an example of the stage preceding that of the cross church with four columns. Remains of frescoes placed on the south side of the building have not yet been published. Despite its architectural significance, the building has never undergone a systematic study.

The north and south walls have a floor level with three arcades, a first level with three windows, and a second level with a window with three lights. On the southeast side, the three apses project boldly outside with three sides. The roof, the cornice and the wooden narthex, which replaced the old Byzantine narthex, are Ottoman. A cruciform font which belonged to the baptistery of the church and lay on the other side of the street has been moved to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. The dome piers, which form the internal side of the cross, are L-shaped.

They are an example of the stage preceding that of the cross-in-square church with four columns. Remains of frescoes placed on the south side of the building have been published. Moreover, during the floor renewal in the 1990's, several tesserae have been found, showing the previous existence of mosaics panels and frescoes in the building. Despite its architectural significance, the building has never undergone a systematic study.

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YA VEDÜD SULTAN MOSQUE

Ayvansaray, Eyüp - İstanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°02'26.6"N 28°56'27.5"E / 41.040722, 28.940972



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Yâvedûd Mosque is also known as Abdülvedûd Mosque or Hatice Sultan Mosque. It is located in the Yâvedûd Avenue on the right hand side of the Haliç Bridge. It comprises the area between Ayvansaray and Defterdar.

It was built by eş-Şeyh Abdülvedûd. While being among the Buhara Soldiers during the siege of Istanbul and then moving to Ayasofya after the conquest, he had a small mosque (mescid) and a small dervish lodge (zaviye) built outside of the Ayvansaray, and then was buried in the location around the lodge with the order of Fâtih Sultan Mehmed Hân.

As the mescid became neglected in the course of time, it was rebuilt by Hatice Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Mehmed IV in 1711. For this reason, this mosque is also known as the Sultan Mosque. In the basement of the temple made of hewn stone, there are four earthen anonymous graves. The mosque part of the building was made of wood. The base of the minaret, its cube and the basement dates back to earlier times. Although there are no people residing around the mosque, the temple is still open for public worship.

The focus point of this neighbourhood is a masjid built during the reign of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror by Sheikh Abdülvedûd Efendi (Yavedûd Sultan) who hailed from Bukhara or Damascus, participated in the conquest of Istanbul, and died in 1455. The masjid is located just outside the Ayvansaray Gate, on Yâ-Vedûd Street on the shore of the Golden Horn.

Among the people who provide us with information concerning this building we have also Evliya Çelebi, who after having narrated in anepic style the life of Yavedûd Sultan in his Seyahatnâme (Travelogue), describes also the place where he is buried.

According to another source, namely the Hadika, “...Its founder is the Venerable Sheikh Abd’ül-Vedûd. While this saintly person from Bukhara, who had participated in the siege of Istanbul, was living some where near Saint Sophia, he had a mosque and a dervish lodge built just outside Ayvansaray. When he died, the War Veteran and Sovereign Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror ordered that he be buried near this dervish lodge. It was the year 860 (1459)...”

From this we understand that Yavedûd Sultan had a masjid and dervish lodge built and that he was buried in or very near this architectural ensemble. Since, as the years went by and the mosque gradually fell into a state of utter disrepair, Hatice Sultan, daughter of Sultan Mehmed IV, had it repaired with the addition of a minber (pulpit) in 1151 (1738). According to the inscription over the door, the building was repaired once more and inaugurated on 5th Cemaziyelahir 1219 (11 September 1804), with the addition of a wooden section.

The wooden section having burned down in a fire in 1965, the General Directorate of religious Foundations had it rebuilt. During the construction of the bridge over the Golden Horn, the building was moved away from the mausoleum, to the site where it stands at present. The masjid has a ground floor made up of alternately coloured stones, over which awooden section was added.

The access to the building is through an entrance over which there is a lean to roof and which has iron railings on its two sides. After having gone up a few marble covered steps one enters a rectangular entrance hall and from there, through a wooden double-winged door, into the mosque proper. The main part has a quasi square shape and just in front of the door there is the mihrab (a niche in the mosque indicating the direction of Mecca) and a little to the right the wooden minber.

On the north side, just over the entrance there is the wooden women’s section. Due to recent renovations, the interior does not have its original decorations. The building’s interior is lighted by means of five rectangular framed windows on the western side and by one each on the southern and eastern sides.Over the rectangular windows there are round windows. A door on the right side of the entrance hall leads to the basement level, where there are four tombs, only one of which has an inscription on it that says “Mehmet Bin Abdullah 1097 (1685)”.

Due to the fact that the elevation of the road increased in 1972, when the bridge and the connecting roads were built, only the pointed brick arches of the three basement windows on the western side and of the two on the southern side are still visible nowadays. The minaretis located on the northwestern corner, at thepoint where the wooden part of the main sectionof the mosque begins.

The fact that the south-western corner of the stone basement has been bevelled is another characteristic of this building. In the enclosed space in front of the masjid there is the mausoleum of the founder, made of sandstone, square and with nine windows. In 1324 (1906) a fountain was added to the space infront of the mausoleum. Although there are no people residing around the mosque, the temple is still open for public worship.

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HALİÇ BRIDGE

Ayvansaray - Halıcıoğlu, Istanbul - Turkey



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Haliç Bridge, which literally means the Estuary Bridge, is a highway bridge on the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Turkey. It connects the neighbourhoods of Ayvansaray in the south and Halıcıoğlu in the north. The O-1 highway passes through the Haliç Bridge.

It was constructed between 1971 and 1974, and entered service on 10 September 1974. The engineering firms which undertook the construction works were IHI Corporation of Japan and Julius Berger-Bauboag AG of Germany.

The bridge has a length of 995 meters, width of 32 meters, and height of 22 meters above sea level.

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ANEMAS DUNGEONS

Ayvansaray, Fatih - İstanbul - Turkey

GPS : 41°02'18.5"N 28°56'27.0"E / 41.038472, 28.940833



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The famous Byzantine prison, Anemas goes from the tower, where Ivaz Efendi Mosque is located, to the Golden Horn. The two towers at the edge of the mosque terrace are the towers of Anemas and Isaac Angelus according to the epitaph dated 1186. Because some parts of the three-storey tower, which belongs to Blachernae Palace, collapsed the inner storeys cannot fully viewed. There is a cistern, measuring 9.5 x 3.7 m and 7.5 m in height, inside Anemas Tower.

The prison takes its name from Anemas, who was an Arabian commander of a Byzantine Emperor and who was incarcerated there for the crime of organizing a conspiracy against to emperor in 1107. The Anemas Dungeon is more like a prison than a dungeon and was built in Byzantine times to house prisoners who had unsuccessfully revolted against the Byzantine emperor. It is part of the land walls on the west side of the city where they begin to descend to the Golden Horn.

 Anemas had 14 cells and two basement floors, although today only one remains. The two lower floors had no lighting, but the upper floor was illuminated through openings in the western wall. Its name derives from a Byzantine general of Arab origin, who was imprisoned there after he unsuccessfully tried to topple Alexios I Comnenus (r. 1081-1118).

Later, four Byzantine emperors were to be imprisoned there and Savcı Bey, the son of Sultan Murat I (1362-1389), was housed here. Although it is known from Ottoman sources, how it was used after the conquest is unknown. Today it has been restored by the Fatih municipality as a tourist attraction.

The so-called Prison of Anemas (Turkish: Anemas Zindanları) is a large Byzantine building attached to the walls of the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey). It is traditionally identified with the prisons named after Michael Anemas, a Byzantine general who rose in unsuccessful revolt against Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118) and was the first person to be imprisoned there. The prison features prominently in the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire, when four Byzantine emperors were imprisoned there.

The building is located in the suburb of Blachernae, between the mid-12th century stretch of walls constructed by the Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143-1180) and the earlier walls of Byzantine emperors Heraclius (r. 610-641) and Leo V the Armenian (r. 813-820). A small stretch of wall connects the structure to the east with the wall of Manuel Komnenos. The structure's outer wall itself is extraordinarily high, rising as high as 23 m above the ground in front of it, and is 11-20 m thick.

 Behind the outer curtain wall, the building consists of twelve three-storied chambers. Its outer face features two rectangular towers built side-by-side, with one shared wall. The twin towers are in turn supported by a massive buttress, which stands almost 8 m above the ground level and projects from 6.5 - 9 m in front of the towers themselves. Despite their proximity, the two towers differ greatly in construction, a difference that extends to the breastwork as well, pointing to a construction at different dates. The southern tower is an irregularly quadrilateral two-story structure.

Its masonry is very uneven, including several stone pillars that have been inserted into it, often not fully, and its counterfort is made of small, irregularly fitted stones. Its interior arrangement, with its spacious upper story, large windows, and westward-facing balcony, suggests a use as a residential tower. Combined, these factors strongly support its traditional identification with the so-called Tower of Isaac Angelos: according to the historian Niketas Choniates, that tower was built by Emperor Isaac II Angelos (r. 1185-1195, 1203-1204) both as a fort and a private residence, and made use of materials from ruined churches.

 In contrast, the northern tower, which is identified as the Tower of Anemas proper, is a carefully built structure, displaying the typically Byzantine alternating layers of stone masonry and bricks. Its buttress is built of large, regular, carefully fitted blocks. The strength of the walls and the buttresses is explained by considering that this structure formed the westernmost retaining wall of the large terraced hill upon which the late Byzantine Palace of Blachernae was built.

The main structure consists of thirteen transverse buttress-walls, pierced by three superimposed brick arches, which create twelve compartments, each 9-13 m wide. The two lengthwise walls are not parallel, but steadily move apart as they go north. The eastern wall features a pair of superposed corridors on its upper two levels, built inside the wall's body and lit by loopholes in the wall's façades. The basement-level compartments have no windows, but the upper levels are lit through small openings in the western wall. A spiral stairway tower connects the main structure with the two towers.

Inconsistencies in the placement of windows, which are partially covered by later additions, as well as other evidence of successive alterations, show that the structure was built and modified in separate phases. The eastern, city-ward wall came first, as a simple defensive wall with galleries from which arrows and other missiles could be discharged through the loopholes. The rest of the main structure was added later, probably as a strengthened revetment for the palace hill.

The role of the compartments is unclear; they have been identified with prison cells, which led to the name "Prison of Anemas" being transferred to the entire structure, but such hypotheses cannot be conclusively proven. It is possible that they functioned as storage rooms or (the upper two levels at least) as barrack rooms.

As for the towers, they are presumed to have been added last, with the southern tower being earlier than the northern one, since they share a wall that manifestly belongs to the former. This, however, throws their identification, respectively as the towers of Isaac Angelos and Anemas, in confusion, since the Tower of Anemas is recorded as extant already in the first years of the 12th century, more than 70 years before the construction of the Tower of Isaac Angelos.

Various hypotheses have been introduced to account for this. One theory is that their traditional identification is reversed, or that together they constitute the same building under different names. Another proposes that the actual Tower of Anemas lay further north and was one of the towers of the wall of Heraclius. All theories, however, contain various problems, and the traditional identification remains in standard use today

According to Anna Komnene, Michael Anemas was the first man to be imprisoned there, and after him the tower and prison were subsequently named. Michael had conspired against Anna's father, Emperor Alexios I, but the plot was uncovered and he and his fellow conspirators were captured and sentenced to imprisonment and blinding, the usual punishment meted out to traitors. His pleas for mercy, however, as he was being led through the Mese, aroused the sympathy of the people and of Anna herself.

Together with her mother, she interceded on his behalf with Alexios. Anemas was indeed shown clemency: he was not blinded, but confined for several years to the tower that was to bear his name. The next prisoner arrived at the tower even before Anemas was finally pardoned and released. It was Gregory Taronites, the doux of Chaldia, the region around Trebizond. Taking advantage of his province's relative isolation, he had tried to make himself an independent ruler in 1104. Even after his capture, however, according to the Alexiad, he remained defiant, leading to a long period of incarceration before he was finally released and pardoned.

The next inmate was the deposed Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos (r. 1183-1185), who was imprisoned there on the eve of his public execution in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, on September 12, 1185. The next known prisoner was John Bekkos, then the chartophylax of the Hagia Sophia and future Patriarch of Constantinople as John XI, who was imprisoned there for opposing Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos's (r. 1259-1282) intended reunion of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

 In 1322, Syrgiannes Palaiologos, who conspired both with and against Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos (r. 1282–1328) and his grandson and opponent Andronikos III (r. 1328-1341) in their civil war, was imprisoned here, albeit in rather comfortable conditions, before being pardoned and restored to his offices in 1328.

The prison was once again in demand in the dynastic conflicts of the Palaiologoi during the 1370s. Emperor John V Palaiologos (r. 1341-1376, 1379-1391) imprisoned his eldest son, Andronikos IV, here after a failed rebellion. Andronikos, however, escaped, and with Genoese and Ottoman aid, he managed to usurp the throne from his father for three years (1376-1379). During this time, John V and his younger sons, Manuel - the future Emperor Manuel II (r. 1391-1425) - and Theodore, were imprisoned in the Anemas Prison.

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