The Fall of Chora: From Byzantine Splendor to Mosque Once More

The Monastery of Chora saw a great turnout for the Friday prayer, the first since it became a mosque.

Few pilgrims can fit into the limited space of the church’s catholicon, so many who came for prayer occupied the outer space around the monument.

There was a large turnout of Muslim pilgrims at the Chora Monastery for the Friday noon prayer, the most important in the Islamic faith, the first after the monument was converted into a mosque.

The conversion of the Byzantine temple of Istanbul into a Muslim mosque was inaugurated by Recep Tayyip Erdogan last Monday, in a special ceremony in which he was connected directly from the presidential palace via teleconference.

Few pilgrims can fit in the limited space of the church’s catholicon, as a result many who came to pray occupied the outer space around the monument. The inner space was already full half an hour before the prayer.

The Monastery of Chora has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. It houses the most elaborate Byzantine mosaics surviving in Constantinople, along with Hagia Sophia and the Monastery of Pammakaristos, which also functions as a mosque.

The mosque operates on the model of Hagia Sophia. The mosaics on the walls in the prayer area were covered, while an area was designated to be visited by tourists with a guide.

The church of Agios Sotiros in Chora, the catholicon of what was once a monastic complex, dates from the 6th century AD, while its unique mosaics and frescoes were created in the 14th century, from 1305 to 1320, during the reign of the Palaiologos dynasty.

The Monastery of Chora was converted into a mosque in 1511, 58 years after the Fall of Constantinople, and by decision of the Turkish Council of Ministers in 1945 it became a museum. After this decision, specialists from the United States carried out a major restoration and conservation project for the mosaics and frescoes, removing the plasters that covered them.

Work began in 1948 and was completed ten years later in 1958. In 2019, Turkey’s Council of State (Danistay) revoked the 1945 decision, and a year later, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the monument would once again function as a mosque.