Arap Camii

About Arap Camii

Mosque in İstanbul, Turkey

The Arap Mosque (Arab Mosque) is a historic mosque in the Karakoy quarter of Beyoglu in Istanbul, below the Galata Tower on the shore of the Golden Horn, the largest mosque on the Galata side and the most unusual in style. The building was erected as a Roman Catholic church by the Dominican friars in 1325, near or above an earlier chapel of Saint Paul from 1233, and it is the only surviving example of medieval religious Gothic architecture in Istanbul: a rectangular plan, a flat roof without a dome, and a square bell tower that became a minaret almost unaltered, resembling the minarets of al-Andalus and North Africa. After the conquest of Constantinople the building remained in Genoese hands under the capitulations, until Sultan Mehmed II converted it into a mosque between 1475 and 1478, when it became known as the Galata Mosque or Great Mosque. Towards the end of the century Sultan Bayezid II assigned it to the Muslims of al-Andalus who had fled the Spanish Inquisition after the fall of Granada in 1492 and settled in Galata, whence its present name. Turkish tradition also links the site to the Umayyad campaign against Constantinople in 717–718 under Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, holding that the first mosque in the city stood here, and a tomb attributed to him is pointed out outside the south-eastern side. The mosque is busy with worshippers today, and its quiet courtyard with fountain and trees is a refuge from the bustle of Karakoy.

Where:

Istanbul, Türkiye