Yenicuma Mosque

About Yenicuma Mosque

Mosque in Trabzon, northeastern Turkey

The New Friday Mosque (Yeni Cuma Camii) in Trabzon is a working mosque that began as the Byzantine church of Hagios Eugenios, dedicated to St Eugenius, the city's patron saint, who was martyred under Diocletian's persecutions around 305 AD and whose intercession is said to have saved the city from the Seljuk assault of 1224 (the siege of 1222–23). The date of the present church is not known precisely; an inscription of 1291 was found nearby, and scholars think it was built in the years immediately after the siege, when Sultan Melik had ordered the earlier church torn down. After Mehmed the Conqueror captured the city in 1461 the building was converted into a mosque, like many churches in Trabzon, and a minaret was added by the northern door. The traveller Fallmerayer, visiting in the early 19th century, recorded seeing inside the remains of portraits of the emperors of Trebizond from Alexios I to Alexios III with inscriptions giving their names and titles; the inscriptions later vanished, though traces of the paintings survived to the left of the entrance. Today the building has three aisles without a transept, a central apse round inside and five-sided outside, a baroque-style stone mihrab and a plain, undecorated wooden minbar. The mosque stands on a hill east of the old citadel with views over the city, and with the Fatih Mosque and Hagia Sophia forms Trabzon's trio of Byzantine churches turned mosques.

Where:

Trabzon, Türkiye