Antalya Kaleici Panhagia Church and New Mosque

Abstract

Antalya Kaleiçi Panagia Church, the Episcopal center in the Byzantine period, remained open to the Christian community for worship until the sixteenth century, when it was converted into a mosque. After the church was turned into a mosque by Sultan Bayezid II’s order, it was named New Mosque (Câmi-i Cedid). The church’s conversion into a mosque, which was used as a church for a long time during the period of Islamic rule and was mainly inhabited by the Christian Orthodox population, caused contentions between the two communities with the effect of the changes in the demographic structure of the city.

After the church was converted into a mosque, it served as a place of worship for about four centuries. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was burned and abandoned. This article aims to understand the transformation of Panaghia Church and New Mosque as it was called in the early twentieth century in the Ottoman period and the process that resulted in its abandonment. The existing literature was subjected to a critical analysis to understand this process, and historical sources were re-evaluated. In addition, under conditions of insufficient resources, the mosque’s importance in different periods was tried to be revealed, based on the mosque’s position in the city religioscape and demographic structure of the city.