Eski Imaret Mosque
mosque in İstanbul, Turkey
The Eski Imaret Mosque (Turkish: Eski Imaret Camii) is a former Byzantine church converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. The church has traditionally been identified as belonging to the Monastery of Christ Pantepoptes (Greek: Μονή του Χριστού Παντεπόπτη), meaning "Christ the all-seeing". It is the only documented 11th-century church in Istanbul which survives intact, and represents a key monument of middle Byzantine architecture. Despite that, it remains among the least studied buildings in the city.
Location
The building lies in Istanbul, in the district of Fatih, in the neighbourhood of Zeyrek, one of the poorest areas inside the old walled city. It is less than one kilometre northwest of the even more impressive Zeyrek Mosque.
Identification
It was the Patriarch Constantius I (1830–1834) who identified the Eski Imaret Mosque as the old Pantepoptes church. Although this identification has been generally accepted, Cyril Mango argued that its location didn't allow a complete overview of the Golden Horn, and instead suggested the site currently occupied by the Yavuz Sultan Selim Mosque as an alternative placing for the Pantepoptes Monastery. Austay-Effenberger and Effenberger agreed with Mango, and argued that it might actually have been the Church of St. Constantine, founded by the Empress Theophano in the early 10th century, highlighting its similarities to the contemporaneous Lips Monastery.
The public source identifies “Eski Imaret Mosque” as mosque in İstanbul, Turkey. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Eski, Imaret and Mosque.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2410449. Authority coordinates are 41.022, 28.955. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1830 and 1834.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eski Imaret Mosque” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.