Myrelaion (Bodrum Mosque)

Myrelaion, known in its Ottoman and contemporary identity as the Bodrum Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, occupies the former Church of the Myrelaion built in the tenth century under the Byzantine emperor Romanos I Lekapenos, who used the complex as an imperial palace and established a monastery with the church as its focal point. After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople the church was converted to a mosque by Mesih Ali Pasha, a grand vizier during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II, and received the popular name Bodrum, meaning cellar or basement, from the vast cistern structure beneath the building that once supported the imperial rotunda palace adjacent to the church. The current mosque thus preserves within its fabric a thousand years of layered religious history, from Byzantine imperial worship to Ottoman Islamic practice to the contemporary daily prayers of a living congregation. Architecturally the building is a classic example of the middle Byzantine cross-in-square church plan, with a dome supported on four columns and a distinctive exterior of bricklaying patterns characteristic of tenth-century Constantinopolitan architecture. Restoration in the late twentieth century uncovered significant elements of the original structure. The mosque operates as an active place of prayer, with carpets covering the floor, a mihrab oriented toward Makkah, a wooden mimbar for the Friday khutbah, and the five daily prayers observed by a local congregation drawn from the surrounding streets. For visitors with an interest in Byzantine architecture and its Ottoman afterlife, Bodrum Mosque offers an unusually coherent and quiet example of the transformation of a small imperial foundation into a continuing Muslim place of worship. Modest dress, shoes removed at the threshold, hair covered for women entering the prayer hall, quiet conduct throughout, and photography carried out only outside of active prayer are the expected courtesies throughout a visit. The cistern structures beneath the building, from which the popular name derives, remain partially preserved and occasionally accessible for specialist study, offering a glimpse of Byzantine engineering in the urban fabric that predates the mosque's Islamic function by many centuries of continuous religious use.