Pantokrator Monastery

Church of the monastery. View from the northeast.

Zayrek Mosque ( Zayrek-jami , tour. Molla Zeyrek Camii ) - is the second largest (after the St. Sophia Cathedral ) monument of Byzantine architecture, preserved from Constantinople .

Beginning in 1118, the Byzantine Empress Irina Komnina built a monastery complex near the Church of the Holy Apostles (church, library, pilgrim with a hospital, a charity house for the elderly and a psychiatric hospital) in honor of Christ Pantocrator . After her death in 1124, the construction was continued by Emperor John II (in memory of his victories over his enemies), who built a church to the north in honor of the icon of Our Lady of Grace and connected it (no later than 1136) with a monastery with a covered passage with a chapel Michael the Archangel. The monastery was surrounded by a high wall with two gates. The kafalikon of the monastery was dedicated to Sophia the Wisdom of God . Both crowned chapters were buried in the chapel, as was Emperor John V of the Paleology Dynasty.

With the establishment of the Latin Empire, the Pantocrator monastery passed into the hands of the Venetian clergy, who placed the famous icon of Hodegetria in the cathedral church. Emperor Baldwin II set up his palace here. After the expulsion of the Latins from the city, Orthodox life returned to the monastery, and one of the local monks was elected a patriarch under the name of Gennady Scholarius immediately after the capture of the city by the Turks. He could not prevent the monastery from turning into a mosque, which was named in memory of Zayrek - a sage from a neighboring madrasah .

Towards the end of the 20th century, ancient buildings fell into such decline that UNESCO put them on the list of World Heritage Sites that are in danger of destruction. After that, the Turkish authorities began a sluggish restoration on donations from private individuals.