The Parthenon mosque refers to one of two places of Islamic worship created successively within the Parthenon during the Greece's Ottoman period. The first was the mosque adapted from the Church of Our Lady of Athens, which was destroyed by a Venetian bombardment in 1687. The second was a free-standing building erected in the open space of what was the naos of the now ruined Parthenon; this was dismantled in 1843.
At what point the Parthenon first became a congregational mosque is undocumented. However, Mehmed II is known to have visited Athens in 1458 after the surrender of the Acropolis to the Ottoman Empire and again in 1460, [1] and it is speculated that the act of conversion could have taken place then or shortly thereafter since the prominent churches of conquered territories were typically converted. [2] The structural changes to the building were slight. A Frankish tower in the south-west corner of the pronaos, which might have served as a bell tower, was converted to a minaret. [3] The presbytery screen, the high altar, and the altars in the side apses were all removed. [4] The mosaic of the Virgin in the apse evidently survived conversion. [5] Less certain is the fate of the ambo, the removal or not of the episcopal throne, and the precise location of the minbar and mihrab. [6] This building was destroyed in the Venetian bombardment during the 1687 Siege of the Acropolis and replaced with a smaller free-standing, single-domed mosque that stood in the cleared space of the naos. It was built sometime in the early 18th century. [7] This in turn was removed in 1843 with the beginning of archaeological activity on the Acropolis.
The primary evidence for this period of the Parthenon’s existence is scant. Not only have the physical structures been erased, but the documentary evidence of the mosque is also scarce. The earliest references are in the biographies of Mehmed II and the Vienna Anonymous manuscript of c. 1460. [8] Mehmed is recorded as having admired the city and its monuments. In 16th-century Ottoman tax records, the mosque is named cami’-i kal’e-i Atina, 'fortress mosque of Athens'. [9] The most detailed surviving contemporary description is in Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme . Evliya not only recorded the physical details of the Parthenon but attempted to incorporate it into the Ottoman cultural milieu and Islamic legend and folklore. [10] Evliya's visit in 1667 was succeeded by a number of European visitors, who left a small cache of records of the Ottoman Parthenon before its destruction. These include Carrey’s drawings, the Bassano drawing of 1670 [11] and Spon’s, Vernon’s and Wheler’s accounts of the Acropolis. The second mosque is slightly better documented in the form of travellers' drawings. Amongst the last of these records is de Lotbinière's 1839 daguerreotype of the Parthenon, depicting the mosque still present in the naos.
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The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from the Greek words ἄκρον and πόλις. The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.
Dervish Mehmed Zillî, known as Evliya Çelebi, was an Ottoman explorer who travelled through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands during the empire's cultural zenith. He travelled for over 40 years, recording his commentary in a travelogue called the Seyahatnâme. The name Çelebi is an honorific meaning "gentleman" or "man of God".
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The Church of Our Lady of Athens or Panagia Atheniotissa was a Greek Orthodox basilica adapted from the ruins of the Parthenon sometime in the 6th century CE. During the Frankish occupation of Athens the church became the Catholic archiepiscopal cathedral of Our Lady by Papal Bull in 1206. It remained under the Latin liturgy until the departure of the last Florentine Duke of Athens in 1458, when it briefly returned to the Orthodox confession. Sometime after the Ottoman conquest in 1460, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque.
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