The Mosque of Ierapetra ( el, Τζαμί της Ιεράπετρας) is a historical
Ottoman mosque located in the town of
Ierapetra
Ierapetra ( el, Ιεράπετρα, lit=sacred stone; ancient name: ) is a Greece, Greek town and municipality located on the southeast coast of Crete.
History
The town of Ierapetra (in the local dialect: Γεράπετρο ''Gerapetro'') is loc ...
, on the island of
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and ...
,
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
. Like the other mosques in Crete, today it is not open for worship.
Description
Based on inscription found in the mosque itself, it was erected around 1891-1892, perhaps on the site of a previous mosque
or perhaps a church dedicated to Saint John.
The upper part of the minaret collapsed during the 1953 earthquake.
Architecture
Ierapetra's mosque is a square building with a wooden, hipped roof covered with tiles. Its architecture style features elements derived from the neoclassical and eclectic trends that reached Crete during the last decades of the 19th century.
The
mihrab
Mihrab ( ar, محراب, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "qibla w ...
, or praying niche, is found on the southeast inner side of the building. It is surrounded by a carved painted panel with a pedimented finial on the tympanum of which is placed an inverted medal bearing an Arabic inscription.
The—now roofless—minaret stands on the northwestern corner of the mosque. Now surviving up to the second balcony, its uppermost part fell in the 1953 earthquake.
Following that, the minaret underwent some restoration work.
The Ottoman fountain is located to the southwest of the mosque, and together with it they once constituted a remarkable complex of Ottoman architecture in
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and ...
. The fountain is an octagonal building with domed roofs, made with worked stones of various sizes. On all sides, the outflow holes as well as water collection troughs are still preserved.
See also
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Islam in Greece
Islam in Greece is represented by two distinct communities; Muslims that have lived in Greece since the times of the Ottoman Empire (primarily in East Macedonia and Thrace) and Muslim immigrants that began arriving in the last quarter of the ...
*
List of mosques in Greece The construction of mosques in Greece has been documented since the period of the Greek Ottoman Empire. Most of the mosques listed were built in the late 14th to early 20th centuries, when parts of modern Greece were part of the Ottoman Empire.
L ...
*
List of former mosques in Greece
This is a list of former mosques in Greece. It lists former mosques ( ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, el, Τζαμί, tzamí, tr, Camii, cami) and places of worship for Muslims in Greece. It lists some but by no means all of the old historical mosq ...
*
Ottoman Greece
Most of the areas which today are within modern Greece's borders were at some point in the past part of the Ottoman Empire. This period of Ottoman rule in Greece, lasting from the mid-15th century until the successful Greek War of Independence t ...
References
{{Mosques in Greece
Ottoman architecture in Crete
Ottoman mosques in Greece
Former mosques in Greece
19th-century architecture in Greece
19th-century mosques
Mosques completed in 1891