The Chora


The Chora Church or Kariye Mosque is a Byzantine church, now converted to a mosque, in the Edirnekapı neighborhood of Fatih district, Istanbul, Turkey. It is famous for its outstanding Late Byzantine mosaics and frescos.
In the 16th century, during the Ottoman era, it was converted into a mosque; it became a museum in 1945, and was turned back into a mosque in 2020 by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The interior is covered with some of the finest surviving Byzantine Christian mosaics and frescoes, which were left in plain sight during Muslim worship throughout much of the Ottoman era. They were restored after the building was secularized and turned into a museum.
The church is located in the western Fatih district of İstanbul. It stands on sedimentary layers and anthropogenic infills on a slope descending towards the north. It is oriented east-west, as are typical Byzantine churches throughout the city.

History

First phase (4th century)

The Chora Church was originally built in the early 4th century as part of a monastery complex outside the city walls of Constantinople erected by Constantine the Great, to the south of the Golden Horn. However, when Theodosius II built his formidable land walls in 413–414, the church became incorporated within the city's defences, but retained the name Chora.

Second phase (11th century)

The majority of the fabric of the current building dates from 1077–1081, when Maria Doukaina, the mother-in-law of Alexius I Comnenus, rebuilt the Chora Church as an inscribed cross or quincunx: a popular architectural style of the time. Early in the 12th century, the church suffered a partial collapse, perhaps due to an earthquake.

Third phase: new decoration (14th century)

The church was rebuilt by Isaac Comnenus, Alexius's third son. However, it was only after the third phase of building, two centuries after, that the church as it stands today was completed. The powerful Byzantine statesman Theodore Metochites endowed the church with many of its fine mosaics and frescoes. Theodore's impressive decoration of the interior was carried out between circa 1310 and 1317. The mosaic work is the finest example of the Palaeologian Renaissance. The artists remain unknown. A renowned classical scholar as well as statesman, Theodore donated his personal library to the Chora monastery, as well. Later on, between 1315 and 1321, Theodore Metochites, the Grand Logothete of the Treasury, commissioned the
construction of the funerary chapel, outer buttress supports, and the narthexes. In 1328, Theodore was sent into exile by the usurper Andronicus III Palaeologus. However, he was allowed to return to the city two years later, and lived out the last two years of his life as a monk in his Chora Church.

Until the Conquest of Constantinople

In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, the monastery was home to the scholar Maximus Planudes, who was responsible for the restoration and reintroduction of Ptolemy's Geography to the Byzantines and, ultimately, to Renaissance Italy. During the last siege of Constantinople in 1453, the Icon of the Theotokos Hodegetria, considered the protector of the City, was brought to Chora in order to assist the defenders against the assault of the Ottomans.

Kariye Mosque (c. 1500–1945)

Around fifty years after the fall of the city to the Ottomans, Hadım Ali Pasha, the Grand Vizier of Sultan Bayezid II, ordered the Chora Church to be converted into a mosque — Kariye Camii. The word Kariye is derived from the Greek name Chora. The architectural modifications were kept minimal with minor whitewashing and the addition of a brick minaret and mihrab. None altered the spatial organisation of the church. Ottoman records indicate maintenance rather than renovation. Due to the prohibition against iconic images in Islam, the mosaics and frescoes were covered by a layer of plaster. This and frequent earthquakes in the region have taken their toll on the artwork. Additionally, the intervention efforts of the 19th century, led by Evkaf Nezareti, flattened the original domed roof profile, and masked the Late Byzantine silhouette.

Museum, art restoration (1945–2020)

In 1945 the site was secularized and designated a museum via Cabinet Decree, reflecting early Republican efforts to position Byzantine monuments as universal patrimony. In 1945, the building was designated a museum by the Turkish government. In 1948, the American scholars Thomas Whittemore and Paul A. Underwood, from the Byzantine Institute of America and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, sponsored a restoration program. From that time on, the building ceased to be a functioning mosque. In 1958, it was opened to the public as a museum, Kariye Müzesi.

Reconversion to a mosque (2020–2024)

In 2005, the Association of Permanent Foundations and Service to Historical Artifacts and Environment filed a lawsuit to challenge the status of the Chora Church as a museum. In November 2019, the Turkish Council of State, Turkey's highest administrative court, ordered that it was to be reconverted to a mosque. In August 2020, its status changed to a mosque.
The move to convert Chora Church into a mosque was condemned by the Greek Foreign Ministry and by Greek Orthodox and Protestant Christians. This led to a sharp rebuke by Turkey.
On Friday, 30 October 2020, Muslim prayers were held for the first time after 72 years.
The building was opened for Muslim worship on 6 May 2024.

Legal framework

Kariye Mosque is situated within the Historic Areas of Istanbul, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1985. It falls under the protection of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, where State Party reporting, conservation planning, and risk monitoring under the World Heritage Centre are mandated. The site is registered as a 1st degree archaeological and architectural heritage asset and is protected under .
The conversion to a museum in 1945, by the Cabinet Decree, was annulled. Regardless of the lawsuit opened by the Association of Permanent Foundations and Service to Historical Artifacts and Environment in 2005, for its right to be a museum, in 2019 by the Council of State ruling based on religious foundations. In 2020, the Presidential Decree transferred the rights to the Presidency of Religious Affairs.

Interior

The Chora Church is not as large as some of the other surviving Byzantine churches of Istanbul but it is unique among them, because of its almost completely still-extant internal decoration. The building is divided into three main areas: the entrance hall or narthex, the main body of the church or naos, and the side chapel or parecclesion. The building has six domes: two above the esonarthex, one above the parecclesion and three above the naos.

Narthex

The main, west door of the Chora Church opens into the narthex. It divides north–south into the outer, or exonarthex and the inner, or esonarthex.

Exonarthex

The exonarthex is the first part of the church that one enters. It is a transverse corridor, 4 m wide and 23 m long, which is partially open on its eastern length into the parallel esonarthex. The southern end of the exonarthex opens out through the esonarthex, forming a western antechamber to the parecclesion. The mosaics that decorate the exonarthex include:
  1. Joseph's dream and the journey to Bethlehem
  2. The enrollment for taxation
  3. The Nativity
  4. The journey of the Magi
  5. The inquiry of King Herod;
  6. The flight into Egypt
  7. Two frescoes of the massacres ordered by King Herod
  8. Mothers mourning their children
  9. The flight of Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist
  10. Joseph dreaming, and the return of the Holy Family from Egypt to Nazareth
  11. Christ taken to Jerusalem for the Passover
  12. John the Baptist bearing witness to Christ
  13. A miracle
  14. Three more miracles
  15. The Virgin and angels praying. This image faces the Christ Pantokrator lunette, and Mary is labelled in Greek, “Mother of God, container of the uncontainable.” This phrase both refers to the theological paradox of Christ's dual nature, as well as the name of the monastery, the Chora.
  16. Christ Pantokrator The label plays on the monastery's name, the Chora, in its reference to Christ as the "land of the living." This phrase comes from Psalm 116:9, used in the Orthodox funeral service, also significant because of the addition of the funerary spaces under Metochites, who anticipated burial in this monastery.

    Esonarthex

The esonarthex is similar to the exonarthex, running parallel to it. Like the exonarthex, the esonarthex is 4 m wide, but it is slightly shorter, 18 m long. Its central, eastern door opens into the naos, while another door at the southern end of the esonarthex opens into the rectangular antechamber of the parecclesion. At its northern end, a door from the esonarthex leads into a broad west–east corridor that runs along the northern side of the naos and into the prothesis. The esonarthex has two "pumpkin" domes. The smaller is above the entrance to the northern corridor; the larger is midway between the entrances into the naos and the pareclession, and they continue the emphasis on imagery of the Virgin and Christ seen elsewhere in these mosaics.
  1. Enthroned Christ with Theodore Metochites presenting a model of his church. This image depicts Theodore in the traditional visual formula indicating that he is the donor, for this fourteenth-century leader was responsible for renovating the twelfth-century church as well as adding the parecclesion.
  2. Saint Peter
  3. Saint Paul
  4. A monumentally scaled mosaic of the Deesis: Christ and the Virgin Mary with two earlier donors [|below], Isaac Komnenos and a nun labeled “Melanie, the Lady of the Mongols,” who may be the daughter of emperor Michael VIII. The subject matter and large scale probably alludes to a similar scene in the south gallery of the Hagia Sophia, installed soon after the Latin occupation of Constantinople ended.
  5. The genealogy of Christ
  6. Religious and noble ancestors of Christ
The mosaics in the first three bays of the inner narthex give an account of the life of the Virgin, and those of her parents. Some of them are as follows:
  1. The rejection of Joachim's offerings
  2. The annunciation to Saint Anne: the angel of the Lord announcing to Anne that her prayer for a child has been heard
  3. The meeting of Joachim and Anne
  4. The birth of the Virgin
  5. The first seven steps of the Virgin
  6. The Virgin given affection by her parents, this scene is more typical of the late Byzantine era, when artists were more inclined to explore emotional and/or everyday themes than artists in the early or middle Byzantine periods.
  7. The Virgin blessed by the priests
  8. The presentation of the Virgin in the Temple
  9. The Virgin receiving bread from an Angel
  10. The Virgin receiving the skein of purple wool, as the priests decided to have the attendant maidens weave a veil for the Temple
  11. Zechariah praying; when it was time for the Virgin to marry, the High Priest Zechariah called all the widowers together and placed their rods on the altar, praying for a sign showing to whom she should be given
  12. The Virgin entrusted to Joseph;
  13. Joseph taking the Virgin to his house;
  14. The Annunciation to the Virgin at the well. This image, in which the young Mary awkwardly turns towards the approach of the archangel Gabriel, was adapted to the triangular space in which it was depicted. There is a strong emphasis on images of Christ and Mary in the exonarthex and esonarthex.
  15. Joseph leaving the Virgin; Joseph had to leave for six months on business and when he returned the Virgin was pregnant, arousing his suspicion.