Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque
Τέμενος Λαλά Μουσταφά Πασά
Interesting facts
- King James II of Cyprus and his infant son James III, the last two Lusignan kings, were buried here in 1473 and 1474.
- Construction was rescued by Bishop Guy of Ibelin, who left 20,000 bezants to the work after a predecessor had embezzled the building fund.
- The Ottomans first named the converted church the Ayasofya, or Saint Sophia, Mosque of Mağusa; the present name dates only from 1954.
- Lala Mustafa Pasha, whose name it now bears, was a Bosnian-born Ottoman commander who later rose to grand vizier under Sultan Murad III.
- Famagusta fell to the Ottomans in August 1571 after a siege of nearly a year, when the Venetian commander Marco Antonio Bragadin surrendered.
- After the conversion a small minaret was raised on top of the cathedral's northern tower, where it still stands today.
- In the 19th century the Greek Orthodox church at Lysi copied the cathedral's west portal and other Gothic details directly.
- The delicate pierced balustrade above the west door's gable is a later restoration by George Jeffery, curator of ancient monuments in British Cyprus.
- A sycamore fig growing in the square beside the cathedral is said to have been planted around 1299, while the building was going up.
- The cathedral appears in several works of fiction, among them the novel Sunrise by the British author Victoria Hislop.
Why it is worth it
The largest medieval building in Famagusta began life as the Latin cathedral of St Nicholas and has been a mosque since 1571, and the double identity is visible at a glance: a French Gothic cathedral front that has served Muslim worship for more than four centuries. The Lusignan kings, a French dynasty that ruled Cyprus from 1192 to 1489, brought the latest northern French architecture with them. Construction ran from 1298 into the early 14th century, an inscription on a buttress records progress in 1311, and the cathedral was consecrated in 1328. The Lusignans were crowned kings of Cyprus in Nicosia and then crowned here as kings of Jerusalem.
The building is a rare example of Rayonnant Gothic outside France, and its west front, with three portals, twin towers over the aisles and a big traceried window, recalls Reims closely enough that it is sometimes called the Reims of Cyprus. The roof is flat, as was usual in Crusader-era buildings in the eastern Mediterranean. The tops of the towers were damaged by earthquakes and by the Ottoman bombardment of 1571 and were never rebuilt. After the Ottoman capture of Famagusta that August, the church became a mosque: statues, stained glass, frescoes and most tombs were removed or plastered over, but the Gothic structure was kept, and a few tombs can still be picked out in the north aisle. It took the name of Lala Mustafa Pasha, the Ottoman commander of the conquest, in 1954.
Beside the south-west corner is the Loggia Bembo, a later marble-framed chamber with Venetian family arms and antique fragments, probably brought from nearby Salamis, set as seats by the entrance. The mosque is open to visitors outside prayer times: shoes come off at the door and coverings are provided for shoulders. The cathedral stands in the square at the centre of Famagusta's walled old town, and the view of its west front from the square is the classic one.
Getting there
The mosque is in the walled old town of Famagusta, which lies in the north of Cyprus, administered by the Turkish Cypriot authorities and recognised only by Turkey. Larnaca International Airport (LCA), about 40 km away, is in the Republic of Cyprus. From there, travellers cross the Green Line at an official checkpoint with a passport; the Deryneia crossing near Famagusta is the closest to the town and is open to pedestrians and vehicles.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, originally known as the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas and later as the Saint Sophia (Ayasofya) Mosque of Mağusa, is the largest medieval building in Famagusta, Cyprus.
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