Hamza Bey Mosque: An Ottoman Mosque in Thessaloniki
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Greece
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Ottoman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Mosque
On this page9 sections
History
Hamza Bey Mosque is an Ottoman mosque in Thessaloniki, Greece, built in 1467–1468 and regarded as the oldest mosque in the city. It began as a masjid, a small mosque intended for daily prayer, and was later enlarged into a camii, a mosque designated for communal Friday worship. Its foundation is associated with Hasfa, the daughter of Hamza Bey, although the identities of both figures remain debated.
Foundation and disputed patronage
A dedicatory inscription on the facade names Hasfa as the founder or patron. Hamza Bey has been identified either as Şarabdar Hamza Bey, a military commander who became beylerbey of Anatolia, an Ottoman provincial governor, in 1460, or as Evrenosoğlu Hamza Bey, a descendant of Gazi Evrenos who may have commissioned the mosque in memory of his daughter Hafsa. Another proposed identification connects the monument with the celebrated Hamza Bey executed by Vlad III the Impaler in 1461, but this association remains uncertain.
An Ottoman defter, an administrative register, from 1478 describes the property as belonging to Hamza Bey rather than Hasfa. The sixteenth-century geographer Asik Mehmed explained the change in name by referring to the difficulty of pronouncing Hasfa’s name. The surviving evidence therefore preserves both the mosque’s connection with Hasfa and the later prominence of Hamza Bey’s name.
Expansion and reconstruction
Before 1592–1593, probably in the second half of the sixteenth century, the mosque was enlarged with vaulted spaces along its eastern and western sides. The northern porch was rebuilt, and a minaret was added at the southwest corner. In a later stage, the porch was incorporated into a peristyle, a courtyard or atrium surrounded by columns, while the principal entrance was moved farther north.
A second inscription links a major reconstruction to Kapuci Mehmed Bey in 1618–1619. A kapuci was an Ottoman court or palace official, so the title identifies Mehmed Bey by his office. The work may have followed a fire or earthquake. It chiefly affected the upper portions of the building, including the windows of the dome’s drum, while much of the lower structure was retained.
Secular use after 1923
The mosque remained in religious use until the population exchange that followed 1923. After the Treaty of Lausanne and the departure of Thessaloniki’s Muslim community, it passed to the National Bank of Greece as exchangeable property belonging to the city’s mufti. It later served as a telegraph office and military building. Although a presidential decree had protected it as a Greek monument on 25 May 1926, the building was valued at 261,000 drachmas in 1927 and sold the following year.
The building subsequently changed private hands. During the occupation, an owner was compelled to transfer it to a Christian refugee of Greek origin. After the war, commercial premises occupied the mosque, which also operated as a cinema named Alkazar. This use continued for approximately 78 years as a commercial center and cinema. The structure was eventually abandoned after being judged unsuitable and was donated to the Red Cross in 1977 by the former owner’s widow and son.
Conservation and current status
The Ministry of Culture assumed responsibility for Hamza Bey Mosque in 2006. Major conservation and restoration work was then led by the Ninth Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, partly with European funding and in connection with construction of the Thessaloniki metro. Excavations near the Venizelou metro station revealed structural imbalances that required the mosque to be consolidated. Restoration also aimed to recover the original appearance of the peristyle, which had been extensively altered during its cinema use.
The mosque is a protected archaeological site in Greece and is administered by the Ministry of Culture. It was intended to accommodate some archaeological remains from the surrounding metro excavations after the planned opening of the station in 2023. The building is also locally known as Alkazar, recalling the cinema that operated there for decades. A possible earlier Byzantine women’s monastery beneath the mosque has been proposed, but that attribution remains uncertain.
Remains
Hamza Bey Mosque stands at the junction of Egnatia and Venizelou Streets in central Thessaloniki, opposite the Bezesteni. The building measures approximately 40 metres in length and 30 metres in width, making it the largest mosque in Greece. Its surviving arrangement combines a square domed prayer hall with later side spaces, a northern entrance complex, and an unusually positioned colonnaded peristyle.
Prayer hall and dome
The square prayer hall measures 14.1 metres on each side. A large dome covers it, rising on an octagonal drum supported by pendentives, curved transitional structures that carry a circular dome over a square or polygonal room. Eight windows pierce the drum. Two smaller domes cover the porch and the principal northern entrance, while the lower sections of the original building use mainly cloisonné masonry, in which stone and brick are arranged in framed bands or panels. Later additions were built with lighter masonry.
The interior retains plaster decoration resembling stalactites and wall paintings with vegetal and geometric designs. Four stainless-steel rings now encircle the dome to strengthen the structure against vibrations produced by earthquakes and metro operations. These interventions form part of the building’s conservation rather than its original construction.
Peristyle and courtyard
The peristyle is notably off-axis and contains more than twenty columns. Most are white marble, while others use green Thessalian marble or red and gray granite. Its arches are made of brick covered with coloured plaster that imitates white and red ashlar masonry. Part of the courtyard’s white marble paving survives, preserving a section of the space around the mosque’s principal building.
The colonnaded atrium has been described as unique in Ottoman mosque architecture because it was not built by a sultan and is the only example of its kind outside Constantinople and Adrianople. Its later alterations were extensive, particularly during the building’s long service as a cinema, which is why the restoration sought to recover its earlier form.
Reused Byzantine elements
Several Byzantine capitals were incorporated into the peristyle. Some date from the fifth or sixth centuries and may have come from a Proto-Byzantine basilica whose remains were found beneath the mosque. Fifteen finely worked Early Christian capitals survive among the reused architectural elements, or spolia. The columns and capitals were assembled from earlier buildings, including twenty columns taken in 1569 from the Church of Saint Minas, the Rotunda when it served as the metropolitan church, and the male royal monastery of the Theotokos.
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