Arabahmet Mosque

This Mosque built in the late 16th century on the remains of an old Latin church is named after the Ottoman commander who led the Ottoman armies during the conquest of Nicosia.

Arab Ahmet Pasha was one of the commanders of the 1571 Ottoman expedition to Nicosia and the Governor General of Rhodes. 

The Arabahmet Mosque is situated in the western Arab Ahmet Quarter of Nicosia and is the only mosque in the capital city featuring a dome.

A typical example of classical Ottoman architecture, a large hemispherical central dome covers the main body of the mosque, three smaller ones protect its entrance and four more are found at the corners of this rectangular build.

Outside the mosque there is a garden with a fountain, cypress trees and graves, some of which are well preserved and in good condition.

Among the graves is that of Turkish Cypriot Mehmet Kamil Pasha, born in Nicosia in 1833. He rose to the rank of Grand Vizier in the Ottoman empire towards the end of the 19th century, the only Cypriot ever to do so.

On 14 November 1913, Kamil Pasha unexpectedly died of syncope and was buried in the court of the Arabahmet Mosque. Sir Ronald Storrs, British Governor of Cyprus from 1926 to 1932, produced a memorial to be raised over Kamil Pasha’s grave for which he also composed the English inscription, carved on the headstone. It reads, “His Highness Kiamil Pasha, Son of Captain Salih Agha of Pyroi, Born in Nicosia in 1833, Treasury Clerk, Commissioner of Larnaca, Director of Evqaf, Four times Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, A Great Turk and A Great Man.”

This site also once hosted a Latin church of which a few fragments still survive scattered about the mosque enclosure and on neighbouring houses. A lintel from a door on which a shield is carved with the bearing of two lions affronted, may be seen in the ground. The most singular survival from the ancient church however consists of a small collection of 14th century gravestones with inscriptions, drawings and fragments.

Engraved on some of the surviving medieval tombstones are names of prominent Veneto families – Francesco Cornar (1390), Antonio de Bergamo (1394), and Gaspar Mavroceni (1402) among them.

Arabahmet was restored in 1845 and again in the 1990’s, and this mosque remains in use to this day.