The complex is placed in Fazilet Sokağı, in the district of Fatih, in a popular neighborhood which got its name from the Mosque, and less than one km to the southeast of Eski Imaret Mosque. It is picturesque but decayed and dangerous in the night hours.
Shortly after the Fall of Constantinople the building was converted into a mosque, and the monastery was converted for a while into a Medrese. The Ottomans named it after Molla Zeyrek, a scholar who was teaching there. However, due to its importance in Byzantine history, Zeyrek was one among the few buildings of Istanbul whose ancient denomination was never forgotten. Among others, the church of Pantokrator is remembered by Pierre Gilles in his classic work about Constantinople, written in the sixteenth century. After the completion of the Medreses in the Fatih complex in 1471, the students abandoned Zeyrek, and the rooms of the monastery occupied by the Medrese vanished later. Until a few years ago, the edifice was in a desolate state, and as a result it was added to the UNESCO watchlist of endangered monuments. In recent years it has undergone extensive restoration. Today Zeyrek Mosque is - after Hagia Sophia - the second largest extant religious edifice built by the Byzantines in Istanbul. To the East lies the Ottoman Konak, which has also been restored and is now open as a restaurant and tea garden.
Description
The masonry has been partly built adopting the technique of the recessed brick, typical of the Byzantine architecture of the middle period. In this technique, alternate courses of bricks are mounted behind the line of the wall, and are plunged in a mortar bed. Due to that, the thickness of the mortar layers is about three times greater than that of the bricks layers. The south and the north church are both cross domed with polygonal apses having seven sides, and not five as was typical in the Byzantine architecture of the previous century. The apses have also triple lancet windows flanked by niches. The southern church is the largest. To the East it has an esonarthex, which later was extended up to the imperial chapel. The church is surmounted by two domes, one over the naos and the other over the matroneum of the narthex. The decoration of this church, which was very rich, disappeared almost completely, except for some fragments of marble in the presbyterium and, above all, a beautiful floor in opus sectile made with colored marbles worked in cloisonné technique, where human and animal figures are represented. Moreover, fragments of colored glass suggest that the windows of this church were once made of stained glass bearing figures of Saints. The mosaics of the interior, representing the apostles and the life of Christ, were still visible - although defaced - in the 18th century. The imperial chapel is covered by barrel vaults and is surmounted by two domes too. The north church has only one dome, and is notable for its frieze, carved with a dog's tooth and triangle motif running along the eaves line. Close to the Mosque is placed the small Şeyh Süleyman Mescidi, a small byzantine building belonging also to the Pantokrator Monastery. As a whole, this complex represents the most typical example of architecture of the Byzantine middle period in Constantinople.
