Arab Ahmet Mosque

Under the Ottomans, pashas and kadis lived in the Arab Ahmet quarter on the west side of old Nicosia: it was the most prestigious part of town, close enough for officials to walk to the Saray, the governor’s seat in the former Lusignan palace. Quarter and mosque are named after Arab Ahmed Pasha, one of the commanders of the army that conquered Cyprus in 1570–1571; he became beylerbey of the island in 1576 and was murdered in 1578.

The present building dates from 1845. George Jeffery in 1918 called it the most important building of its kind in Cyprus, if almost without ornament: a large hemispherical dome about six metres across on pendentives, and in front a porch under three smaller domes. It is the only mosque in Nicosia built to a traditional Anatolian plan, whereas the nearby Selimiye and Haydar Pasha mosques were Gothic churches.

Beneath it lies a medieval layer. The historian Christopher Schabel argues that the Carmelite church, which the sources place near the Paphos Gate, stood here. At least 35 tombstones from 1313 onwards were found in the enclosure, with the arms of Latin knights and the names of Venetians; during the restoration of 1992–1996 they were moved to the Lapidary Museum.

The courtyard holds a cemetery of Ottoman notables. The best-known grave is that of Kıbrıslı Mehmed Kâmil Pasha, a native of Nicosia who rose to be grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire. He died in 1913, and the memorial over his grave was put up by the British governor Ronald Storrs, who wrote the English inscription beneath the Turkish one himself.

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The site lies in the northern part of the island, which has not been under the control of the Republic of Cyprus since 1974. It is reached through the official crossing points.