Black mosque

In the center of Sofia, at one of its tourist crossings, stands an interesting object. People call it "Black Jamia", which means black mosque. But it is completely obvious to every tourist that this is a Christian temple. In addition, the names of the Christian saints are written on it, the temple is dedicated to the memory of the Holy Seventh Archangel: Cyril, Methodius and their disciples, and it is called the church "Sveti Seedchislennytsi".

So what does the mosque

It turns out that not only the Turks rebuilt Christian churches into their prayer houses - the Bulgarians also decided to do this to the mosque, which was built on this site by Ottoman architect Koca Sinan in 1528. It was called “Koca Dervish Mehmed Pasha” / “Imaret Jamia”. It had a black granite dome and therefore was called “Black Jamia”.

However, an important role in this was played by the place itself on which the temple stands: before Black Jamia, this place was the compound of the Rila Monastery, which was built on the site of an ancient Christian temple, set up, in turn, on Roman baths. By the way, this is a characteristic feature of the old Sofia churches - they “grew up” from the Roman baths, which after the edict of Milan served as baptistries. After all, Sofia (Serdica Ulpia) was the spa capital of the Roman Empire :-)

In the 18th century, Sofia experienced two major earthquakes. One of them destroyed the minaret of black Jamia, but there was no one to repair it - anti-Ottoman riots blazed in Bulgaria and the Turks preferred to quit Jamia. And after the Liberation in 1878, a weapon storage facility was organized from it.

The idea to rebuild black Jamia in an Orthodox church came from the Bulgarian politician Petko Karavelova. The fact is that after the Liberation, Sofia was appointed the capital and it was necessary to decorate and develop the city so that it would not be a shame to the neighbors. Since the overwhelming majority of the population was now Christian, the city already required Christian churches, and the ruined mosque did not meet the new interests. Not everyone liked the proposal of Karavelov, but the lack of funds played a role and it was decided to rebuild the mosque in an Orthodox church.

The project was developed by the Russian architect Alexander Pomerantsev, and in 1903, the central altar of the Sveti Sedmotsenlenitsi temple was consecrated.

The church is quite large: it has a height of about twenty-two meters, a dome diameter of eighteen meters and an area of 720 squares. A total of 37,000 levs (gold) were collected for perestroika. Crucifixion and icons were donated by philanthropists, and painted the temple right up to 1996!

There are parts of the relics of St. Gorazd, St. Clement and St. Harlampia in the temple.

In the spring of 1925, a communist terrorist attack was committed here, in which Bulgarian politician Konstantin Georgiev died.

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All photos in this blog are taken by me unless otherwise attributed.

With love from Bulgaria @varya-davydova

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