Guide
This building on Vali Fuat Bey Caddesi in Şanlıurfa is thought to have been built at the beginning of the nineteenth century over the church of John the Baptist, which Bishop Nona had raised in 457. Because it was, according to the Culture Portal, the largest church of its period in the region it was also called the cathedral. It stood ruined for many years and was at one point used as an electricity plant, before being repaired and opened for prayer as a mosque on 28 May 1993. The General Directorate of Foundations repaired it again in 2010-2011.
The entrance is on the west, and the porch was made by using the narthex of the earlier church. The prayer hall is generously lit by windows, and what to look for is at the edges of those windows: half columns left from the church, and reliefs of dragons coiled around one another. The mosque's name comes from an earlier period still - because the first church was used for a time as a mosque by Saladin, the building was given the same name when it was converted.
