Byzantine period Between 1118 and 1124 the
Byzantine Empress
Irene of Hungary built a
monastery on this site dedicated to
Christ Pantokrator (Christ the Omnipotent). The monastery consisted of a
church (which became the
katholikon, or main church, of the monastery) also dedicated to Christ Pantokrator, a library and a hospital. After the death of his wife, shortly after 1134, Emperor
John II Komnenos built another church to the north of the first one which was dedicated to the
Theotokos Eleousa (Merciful Mother of God). This church was open to the population and served by a lay clergy. which became the imperial mausoleum (
heroon) of the
Komnenos and
Palaiologos dynasties. During the period of
Latin domination after the
Fourth Crusade in 1204, the complex fell into the hands of the
Venetian clergy, and an
icon of the
Theotokos Hodegetria was housed here. The monastery was also used as an imperial palace by the last
Latin Emperor,
Baldwin. After the
Palaiologan restoration, the monastery was once again used by Orthodox monks. The most famous of them was
Gennadius II Scholarius, who left the Pantokrator to become the first Patriarch of Constantinople after the Muslim conquest of the city in 1453.
Ottoman and Republican period Shortly after the
Fall of Constantinople the main church was converted into a mosque, while the monastery served for a while as a
medrese. The
Ottomans named it after Molla Zeyrek, a scholar who taught there. and the rooms once occupied by the school vanished. By the early 21st century the edifice had become very rundown and partly ruinous as a result of which it was added to the
UNESCO watchlist of endangered monuments. Extensive and sometimes controversial restoration has now been completed and the mosque reopened for prayer. ==Architecture==