Mosque, school, home

During the 1870s, when Nea Chora was systematically becoming a residential area, the neighbourhood’s first temple was constructed. It was a mosque donated to the community by an affluent Muslim woman, Hamide, daughter of Haider Aga Sapunjizade.

The mosque consisted of a main building for prayer and ancillary buildings: a school and the imam’s residence. As was common practice among the Muslims, the mosque was linked to another one of Hamide’s properties within the walls of the fort and the income generated from that property was used to cover the mosque’s maintenance expenses.   

Some of the mosques in Chania had already fallen into disuse before the population exchange due to the steady decrease in Crete’s Muslim population at the beginning of the 20th century. It is not known exactly when this mosque stopped functioning as a prayer site, but it was definitely after 1915.  

During 1924 and 1925, the mosque housed the Nea Chora Elementary School for Boys. After the departure of the Muslims of Chania in 1923, local Christians tore down the mosque’s minaret and used the debris as building materials. Nikolaos Kyriakakis, a teacher who was active in Nea Chora’s public life, recorded his experience of teaching at the mosque and his testimony survives in the piece by Giorgos Pitsitakis ‘Education steps in the New Country’:

‘When I took over as principal [of the elementary school], I was faced with countless difficulties due to the lack of space and teaching staff […]. My two colleagues and I started teaching inside the church of Agios Konstantinos and Agia Eleni. However, we could get no peace due to the constant complaints of the local priest. So we had to move the school all the way up to Tampia on the fort. […] Meanwhile, as all Ottoman families were leaving the prefecture, a group of Christians who had replaced the Ottomans destroyed the local mosque, tore down its minaret and even stole and used the building materials. However, in the end, they realized that it would be best to turn the mosque into a school for their children to save them from having to make the hard, uphill walk to Tampia.’ (Giorgos Pitsitakis, ‘Education steps in the New Country’, in Municipality of Chania, Nea Chora: Washed by the Sea, Chania 2012, p.283).  

Since then, the building has had multiple uses. In 1938, it housed 12 families of refugees from the Soviet Union. After the war, it operated as a hotel for a while and later became a pool hall. Today, it is a private residence. With the exception of the minaret, the main building has been largely preserved. 

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