e old walls near Toklou Ibrahim Dede Mesjedi must therefore be later
than the Turkish conquest. And as soon as Moslems were laid there, it
was almost inevitable that a church in the immediate neighbourhood
should either be destroyed or converted into a mosque. By what name
that mosque would thenceforth become known was, of course, an open
question. The new name might be purely Turkish. But when it sounds
like the echo of a name which we know belonged to a Byzantine building
in this quarter of the city before Turkish times, it is more
reasonable to regard the new name as a transformation of the earlier
Greek term, than to derive it from fine-spun etymological fancies and
historical blunders. The identification, therefore, of Toklou Ibrahim
Dede Mesjedi with the church of S. Thekla, on the ground of the
similarity of the two names, has a strong presumption in its favour.

[Illustration: PLATE LVI.
S. THEKLA. NORTH SIDE, FROM THE NORTH-WEST.]

[Illustration: S. THEKLA. EAST END.
_To face page 208._]

NOTE ON THE CHURCH OF S. THEKLA

(CHAPTER XIII.)

On page 209, note 3, I have said that if the mosque Aivas Effendi
(more correctly Ivaz Effendi), which is situated behind the Tower of
Isaac Angelus within the old area of the palace of Blachernae, could
be proved to stand on the site of a church, the argument in favour of
the identification of the Church of S. Thekla with Toklou Dede Mesjedi
would be weakened. Since this book went to the press, my learned
friend Mr. X. A. Siderides has shown me a passage in the historical
work of Mustapha Effendi of Salonica, published in 1865, where the
mosque of Ivaz Effendi is described as a church converted into a
mosque by a certain Ivaz Effendi who died in 1586, at the age of
ninety. In that case we should have a Christian sanctuary whose
position corresponded strictly with the position occupied by the
Church of S. Thekla "in the palace of Blachernae," an indication not
exactly accurate in regard to Toklou Dede Mesjedi. In view of the late
date of Mustapha Effendi's work, and the absence, so far as I can
judge, of Byzantine features in the structure of the mosque, it is
difficult to decide if the arguments in favour of the identification
of the Church of S. Thekla with Toklou Dede Mesjedi are entirely
overthrown by the statement of Mustapha Effendi.

A second consideration in support of this identification is the
statement made by A