Bayraklı Mosque

The Bayrakli Mosque (Greek: , from Turkish: Bayraklı Camii, lit.'Mosque of the Flag-bearer') also known as the Hamidiye Mosque (Greek: ) is a former mosque on the island of Chios, in the North Aegean region of Greece. Built in 1892 during the Ottoman-era, it is one of the three surviving former mosques on the island, the other two being the Osmaniye Mosque and the Mecidiye Mosque, all three no longer used for Islamic worship.

The mosque stands inside the fortress of the old town of Chios, on Saint George Street, on the site of the ancient city. A local tradition holds that an old Genoese Catholic church formerly occupied part of the site. A scholarly identification along similar lines has been proposed: on the basis of a marble fragment found opposite the ruined mosque and the building's depiction as a church on an early plan of the citadel, it has been suggested that the mosque probably occupies the site of the church of San Domenico, later known as Santa Maria di Castello, which was the principal Dominican church within the fortress. According to a copy made by Girolamo Giustiniani of an inscription formerly in that church, the Genoese commander Giovanni Giustiniani Longo was buried there. A patrician of Genoa and a member of the Maona of Chios, he commanded part of the defence of Constantinople and died of a wound received during the siege; the original inscription does not survive and is known only through Giustiniani's transcription. When the Ottomans captured Chios in 1566, all the churches in the citadel were reportedly converted into mosques except that of the Dominicans. The present mosque was built later, in 1891–1892, by order of Sultan Abdülhamit II, when Chios was part of the Ottoman Empire and the Vilayet of the Archipelago, as recorded by the marble inscription above the doorframe. Several materials taken from ancient buildings were used in its construction. Following the Armenian Genocide, the Treaty of Lausanne and the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece in the early twentieth century, the building no longer functioned as a mosque but housed a displaced Armenian family, whose initials that they carved

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