The Arablar mosque (Stavros tou Missirikou)
”This small church now used as a mosque is a monument of considerable interest. It is situated on the east side of the Phaneromene enclosure.
The plan of the building is of a domical Byzantine type of a nave with two shallow aisles and a semicircular apse. Architectural decorations are however of the XVIth century style, and the whole forms a curious mixture of different characteristics. The windows and doors have the usual mouldings of the period and the gables are ornamented in a curious manner with small inverted trusses to represent crockets. Regular Gothic buttresses support the walls on every side.
In converting the church into a mosque the west and south doors have been closed up and a porch built at the north-east side. A singularly small minaret was also built at the north-east corner. The building was repaired a few years back, when the gypsum plastering usual in a mosque was renewed;
This small church or chapel is an excellent example of the style of art and the mixture of architectural elements which seems to have prevailed in Cyprus during the Venetian Occupation. The cruciform plan crowned by a cupola is Byzantine, the buttresses with dripstones suggest the mediaeval period, whilst the decorative stone carving is evidently copied from drawings of a classic or renaissance description. It was doubtless the intention of the builders to imitate one of the small churches so common in a Venetian city. It has been supposed that this church is referred to by Dapper (‘Les iles de l’Archipel’) as belonging to the Italian Missionaries in the XVIIth century-the name corrupted from ‘the Cross of the Missionaries’. Its Turkish name seems to be ‘Arab-jami’, or the mosque of the Arab slaves, and the most probable derivation of ‘missiricou’ is from the Arabic ‘Misr’ meaning Egypt, the land from which most of the Arab slaves would have come, although the prefix ‘Stavro’ seems odd applied to a mosque.”
Sources: George Jeffery (1918) and Muslim places of worship in Cyprus (Published by the Press and Information Office, Republic of Cyprus)