Both the quarter and the mosque are named after Arab Ahmet Pasha, one of the Turkish commanders in the Ottoman conquest of Nicosia.

From here the boundary passes south of the prison due east, via Norman St., thence along Dereboyu Avenue and Markos Drakos Ave. until the point of the Roccas bastion.

This area includes the Ledra Palace Hotel, British High Commission, Central Prison and the Turkish Cypriot Assembly of the Republic.

Arab Ahmet was one of the original 12 quarters as they existed shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Nicosia in 1570 and, like the others, was named after and put in charge of one of the commanders of the victorious army.

[13] Arab Ahmet neighbourhood was the most prestigious residential area of Nicosia, where the high-ranking Turkish officials and the kadis and pashas had their homes.

[14] Many other Armenians, who escaped from the massacres in Anatolia, settled in the Arab Ahmet neighbourhood and lived there until the inter-communal troubles of 1963, when they fled the quarter.

As they prospered in the area, they bought these properties from Turkish Cypriots, who preferred to either leave the island for Turkey or move to the new Köşklüçiftlik quarter outside the walls.

It is named after Ahmed Pasha (not the neighbourhood), who seems to have rebuilt or repaired it as the principal water-conduit which supplied the town from the upper reaches of the river Pediaios.

[18] The hotel was designed by the German Jewish architect Benjamin Günsberg and was built between 1947 and 1949 on what was then called King Edward VII Street in the quarter (enoria) of Arab Ahmet.

Following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus it fell within the boundaries of the UN Buffer Zone and now serves as the headquarters for Sector 2 United Nations Roulement Regiment (URR) part of UNFICYP.

The southern fringe of the neighbourhood outside the walls, around the Ledra Palace Hotel, is under the control of the Cyprus government or the United Nations.