"Ljeviška" (of Ljeviš) is a Serbianized version of the Greek word "Eleusa" (Ελεούσα), meaning "merciful", a type of depiction of the Virgin Mary in icons in which the infant Jesus Christ is nestled against her cheek.

They highlight valuable information about the city of Prizren in the Roman period and indicate that it may have been a settlement bigger than a village at that time.

Milutin chose to utilize these elements as a symbol in order to highlight his own partially Byzantine origin and relation to the imperial family.

In 1455, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Fatih Mehmet) visited Prizren, which at the time had eight Orthodox and two Catholic churches.

In this period, it was formally called Fatih camisi, while popularly it was known as Cuma Cami, which is how the site is known to the local inhabitants.

As a plague erupted, imperial general Silvio Piccolomini visited Prizren to meet Catholic Archbishop Pjetër Bogdani.

[5] In 1948, it was recognized by the Yugoslav government as a protected cultural site and in 1950–52 a large-scale reconstruction and restoration project began.

In 2005–2008, it was restored by the Commission for Implementation of Reconstruction for Serbian Orthodox Church monuments in Kosovo of the European Union.

[16] In 2020, conservation and restoration of the exterior and churchyard was carried out, under finance Serbian Ministry of Culture and Information after authorization was secured from local institutions.