Camille Enlart has held that the 14th and 15th centuries, during the Lusignan and Venetian rules, the site of the mosque was home to a Carmelite church.

It had one dome and was reportedly surrounded by a graveyard, which was the site of burial of a King of Jerusalem, a Duke of Normandy and other nobles.

After the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1571, an army encampment was placed at the Sarayönü Square and the Carmelite church was converted to a mosque to facilitate the worship of the soldiers.

This mosque had traditional Ottoman architecture in the interior; it had a roof that was supported by two sharp arches and an undecorated minaret.

In 2004, after pressure from conservative and moderate Islamist circles in Turkey, including the national newspaper Zaman, it was converted back into a mosque.