Rows of pillars, with Corinthian capitals, divide them one from the other.
The roof of the central nave is supported by rows of pillars, one above the other, each pillar of the lower row having a cluster of small marble pillars round it, for greater strength.
One of the upper pillars on the north-east side of the mosque, of grey veined marble, bears a bas-relief of a seven-branched candlestick, with a Greek and Hebrew inscription of three lines inside a wreath. It belongs, as M. Clermont-Ganneau surmises, to one of the thirty columns sent by the Empress Eudoxia, and probably comes from the Synagogue of Cæsarea.[43]
The walls and ceiling are now whitewashed. The church was undoubtedly decorated with mosaic and pictures.
The three apses have disappeared to make room for a large octagonal minaret.
On the south side the Moslems have built an additional aisle.
The total length of the building is one hundred and eight and a half feet, interior measure, the nave being twenty-one and a half feet wide, and the aisles thirteen feet.
The west doorway is a beautiful mediæval specimen of the Italian Gothic of the twelfth century churches in Palestine, with delicate clustered shafts and pillars, deeply undercut lily-leaves adorning the capitals.
Lieut. Kitchener, in 1874, took a photograph of the western door as well as the interior of the mosque.