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A mosaic of Jesus Christ inside the Hagia Sophia. (Alexander Zhivitsky/Shutterstock)
As the president of Turkey moves to
convert one of the oldest Christian churches and sites into a mosque, a
look at some of the key historic facts about the majestic Hagia Sophia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
signed a decree on July 10 to re-convert the magnificent Hagia Sophia —
the onetime cathedral of the Bynzantine Empire — in Istanbul into a
mosque. The order was issued within hours of a court ruling that wiped
away an 80-year-old government decree that had declared the beloved
Christian symbol a museum. The July decision has been condemned by
Christians all over the world, as well as international leaders and the
United Nations.
Here are eight things to know about the Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
1. It was the cathedral of the Eastern Roman Empire for more than 1,000 years.
Hagia Sophia was constructed as the cathedral-church of
Constantinople, and from 527 until Sept. 29, 1453, and the fall of the
city to the Muslim armies of the Ottoman Empire, it was the largest and
arguably greatest church in all of Christendom. The name of the church
is translated as “the Holy Wisdom,” and it was dedicated to the Second
Person of the Trinity.
2. There were several churches built on the site.
In fact, the Hagia Sophia was the third church built on the same
site. The first church was built in 360, during the reign of Emperor
Constantius II, son of Emperor Constantine the Great, the founder of
Constantinople. Called at first the “Great Church,” it was destroyed by
fire in 404, when the outraged supporters of St. John Chrysostom
protested his exile by the Empress Aelia Eudoxia, who hated the saint
and archbishop of Constantinople for his criticism of the corruption,
opulence and brazen immorality of the imperial court.
The second church was built at the command of Emperor Theodosius II
in 415. The massive five-aisled church was also destroyed, this time by
the bloody Nika Revolt — a violent protest against Emperor Justinian I
in 532 that was brutally suppressed but that also ended with the
destruction of much of the capital. As reconstruction was essential for
the church and whole parts of the city, Justinian decided to embark on a
truly ambitious project that would create an unprecedented masterpiece
of a cathedral. The result was the Hagia Sophia.
3. It is honored as one of the greatest masterpieces of art and architecture.
Building
the Hagia Sophia took five years, from 532 to 537, and involved
thousands of artisans and laborers. The chief architects for the church
were two of the greatest minds of the era: Isidore of Miletus, a
physicist and mathematician, and Anthemius of Tralles, a geometrician
and mathematician.
The plan included a rectangular basilica with an immense dome — with a
magnificent cross at the very top — with materials from all over the
Byzantine Empire, including bronze, marble, ivory, gold and stone from
Egypt, Syria and Greece. Columns from the onetime pagan Temple of
Artemis in Ephesus were also hauled to Constantinople for use. The dome
was revolutionary in its design, so much so that after an earthquake in
557 it collapsed partially the next year. The construction of a new
dome, with greater architectural supports, or ribs, was overseen by
Isidore the Younger, nephew of Isidore of Miletus.
The interior was also extraordinary in its opulence and its interplay
of light and shadow, thanks to the ring of windows seemingly floating
beneath the main dome. The decorations in the church eventually included
mosaics depicting Christ, the Blessed Mother and angels. A Christ Pantocrator dominated the central dome. One of the other important floor decorations was in the nave — the Omphalion, a slab of marble used for the coronation of the Byzantine emperors.
It was officially dedicated on Dec. 27, 537, and Emperor Justinian
supposedly exclaimed when it was finished, “Solomon, I have outdone
you!” The final dimensions of the church: 269 feet long, 240 feet wide;
the cupola of the dome soars 180 feet above the main floor. It remained
the largest cathedral in the world for almost 1,000 years and the zenith
of Byzantine architecture.
The sixth-century historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote that the
Hagia Sophia was “distinguished by indescribable beauty, excelling both
in its size, and in the harmony of its measures, having no part
excessive and none deficient; being more magnificent than ordinary
buildings, and much more elegant than those which are not of so just a
proportion. The church is singularly full of light and sunshine; you
would declare that the place is not lighted by the sun from without, but
that the rays are produced within itself, such an abundance of light is
poured into this church.”
4. It survived earthquakes, fires and Iconoclasts.
Aside from the earthquake of 557, the Hagia Sophia survived several
natural disasters. A fire in 859 was followed a decade later by an
earthquake. Another quake in 989 caused damage to the dome, and Emperor
Basil II commissioned a famed Armenian architect, Trdat, to oversee the
repairs. Earthquakes have occurred over the centuries, including one in
1894.
The interior was also impacted in the eight century by the Iconoclast
movement under Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, who issued a decree
forbidding images in the empire. The mosaics in the Hagia Sophia were
either removed or covered over. The decree began two periods (from
around 726-787 and from 814-843) of Iconoclast influence. When, however,
the ban on images ended, Byzantine Emperors installed new and beautiful
images of Christ, the Blessed Mother and saints.
5. It was sacked in 1204 by Crusaders during the Fourth Crusade.
During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Hagia Sophia was sacked by
Latin Crusaders when they seized Constantinople and overthrew the
reigning Byzantine imperial government. The dark moment in Christian
history was orchestrated by the cunning 90-year-old blind Doge of
Venice, Enrico Dandolo. The church was looted, with many sacred vessels
and relics taken back to Italy, and the Hagia Sophia served as a Latin
church until 1261, when the Byzantine imperial line reestablished
itself. When Dandolo died in 1205, he was buried in the Hagia Sophia.
The events of 1204 continue to cast a shadow on efforts to heal the
Great Schism of 1054 between the Orthodox and Catholics.
6. It was forcibly converted into a mosque in 1453.
Muslim armies tried for centuries to conquer the Byzantine Empire.
The final defeat of the Byzantines came at the hands of the Ottoman
Turks, who systematically destroyed the collapsing empire until only
Constantinople remained. The great city finally fell on May 29, 1453,
and the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaeologus, died defending the
city gates. The Ottoman army under Sultan Mehmet II poured into the
city, and Ottoman troops were allowed three days to rape and slaughter
the inhabitants and loot the city. The survivors were placed into
slavery if they could not be ransomed.
The thousands of Byzantines who fled to the Hagia Sophia to pray for
help suffered the same fate when frenzied Ottoman soldiers stormed the
cathedral. Like the other churches in the city, the Hagia Sophia was
sacked and desecrated. By the time the sultan finally entered the
church, it had suffered significant damage.
Mehmet declared that the Hagia Sophia would henceforth serve as the
main mosque of his new capital. He ordered the mosaics to be covered in
plaster and then decorated with Islamic calligraphy and designs. The
sultan completed the forced conversion of the church into a mosque with
the installation of a minbar (pulpit), mihrab (prayer
niche) and fountain for washing to be added. Over the next centuries,
four minarets for the call to prayer were added at the four corners of
the building.
Aside from the images being covered over, the most significant change
to the interior was the installation of eight huge medallions on the
columns in the nave. They were added during extensive renovations
between 1847 and 1849 under Sultan Abdülmecid I and display the names of
Allah and Muhammad, the first four caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and
Ali, and Muhammad’s grandchildren Hassan and Hussein. The restoration
was overseen by the Swiss-Italian architect-brothers Gaspare and
Giuseppe Fossati and a crew of almost 1,000 workers.
7. It was declared a museum in 1934.
After the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1922 and the start of
the Republic of Turkey, a trend toward secularization began under its
first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Hagia Sophia was closed in
1931, and in 1934, Atatürk officially declared it a museum. As part of
the new status, the mosaics were publicly revealed for the first time in
centuries. In 1985, the Hagia Sophia was included in the “Historic
Areas of Istanbul” and therefore part of UNESCO’s World Heritage
List. It was also one of Turkey’s most-visited sites, with several
million visitors every year.
8. World Leaders have condemned declaring the Hagia Sophia a mosque.
World reaction to Erdoğan’s July 10 decree to revert the Hagia Sophia to a mosque has been almost universally negative.
The director-general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, wrote, “Hagia Sophia
is an architectural masterpiece and a unique testimony to interactions
between Europe and Asia over the centuries. Its status as a museum
reflects the universal nature of its heritage, and makes it a powerful
symbol for dialogue.”
The Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of
Constantinople, whose cathedral would historically have been the Hagia
Sophia, expressed his great dismay, declaring in a homily on
June 30, “The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque will disappoint
millions of Christians around the world, and Hagia Sophia, which, due to
its sacredness, is a vital center where East is embraced with the West,
will fracture these two worlds, more so at a time when the afflicted
and suffered mankind, due to the deadly pandemic of the new coronavirus,
is in need of unity and common orientation.”
