Hagia Sophia: A historical perspective

Hagia Sophia, once Christendom’s greatest church, which was converted into a mosque under the Ottomans before becoming a museum in the 20th Century, has now been reinstated as a mosque.

My family and I have visited Hagia Sophia and were impressed by its grandeur and grace. We have very fond memories of it and had wished we could offer our prayers there. We have remembered the Almighty in our visits to Saint Peters Basilica at the Vatican and other renowned churches around the world.

Officially known as the Great Mosque of Ayasofya, the House of God has been a place of worship for both Christians and Muslims. It was completed in 537 AD at Constantinople for the state church of the Roman Empire by Emperor Justinian I. It was then the world’s largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome and is considered as the epitome of Byzantine style of construction and is said to have “changed the history of architecture”.

The church was dedicated to the Wisdom of God, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity while Sophia is the Latin transliteration of the Greek word for wisdom. After Sultan Muhammad Fateh conquered Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire converted Hagia Sophia to a mosque. One of the first acts of the conqueror Mehmed II was to pray in Hagia Sophia, effectively establishing it as a mosque. Many Muslims interpret this as a fulfilment of one of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)’s hadith, widely accepted traditionally as a prophecy, concerning the fall of Constantinople to Muslim hands.

Most people are not aware of a historical fact that Sultan Muhammad Al-Fateh, after conquering Constantinople, approached the pastors managing Hagia Sophia and offered to purchase it from his personal funds.

A deal was struck and the deed was signed, with money being paid from his own purse and not the national treasury. This deed came to light a few weeks ago, when Turkey was in the process of manually reviewing 27,000 documents and coincidentally found an original title (Tabou) that clearly shows private property ownership. Thus, the current landlords, descendants of the Ottomans, applied for absolute free use of the property as their own, and their request was to return the building to a mosque as they used it since the day they bought it.

After its conversion to a mosque, in 1453, Islamic architectural features were added, such as a mimbar (pulpit), four minarets, and a mihrab – a niche indicating the direction of prayer (qibla). The Byzantine architecture of the Hagia Sophia served as inspiration for many other Ottoman mosques, including the Blue Mosque, the Shehzade Mosque, the Suleymaniye Mosque, the Rustem Pasha Mosque and the Kiliç Ali Pasha Complex.

The complex remained a mosque until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the secular Republic of Turkey under Ghazi Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. According to data released by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Hagia Sophia was Turkey’s most visited tourist attraction in 2015 and 2019, attracting almost 3.3 million visitors annually.

Hagia Sophia has suffered a fair share of ruin due to natural calamities and man-made disasters. Earthquakes in August 553 and on 14 December 557 caused cracks in the main dome and eastern semi-dome. According to the Chronicle of John Malalas, during a subsequent earthquake on 7 May 558, the eastern semi-dome fell down, destroying the ambon, altar, and ciborium. The collapse was due mainly to the unfeasibly high bearing load and to the enormous shear load of the dome, which was too flat. These caused the deformation of the piers which sustained the dome. Emperor Justinian ordered an immediate restoration.

He entrusted it to Isidorus the Younger, nephew of Isidore of Miletus, who used lighter materials. The whole vault had to be taken down and rebuilt 20 Byzantine feet (6.25 meters or 20.5 feet) higher than before, giving the building its current interior height of 55.6 meters (182 ft). Moreover, Isidorus changed the dome type, erecting a ribbed dome with pendentives whose diameter was between 32.7 and 33.5 m. Under Justinian’s orders, eight Corinthian columns were disassembled from Baalbek, Lebanon, and shipped to Constantinople around 560. This reconstruction, giving the church its present 6th-century form, was completed in 562. The mosaics were completed in the reign of Emperor Justin II (565–578), Justinian I’s successor.

The basilica suffered damage, first in a great fire in 859, and again in an earthquake on 8 January 869, that made one of the half-domes collapse. Emperor Basil I ordered the church repaired.

After the great earthquake of 25 October 989, which collapsed the western dome arch, Emperor Basil II asked for the Armenian architect Trdat, creator of the Cathedral of Ani, to direct the repairs.

He erected again and reinforced the fallen dome arch and rebuilt the west side of the dome with 15 dome ribs. The extent of the damage required six years of repair and reconstruction; the church was re-opened on 13 May 994. At the end of the reconstruction, the church’s decorations were renovated, including the addition of four immense paintings of cherubs; a new depiction of Christ on the dome; a burial cloth of Christ shown on Fridays, and on the apse a new depiction of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, between the apostles Peter and Paul. On the great side arches were painted the prophets and the teachers of the church.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference that Muslim prayer will begin on July 24, the 567th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul. Erdogan announced: “Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims.”

Conversion of houses of worship from one faith to another is nothing new. After the downfall of the Muslim Empire, mosques in Spain were turned into churches. As long as the Almighty is prayed to in the House of Worship, its sanctity remains.